About ARA
The Australasian Reporting Awards were introduced in 1950 as the Annual Report Awards to improve the quality of annual reporting in Australia and raise public awareness of the purposes of organisations and their achievements.
Subsequently the Awards were expanded to include organisations in New Zealand and renamed the Australasian Reporting Awards. The Awards are now open to organisations located in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
The Awards are administered by Australasian Reporting Awards Limited (ARA), an independent not-for-profit organisation run by volunteer professionals from the business, government and not-for-profit sectors, with support from organisations concerned with the quality of business and financial reporting.
The Awards provide all organisations that produce an annual report an opportunity to benchmark their reports against the ARA criteria which are based on world best practice and their peers.
An important aspect of the ARA assessment process is that it focuses on the quality and completeness of the reporting about the organisation’s behaviour and performance, not on its actual behaviour and performance!
The quality of the ARA process is due to the expertise and commitment of the large number of senior people who make enormous voluntary contributions of their time to judge reports as ARA Coordinators and Adjudicators. Without them there could be no ARA Awards. ARA is very fortunate that many of them have strongly supported the rigorous ARA process for some years.
Educational benefits are an important part of the ARA Awards process. In particular, entrants can receive constructive feedback from an expert ARA Adjudicator to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their current annual report, and receive practical advice on how to make their next annual report more effective.
The ARA Awards have been very successful in encouraging and helping many organisations to improve the quality of their communication with stakeholders.
The Awards process includes:
Preparing, reviewing and widely distributing criteria based on world best practice, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) as guidelines for preparing an annual report;
Providing a free practical guide to preparing an annual report;
Recognising excellence in reporting with Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards;
(These are benchmarking, not competitive Awards);
Conducting an annual seminar on reporting;
Offering constructive feedback to organisations that enter the Awards.
Many organisations have taken the opportunity to use this process to reach and maintain their reporting at the Gold Award standard on an annual basis. The ARA Chair’s Commendation was introduced in 2017 to recognise consistent and outstanding performance. This Award is presented to organsations that have achieved ten consecutive Gold Awards.
“ARA’s continuing commitment to promoting best practice reporting standards is vital to good corporate practice and healthy functioning of capital markets.”
(Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation)