{"id":3127,"date":"2013-06-13T10:22:40","date_gmt":"2013-06-13T00:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/?p=3127"},"modified":"2017-07-24T18:07:11","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T08:07:11","slug":"real-charities-the-questionable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fionalake.com.au\/blog\/real-charities-the-questionable\/","title":{"rendered":"Real charities and the questionable organisations who appear to do little hands-on good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia has many organisations, religious and otherwise, doing fabulous community work that could not be funded by governments.<\/p>\n

For example; Blue Care<\/a>\u00a0& Frontier Services<\/a> (Uniting Church); St Vincent de Paul <\/a>(associated with the Catholic Church, but not funded by it), Masonic Care Queensland <\/a>(Freemasons). Etcetera.<\/p>\n

Quite rightly, these organisations have been granted Charitable Status, so rather than having to fork out tax, all their profits can be reinvested in their worthy community programmes.<\/p>\n

But there are a number of organisations in Australia who have been granted charity status, who are promoting particular causes that stray away from what the general public would believe should be effectively funded by them (via exemption from tax paying); and\/or they appear to have no positive or hands-on activities whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Animals Australia is perhaps the most obvious example.\u00a0 Charitable status, recipient of government grants – yet money appears to only be spent on staff wages and campaigning against animal-related industries, such as sheep and cattle farmers.\u00a0 This includes expensive advertising campaigns on television etc.<\/p>\n

The other curiousity is that Sanitarium falls under the umbrella of the Seventh-Day Adventist church’s charitable status also. Sanitarium is a business that competes head-to-head with Australian owned food manufacturing businesses, that do not have charitable status. Sanitarium’s attempt at justifying their company profit tax exemption<\/a> is laughable. If this was all it took, every company in Australia could apply for exemption from paying tax:<\/p>\n

“Sanitarium Health Food Company was registered as Australia\u2019s first health food company in April 1898. It was established by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia to promote and produce plant-based health foods based on its belief that plant-based diets are designated by God, our Creator, for the health of the human race. Worldwide, the Church operates health food industries and health-care services based on this philosophy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sanitarium\u2019s enduring mission is to \u201cinspire and resource our community to experience happy, healthy lives\u201d. As such the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and Sanitarium continue to share an explicit common reason and purpose of existence.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sanitarium is a leader in producing foods of the highest nutritional value and appeal. It invests significant resources into community nutrition education through its Sanitarium Nutrition Services, providing unbiased advice and consultation to both health professionals and the community.\u00a0<\/em> Promoting vegetarianism, no doubt, as this is a core 7th Day Adventist belief.\u00a0 This has been written about in an earlier post.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Company is a generous supporter of the community through charity partnerships.<\/em><\/p>\n

In relation to Sanitarium’s tax status, it is important to note the following:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n