ACNC Registered Charities

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) is the national regulator of charities in Australia.

Since 3 December 2012, charities wanting to access Commonwealth charity tax concessions (and other benefits), need to register with the ACNC. Although many charities choose to register, registration with the ACNC is voluntary.

The ACNC maintains a register (known as the Charity Register), which contains information about registered charities.

A user-friendly way to search the Charity Register, particularly for information on individual charities or to search by particular locations or activity types at acnc.gov.au/charity.

Some information on the Register is only available on the charity's Register page. This includes:

• Entity type
• When charitable purposes applied or ceased to apply
• Registration status
• Whether the charity is a basic religious entity
• The names of the people responsible for directing the charity.
• Annual information statement data
• Annual financial reports
• Governing documents
• Enforcement outcomes (such as warnings or directions)

For researchers and others interested in using the Charity Register data to look at multiple charities, or for data analysis, the dataset published on this data.gov.au page is the most effective way to download the information. The information included in the downloadable dataset is:

• Legal name
• Other names (such as trading names)
• Australian Business Number (ABN)
• Contact details
• Date established
• Who the charity helps (beneficiaries)
• Size of the charity (small, medium or large)
• Financial year end
• States, territories or countries where the charity operates
• Charitable purpose(s)
• When the charity was registered with the ACNC

In some situations, charities can apply to have some or all of their information withheld from the Charity Register. If the ACNC has approved for the information to be withheld, it won’t appear on the Charity Register, or in this dataset.

Each year, charities also lodge Annual Information Statements with the ACNC. These record further information about charities’ purposes, activities and operations for the year, and appear on the webpage version of the Register.

The ACNC also publishes other datatsets on data.gov.au, as part of our commitment to open data and transparent regulation. All datasets (including Annual Infomation Statement datasets) can be found at data.gov.au/dataset?q=acnc.

PLEASE NOTE: It is possible that some information in this dataset might be subject to a future request by the charity to have their information withheld, but will still appear in the dataset until the next update. Please consider this risk when using this dataset.