Empowered, engaged and accountable people
In October, we launched our third Reconciliation Action Plan. The plan aims to move reconciliation from the head to the heart. It encourages every Red Cross person to make their own personal commitment, with hundreds of Red Cross people completing ‘I will’ plans that outline the reconciliation actions they will take.
As part of our Reconciliation Action Plan, we committed to developing a way for staff to continually improve their cultural understanding and competency through what we call the ‘Cultural Ladder’. It launched during Reconciliation Week 2019 and provides access to resources, reading materials as well as on-line and face-to-face training.
In FY18 we advised that we had made mistakes in the way that some current and former employees had been paid. Those mistakes arose from incorrectly applying awards and enterprise agreements and errors in job classification. We are working with the Fair Work Ombudsman to ensure our employees receive back pay and are remunerated correctly and the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) have now completed a review. We have now corrected the hourly pay rate and annual leave loading for the majority of our current employees and made partial back payments to approximately 600 employees. Funds for the partial back payments and any future back payments were set aside in a provision from non-operational funds in FY18. We thank our employees for their incredible patience and understanding as we make progress to finalise back payments.
Funding and support for today and the future
In the past year, we worked to improve the regular giving program using a new customer-centric approach and continuous testing and learning. We worked to improve the experience of people who interacted with face-to-face fundraisers, ensured people who signed up stayed engaged and looked for new ways for people to take part in regular giving.
We developed new ways for people to engage with Red Cross. The Go Without Challenge was aimed at engaging school kids in Red Cross Calling. This new product drew on the insight that young people want to be involved, like to empathise with the beneficiary and want to see the impact they are making to a specific cause.
We developed the product iteratively and put the people who wanted this product at the centre of this work. As it was developed, students, parents and teachers were able to give weekly feedback on prototypes directly to the project delivery team. The end result: a challenge for students to ‘Go Without’ food, their bed or words (including their phone) and fundraise with their family and friends for Red Cross. More than 1,000 students and 500 schools took part.
Our new Hero Kids program aimed to engage families with young children on humanitarian issues, while the re-launched Real Good Gifts surpassed revenue targets, raising $46,000 and engaging 631 families. The vast majority of donors (94%) were brand new.
In addition to our ongoing fundraising work, we ran four major fundraising appeals to support disasters and emergencies at home and overseas. At short notice, our team pulls together to give people the information and the opportunity to give. The drought impacting parts of Queensland, NSW, South Australia and Victoria, earthquakes and tsunamis in Indonesia and fires in Greece all resulted in major appeals and raised a combined $12.7 million.
Reducing costs
More than $2 million of ongoing savings were achieved through consolidation of properties in Melbourne and Perth and downsizing of property in Sydney.
We also achieved $3 million in procurement and cost reduction initiatives including renegotiation of contracts, replacing our travel booking, printer & fax systems and reducing spending on travel and recruitment.
Several Finance & Business Services processes were refined. New treasury processes, invoice payment automation, a new fleet management portal and self-booking system for travel were just some of the improved processes that helped unlock time and resources.