Message from the CFO & Chair of Finance, Audit & Risk Committee

In 2022-23, our supporters’ continued generous contributions allowed Bush Heritage to deliver a robust financial outcome.

We achieved a strong revenue that enabled a significant increase in expenditure across our key impact areas throughout the year.

Our financial base holds strong, leveraged from the phenomenal donor and bequest revenue we received in the prior year. We are in an excellent position to deliver on the key priorities of our ambitious 2030 Strategy – to deepen and double our impact.

For 2022-23, our total revenue was $34 million. This is the second highest on record and is only surpassed by the extraordinary revenue achieved in the previous year of $64 million, driven by generous bequests of $38 million.

Nearly 80% of our current year revenue came from donations and bequests. This highlights the important role of our supporters’ contributions in allowing Bush Heritage to continue healing and protecting Country. Our supporters’ generosity and loyalty are greatly appreciated.

The strong revenue enabled Bush Heritage to increase expenditure across our key impact areas and, importantly, our conservation management activities. The current year total expenses of $34 million was an increase of $5 million from the prior year.

Expenditure on conservation management activities made up 70% of total expenses. This was an increase from 67% in the prior year.

This year, to ensure our ability to deliver on the goals of the 2030 Strategy we invested in building capability in our key impact areas: our reserve system, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partnerships and enhancing natural capital in agriculture. 

We will continue to invest in developing this capability during 2023-24 and, as a result, we anticipate that we will report a small accounting loss in the coming year.

Our strong financial base enables the capability to act on appropriate growth opportunities as they are identified and assure support of the core needs of the business during any potential future volatility. 

We have been actively searching for potential land acquisitions to realise our 2030 Strategy’s objectives and goals.

We follow a rigorous and efficient identification and assessment process for potential acquisitions. Guided by this process, in the new financial year, we will continue actively searching for appropriate opportunities.

Mark Dwyer
Company Secretary,
Executive Manager Corporate Services and Chief Financial Officer

Rebecca Nelson
Chair of the Finance, Audit & Risk Committee