Community Sector Investment Over Time

The community sector provides services to virtually all Canberrans and serves as an essential safety net for people experiencing poverty and disadvantage. Increased demand and inadequate funding mean that Canberrans are falling through the cracks, as community organisations are forced to turn away people who desperately need help.

In the ACT, the community sector has raised concerns about systemic underinvestment with the ACT Government for over a decade, including in the Counting the Costs Report. The ACT Government has acknowledged the validity of the community sector’s concerns, but significant recommendations have not been actioned. In this context, and amidst a cost-of-living crisis, understanding how investment in the sector has changed over time is vital.

ACT Government budget practices make it difficult to determine how funding for the community sector has changed over time. This is because community sector funding is not consistently labeled and total funding for the sector is not routinely reported. This factsheet uses two years in which the ACT Government provided information that allows investment in the community sector to be calculated: 2009-10 and 2022-23.