We might not be the ABC, but we thought we’d have a crack at this one all the same… https://twitter.com/drcbond/status/1288673655514230784

Q1: Is Clontarf an Indigenous Community Controlled Organisation?

A1: Nope, it is not Indigenous controlled, owned, or run. The Clontarf Foundation was founded in 2000 by Gerard Neesham, a non-Indigenous ex-AFL player and coach.

In publicly info, the ABN history tells us that it was “The Gerard Neesham Aboriginal Sporting Foundation Inc” from June 2000 - May 2004, then “The Western Australian Indigenous Sporting Foundation Incorporated" until it became “The Clontarf Foundation Inc” in June 2004.

They dropped the ‘inc’ in 2008, moved to a new ABN as ‘Clontarf Foundation’ and became an ACNC (Australian charity) in Dec 2012, receiving the charity tax concessions of a public benevolent institution (GST, FBT and Income Tax exempt, & DGR status).

Q2: How much funding do they get from state & federal governments?

A2: 2019 Grant Income:
State Funding: $20,849,898
Federal Funding: $21,815,393
Private Funding: $13,978,861
Total: $56,644,152

On top of $56.6M in grant income, $1.8M is ‘other income.’ Of this $1.8M, $1.6M is interest. ‘Interest income’ can be from a number of possible sources, eg cash or investments. But it is worth noting that they make more in interest than many Indigenous orgs get in total funding.

In the 2019 statement of financial position it says that they spent $53,387,716 on suppliers & employees. Comprising 1 staff member on $300,000 - $350,000, 1 staff on $200,000 - $250,000, 27 - $150,000 - $200,000, 85 staff $100,000 - $150,000, and 333 staff get ‘Up to $100,000.’

They don’t report on how many Indigenous people are in each salary range, but damn we wish they did. Either way, the two people at the very top of the tree are doing okay.

Clontarf approximates that it costs $7500 per student per year, predominantly for wages and suppliers.

It’s a bit hard to answer Q3 “what do independent evaluations of this say?” as they are hard to come by, which isn’t great for a non-Indigenous org receiving that much money.

There is this review from PM&C in 2018 evaluating a $4.5Million expansion which doesn’t say much but has some interesting bits all the same. https://www.niaa.gov.au/resource-centre/indigenous-affairs/clontarf-foundation-expansion-measure-final-report

And we do know they get a lot more $ than girls programs… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-02/what-explains-the-indigenous-school-academy-funding-divide/9494820

It seems they focus a lot on sports, attendance and behaviour and not so much on academic outcomes, and it isn’t clear how they record success, eg if every student they ‘help’ with attendance issues doesn’t actually have an attendance problem.

There is one report which is worth noting, a 2016 evaluation of NSW Clontarf Academies conducted by the NSW DET https://www.cese.nsw.gov.au//images/stories/PDF/Eval_Rep/Aboriginal_Affairs/Clontarf_Report.pdf

States and Territories combined gave Clontarf almost $21Million in 2019 so you’d expect every state and territory to have done their own review, but we couldn’t find them. Pls Tweet us the links if you know where they are.

It includes a figure explaining the logic for Clontarf, which makes some serious generalisations about Indigenous boys which need to be interrogated. These generalisations could be true if you targeted this specific cohort, but participation is open to all Aboriginal boys.

The report includes a range of quotes which are largely supportive of Clontarf (p9).

One quote from Page 20 was especially interesting though:

So from the school perspective, it provides three Aboriginal staff instead of 1.5, but Clontarf staff aren’t AEWs or AEOs or SLSOs, and the cost from a school perspective may be cheaper, but not from a whole of government perspective.

This raises the question of whether the Clontarf academy is more effective than an increased number of trained Aboriginal support staff.

There are also quotes on Page 20 highlighting the lack of support for Indigenous girls:

Here are some tables and data sets for your own interpretation:
Page 42

Page 60

Page 68

There’s a lot more in that report, but those are a few snapshots we felt worth sharing. Important to remind people this was NSW only and Clontarf is national.

The Federal budget announced $200 Million for improving Indigenous education in the 2019/20 budget, and Clontarf received just under $21 Million in Federal grants in the 2019 calendar year.

Financial year to calendar year differences aside, $21 Million is just over 10% of $200 Million which is a huge proportion of total expenditure for any single program to receive with so little scrutiny.

So to answer @drcbond - are they ‘a community controlled org who does a lot on very little’?
Not community controlled, not clear if it does ‘a lot’ and it definitely does not do it on ‘very little’.

Update:

$39.8 million extra allocated to the Clontarf Foundation to add up to 12,500 places for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men in the #Budget

... and fuck all extra for young women.