Meeting the Needs

Shane Wood cfc has spent the past 13 years juggling budgets and competing demands. As ACRATH’s Treasurer he understands better than most the tension between income and funding important projects that respond to the needs of victim/survivors of human trafficking. This month he hands the job over to someone else at the ACRATH annual meeting.

Melbourne-based Shane joined ACRATH in 2011 after returning from Broome where he was co-ordinator of the Bishop’s Office for Justice, Ecology and Peace. While he had limited understanding of human trafficking at that time, he soon discovered that many of the issues he had dealt with intersect with modern slavery.

“It was a quick learning curve,” Shane said. His next learning curve was in 2012 when he agreed to be Treasurer, before ACRATH was incorporated. Since then, he has guided the organisation through many changes, expansions, shifting income patterns and more recently the cost of living crisis that has hit all charities and NGOs.

One thing that has not changed during his time as Treasurer is his focus on sustainability. In the first six years as Treasurer ACRATH received funding from the Commonwealth Government, donations from the public and generous support from many religious congregations. Once federal funding ended, the community and religious congregations stepped up.

He has had oversight of large annual donations as well as small ‘faithful’ donations from people around Australia, some of whom have given the same amount each month for more than a decade. ACRATH is grateful to them all.

The past decade has been one of change for ACRATH as the organisation grew, fundraised to make up for the loss of large federal grants, developed partnerships and collaborations with universities and health care providers including St John of God Health Care and St Vincent’s Health Australia.  For Shane, the growth has also meant ‘juggling’ competing and important demands.

“There’s a real tension between taking on something that looks good and will attract the imagination of the public and knowing how we can pay for it. The other tension is our people. In the social services sector, there is a danger that people will burn out because they know funds are limited and they do extra work,” Shane said.  “Even if you obtain the funding, you need more staff to carry out the work, and this demands more oversight from the person in charge whose time might already be fully committed.”

He doesn’t hesitate recommending ACRATH to potential donors, big or small, and says donors get ‘bang for their buck’ with ACRATH because:

• Volunteers are trained to carry out work in regions around Australia.
• ACRATH has credibility in the sector because its work is informed through direct contact with victim/survivors of human trafficking in the Companionship and Migrant Worker programs.
• ACRATH has access to a network of faith-based organisations working in the modern slavery space around the world and can call on these organisations to assist Australians caught up overseas or to provide information about how people are being sent to Australia.

“There has been a lot of change not just in income, but in the organisation itself. ACRATH’s engine room has been mostly volunteers and Religious Sisters and they tend to work 9 to 9. But we can’t expect that of others, and we must change. To sustain the work, we need to find different ways of operating.  It is a challenge; but exciting at the same time.”

He may well be part of that change. Shane is retiring as Treasurer but is available to remain on the National Committee to assist with the transition.

Thanks, Shane, for 13 years of service as Treasurer.