An active humanitarian movement

Supporting people taking action and creating connections

I’m most proud of being a part of Australian Red Cross and the current journey to change youth participation in humanitarian action. It has allowed me to contribute so much to my community.
—Evie Kuang, REDx Youth Committee Member

Members of our REDxYouth Committee Elvis, Marlee, Caitlin, George and Evie, are helping guide our organisation and engage other young Australians through our REDxYouth Network. Photo: Australian Red Cross/Frances Andrijich Photography

In the past year we’ve worked to better understand how many people are taking humanitarian action. Using this analysis we can see more than 1.9 million people are taking humanitarian action. That’s a lot of people doing their bit for humanity, from people who volunteer or are Red Cross members, to financial supporters and blood donors.

We’ve also worked to make taking action easier. We launched RedXYouth to help young people connect and act on causes that matter to them, and we tested an online platform to see if it would help members across the country to better connect. While we still have work to do, we have made progress on improving the experience for volunteers, including making the process of getting on board with us easier and quicker.

We also worked to ensure our trusted brand would be the first choice for people wanting to contribute and take humanitarian action.

Goal: Build an inclusive, diverse and active humanitarian movement based on voluntary service

2.5 million people, reflecting the diversity of our community, take voluntary humanitarian action with us to help others

50% (of 2.5 million) are self-organising and leveraging our knowledge, expertise, and evidence to advocate for and help others

Australians trust and respect Australian Red Cross

Getting ready for Volunteering 3.0

We have now secured a founding partnership with an Australian foundation to establish Humanitech – an initiative to progress humanitarian outcomes through the use of new and emerging technology such as Blockchain.

1.9 million people are taking voluntary humanitarian action

The first solution to come out of this initiative is the The Identity Project. The pilot for the Identity project was completed in the past year. The first phase of the project will allow a volunteer to securely share their credentials such as police checks with several organisations, making it easier to volunteer, as they no longer need to repeat mandatory checks. It will also reduce costs for all organisations. A ‘trust alliance’ has been established to develop the standards that will enable credentials to be accepted by each organisation.

This work is a first step towards our long term vision of giving people control of their identity and reputation, sharing it in ways that let them fully participate civically, socially and economically.

Making volunteering easier

We reached out and engaged more than 2,000 young Australians through the redefinition of the National Youth Advisory Committee (NYAC, also known as the RedX Committee) and launch of RedxYouth. It’s a network of young people interested and engaged in humanitarian action, connecting and leading on work in ways relevant to them.

More than 2,000 young Australians connected with our REDxYouth network

Additionally, we went back to basics and looked at our processes and data to make things simpler for our members and volunteers. We simplified the renewal process for branches and units, streamlined volunteer recruitment and standardised the way we collect, store and use data. We also updated our communications to members and volunteers with a regular blog sent to our members by our President, Ross Pinney, and a regular email update sent to volunteers.

Trust and respect

According to our Brand Equity Tracker, Red Cross is the second most spontaneously recalled charity, and the first one when it comes to international charity.

Our reputation score in the AMR Charity Reputation Index is stable at 82.8 and considered as excellent. Despite recording a similar score to 2017, Red Cross’s rank among the top 40 charities has dropped 5 places to 24th, highlighting the improvement recorded by some of the other (smaller) charities this year.

We’re the #1 recognised charity for prompted awareness

Still according to AMR, the trust in Australian Red Cross is growing: 81% of the Australian population were positive about trusting Australian Red Cross to do the right thing, versus 76% last year.

In addition, we continued to improve trust through our ongoing Trust Initiative. The project works to ensure the information we are trusted with remains private and secure. In the past year we trained more than half of our workforce in data security and made process improvements across the organisation.

What we learned

Making good decisions through data and insights

This year, we have increased our focus on data and insights, taking further steps to keep our data safe and using customer insights to provide a great donor experience.

We’ve been asking supporters what they want and applying what we learn. Our annual supporter survey included channel preferences. We have run hyper-targeted campaigns, contacting fewer donors and getting better results.

We’ve created new ways for people to contribute, using customer insights and user-centred design. These insights developed the Go Without Challenge, which met the needs of young supporters and saw participation from 1,000 students at 525 schools.

We relaunched Real Good Gifts and used a live data dashboard to understand buyer behaviour, monitor the effectiveness of marketing channels and optimise our media investment to connect with more donors at a lower cost.

Red Cross people volunteer with these services each week, helping to breakdown the feeling of isolation while providing healthy sandwiches and sharing a chat and a cuppa.
— Maureen Farrington, Red Cross Tewantin and Noosa branch member

Members are the grass roots of our organisation. They see the issues faced in their communities, band together and take humanitarian action. At the local government’s social services hub, Tewantin and Noosa branch members volunteer to support people coming in need of support services. Volunteers chat with people over healthy food and a cuppa, helping break down the isolation many people feel when they come to the hub. From running homework clubs for migrant children, to providing mobility aids and running huge fundraising events, our members are the heart of our organisation.