A living investigation into Australia's philanthropic system
359,678 FINANCIAL RECORDS.
10,837 FOUNDATIONS.
ONE QUESTION.
Where does the money go?
The System At A Glance
AUSTRALIA'S $222 BILLION CHARITY SECTOR
We imported every ACNC filing from 2017 to 2023. Cross-referenced with ATO data, corporate filings, and public grant disclosures. Here's what we found.
The charity sector holds almost half a trillion dollars in assets. Only 2.3% of annual revenue flows out as grants. The rest goes to salaries, operations, and growing the endowment. The question isn't whether philanthropy is generous — it's whether the system is working.
The Concentration Crisis
94% OF DONATIONS GO TO
10% OF ORGANISATIONS.
0.5%
To First Nations
Despite being 3.8% of the population. For every $1 spent on non-Indigenous Australians, First Nations communities get 13 cents.
12%
To Women & Girls
Half the population. 12% of philanthropic funding. The numbers speak for themselves.
-$144M
Smallest 16,000 Charities
The grassroots organisations closest to community collectively lost $144 million last year. They subsidise the sector with unpaid labour.
$2.5B
Annual Tax Subsidy
Taxpayer money through DGR deductions. 82% of this public subsidy flows to the top 10% of organisations.
89%
Pay Executives More Than They Grant
89% of foundations pay their executives more than they distribute in grants. The data is public. We just made it visible.
Follow The Money
FROM EXTRACTION TO COMMUNITY
For the first time in Australia, you can trace funding from its origin — through foundations and grant programs — to the communities it reaches. Or doesn't reach.
SOURCE
Mining royalties, property wealth, family trusts, corporate profits, investment returns
$1.1B from ethically contested sources
FOUNDATION
Private foundations, corporate giving programs, community trusts, PAFs & PuAFs
10,837 foundations profiled
PROGRAMS
Grant rounds, scholarships, sponsorships, partnerships, impact investments
1,297 programs mapped
GRANTS
Individual grants with amounts, eligibility, timelines, and outcomes
30,139 opportunities indexed
COMMUNITY
The organisations and people doing the work on the ground
64,560 community orgs
What This Means For You
WHETHER YOU GIVE OR RECEIVE,
THE SYSTEM AFFECTS YOU.
CivicGraph isn't a search engine. It's infrastructure for fairer markets — three layers connecting money, entities, and community evidence. Here's what it changes.
IF YOU'RE A FOUNDATION
- See your scorecard. Giving ratio, executive pay benchmarks, geographic reach, thematic coverage. How do you compare to your peers?
- Find who you're missing. The best community organisations don't have grant writers. They have Elders, practitioners, and youth workers too busy doing the work to fill in your 47-page form. Search by impact, not prose.
- See the whole system. Where does your funding overlap with other foundations? Which communities are invisible? Where is nobody giving at all?
- Build your brand through transparency. In a world where every ACNC filing is public, your reputation is what the data says. Be on the right side of it.
IF YOU'RE A CORPORATE
- Your CSR is visible. We track ASX200 corporate giving — what you fund, where, how much. Stakeholders, journalists, and communities can see the full picture.
- Discover aligned partners. Stop fielding random grant applications. Search 64,560+ charities by mission alignment, geography, and proven track record.
- Move from transactional to relational. The grant application process is adversarial by design. CivicGraph enables mutual discovery — find each other based on real alignment, build partnerships over time.
- Prove real impact. Portfolio analytics show where your dollars land — geography, community served, outcomes achieved. Not a CSR report. Real data.
IF YOU'RE A COMMUNITY ORG
- Find every grant you're eligible for. AI scores 30,139+ grants against your mission statement. Stop searching. Start matching.
- Write better applications, faster. AI drafts in your voice, tailored to the funder's language. Not a template. A real draft that sounds like your community.
- Track every relationship. Every conversation, every application, every outcome with each foundation. Build trust over years, not rounds.
- Use it free. Forever. Community orgs under $500K revenue pay nothing. Funded by foundations and corporates who believe in equitable access.
IF YOU'RE IN GOVERNMENT OR RESEARCH
- System-level visibility. Where is philanthropic money flowing? Where are the gaps? What's the overlap between public and private funding? Data that doesn't exist anywhere else.
- Living reports, not static PDFs. Our data investigations update as new filings come in. Power dynamics, community parity, money flow — always current.
- Open data infrastructure. API access to 359,678 financial records, 10,837 foundation profiles, and 30,139 grant opportunities.
- Inform policy with evidence. DGR reform, giving incentives, sector regulation — every policy question can be answered with real data.
Living Data Investigations
THE REPORTS
Not static PDFs. Living investigations powered by 359,678 financial records that update as new data comes in. Click through to explore the full analysis.
Where Does $222 Billion Go?
359,678 charity records. 7 years. The full picture of Australia's charity sector.
02Power Dynamics
Concentration, inequality, and the Gini coefficient of Australian philanthropy.
03Community Parity
Who benefits, who misses out, and the communities invisible to funders.
04Community Power
Alternatives to grant dependency. What happens when communities control the money.
05Money Flow
Trace funding from mining, finance, and property through foundations to community.
06Access Gap
The tools gap between large and small organisations. Who can afford to fundraise.
The Platform
EXPLORE THE DATA YOURSELF
Every number on this page links to live data. Search foundations, browse grants, explore charity finances, run simulations. It's all open.
4,964 AI-enriched
FOUNDATIONS
Search 10,837 foundations by giving area, size, and geography. AI-enriched profiles with giving ratios and scorecards.
AI match scoring
GRANTS
30,139 grant opportunities from state, federal, and private funders. 100% AI-embedded for semantic search.
7 years of data
CHARITIES
64,560+ community organisations with ACNC financial data, mission profiles, and geographic coverage.
Full transparency
CORPORATE
ASX200 corporate giving mapped. Who gives, how much, where it goes, and what it means.
Updated daily
DASHBOARD
System-level metrics. Sector revenue, concentration indices, giving ratios, and trends over time.
Interactive
SIMULATOR
Model funding scenarios. What happens if giving ratios increase? If concentration decreases? Play with the numbers.
THE MODEL
The organisations doing the hardest work in the hardest places shouldn't also have to pay for the tools to find funding. So we built a different model.
$499
Funder pays /month
$0
Community uses free
Foundations and corporates already have the budgets. And they get a better product because more community orgs on the platform means better data, better discovery, and better outcomes for everyone.
Community
Free
Grassroots NFPs, First Nations orgs
Professional
$49/mo
Established NFPs, social enterprises
Organisation
$199/mo
Peak bodies, multi-program orgs
Funder
$499/mo
Foundations, corporate, government
The Big Why
AUSTRALIA HAS NO
360GIVING.
The UK has 360Giving — open data on every grant. The US has Candid. Australia has nothing.
We didn't wait for government to build it. We didn't wait for the sector to agree on a standard. We built it with the data that already exists — public filings that nobody had bothered to aggregate, analyse, and make accessible.
This isn't a grant search engine.
It's infrastructure for fairer markets.
THE SYSTEM CHANGES
WHEN EVERYONE CAN SEE IT.
Whether you give or receive, the data is yours. Join the platform that makes the invisible visible.