Warrigal wins gold for quadruple bottom line
The NSW provider has received the highest level of recognition in the annual Australasian Reporting Awards.
Warrigal Care CEO, Mark Sewell with his organisation’s gold award.
NSW provider Warrigal Care has won a gold award in the annual Australasian Reporting Awards for the third year running.
The awards were started almost 60 years ago to celebrate excellence in public accountability and to help improve the quality of annual reports.
Candidates for the awards are judged according to a set of international standards in reporting which is updated regularly in response to stakeholder expectations and statutory requirements.
Warrigal Care’s CEO, Mark Sewell said public accountability was a core part the organisation’s philosophy.
“Often these days people talk about the triple bottom line but really organisations are going to have to start thinking about the quadruple bottom line – and the fourth element of that is governance,” he said.
“It is increasingly important to be publicly transparent and to win the public’s trust by clearly and easily reporting your strengths and weaknesses.
“A lot of the big corporates have to have high standards of reporting to be accountable to ASIC and their shareholders but for us it is a natural extension of what we think is important.”
The organisation has been focusing on its annual reporting for a decade now, collecting a number of bronze and silver medals before it won the first of its three gold medals in 2007.
Other gold award winners in 2009 included the National Australia Bank, the Port of Brisbane Corporation and Wesfarmers.
Mr Sewell said it was good to see a charitable aged care organisation being recognised alongside some of Australia’s big corporate players.
“We are encouraging as many other providers to be a part of it as well,” he said.
“These awards have been around for a while and some of the big companies with big resources have been collecting gold awards but even the small companies like us with hardly any resources devoted to reporting can get the gold award too.”
He added that this year’s gold-winning report was doubly exciting as it commemorated Warrigal Care’s 40th anniversary with a list of all the organisation’s volunteers and donors.
