Yes! PafGUIDE includes every single Private Ancillary Fund (PAF) that is registered in Australia — even those that do not appear on the ACNC Charity Register (approximately 50%). Each month, we do a check for newly established funds using Australian Business Register data and we crosscheck this data against the PafGUIDE data to determine the funds that have been cancelled. The research team then adds new funds and updates existing funds in the database.

In 2019, our research team commenced the project of adding every Public Ancillary Fund (PuAF) into PafGUIDE. The addition of Public Ancillary Funds to PafGUIDE has close to doubled the number of funds in the database and significantly increased the chances for our subscribers to access opportunities for funding.

All information in the PafGUIDE database comes from publicly-available and pay-for-content sources. After utilising online tools by Australian Business Register (ABN Lookup), Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC Charity Register), and Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC Connect), the majority of research time is spent scouring as many digital and hardcopy resources as are available, such as annual reports, social media, rich lists, and so on, to gather as much information as possible for every single fund. The result is an aggregated (by a human!) profile for each fund and a complete database of every PAF and PuAF.

Along with the monthly check for new and cancelled funds, our research team works daily through a cycle of every fund in the database from least recently updated. The Suggest an Edit or Update button at the bottom of each fund entry allows subscribers to send an email request to the research team to prioritise the updating of a fund, and we will usually action the request within 48 hours. This ensures our subscribers have the ability to access the most up-to-date information possible as our team keeps track of all PAFs and PuAFs in Australia.

A researcher will spend anywhere between 2 hours to a full day researching to add or update a fund entry in the PafGUIDE database. The profile of a fund includes (depending on the level of information available) Fund Name, Fund Type, Financial Info, ABN, Entity Type, Date of Effect, Funding Categories, Geographic Scope of Funding, Contact Details, Address Details, Directors, and About the Fund, including Philanthropic Track Record (gift type, amount, year, and recipient), Application Process, Director Biographies, and Capacity Indicators, along with any other information, such as the personal giving history and wealth indicators of the Directors, that might help your organisation assess the fit of the fund to your cause and community. So, very comprehensive!

PafGUIDE remains the only database that includes every single PAF with each one individually and comprehensively researched. PafGUIDE has been an ongoing project since 2009 when our team started researching what was then known as Prescribed Private Funds (PPFs). It is great to see a number of other databases since established for the purpose of providing information on grants, donations, etc., and it is useful to utilise multiple resources for your fundraising; these other databases might include some PAFs, but only those that appear on the ACNC Charity Register, which means around half are missing! PafGUIDE is the only complete database of Private Ancillary Funds in Australia.