The Foundation wins New Zealand Charity Reporting Award for the fourth time.
The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ is proud to announce that our 2020 Performance Report won ‘Highly Commended’ in this year’s New Zealand Charity Reporting Awards. This is our fourth time receiving an accolade in the five years since the awards began. The Foundation has previously been awarded three 'Highly Commended' and one ‘Winner’ award.
Presented by Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, the Awards were created to honour the top examples of financial reporting among registered charities, and to help the sector continue to improve the quality of its reporting. Reporting standards are set by the External Reporting Board (XRB) and were first introduced in 2015 to provide transparency and consistent reporting across the sector. The New Zealand Charity Reporting Awards judge both on compliance with reporting standards, and the effectiveness of the communication.
There are almost 28,000 registered charities in New Zealand which are divided into four reporting categories – Tiers 1, 2, 3 and 4. Each tier is based on annual spend. The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ falls into Tier 2, having an annual spend of between $2m to $30m. In previous years, each Tier has been judged separately, but this year Tier 1 and 2 charities were grouped together. This meant The Foundation was judged alongside New Zealand's largest charities and makes receiving an award extra special.
Completing the Performance Report each year is a considerable undertaking that requires collaboration across all of our teams. Receiving the 'Highly Commended' award is a meaningful recognition of the work we have done and continue to do across the whole organisation. Sharon Orr, The Foundation’s Finance & Operations Director, says of receiving this award:
"Winning this award underpins our goal to demonstrate transparency and excellence of information in our financial reporting. It’s the reason we chose to early adopt the Service Performance Reporting standard, which is the component in our Performance Report that describes who we are, why we exist and the impact of our work. It’s our opportunity to describe the part we play in assisting our partners to end avoidable blindness and vision impairment in the Pacific. Some of these countries have the highest prevalence of avoidable blindness in the world, so it’s vitally important that as a charity, we are held to the highest standards of accountability to both our generous supporters and to our Pacific partners."