Capital management and planning practices at RSL Queensland

RSL Queensland: Capital management and planning practices

During the global pandemic, The Returned & Services League of Australia - Queensland Branch (RSL Queensland), saw significant performance and operational growth in the popularity of its Art Union, the prize home lottery initiative to fundraise for veterans and their families. This growth resulted in material increases to the organisation’s capital reserves.

Following this period of extreme growth, RSL Queensland was faced with consolidated performance, increased competition and increasing risks in construction. RSL Queensland identified that a key risk mitigation to all of these was to uplift the organisations capital management and planning practices and thus created for themselves a Capital Management Framework (CMF).

Delivery

BDO was engaged to support the design and implementation of the CMF to ensure uplifts to budgeting and planning capabilities were realised. To support the successful implementation of the Framework, BDO supported RSL Queensland with the following:

The review of existing capital management practices
Identifying risks and exposures to RSL Queensland based on current practices
Identifying opportunities to improve financial management practices and risk mitigation enhancing planning and delivery capabilities
Developing and implementing tools to support RSL Queensland with ongoing capital management practices
Supporting governance structures to enable the Board and senior management to maintain appropriate oversight
Uplifting budgetary practices and processes to further enable managers with their planning and decision making.

Outcome

Over the 12-month engagement, BDO partnered with the RSL Queensland finance team to support the delivery of the identified implementation plan, creating organisational improvement outcomes, including:

The ability to clearly demonstrate to RSL Queensland members how they will be supported in the future
Improved strategic decision-making to support the delivery of RSL Queensland’s mission
Increased market awareness and identification of impacts of potential organisational risks
The ability to identify opportunities to better support the delivery of its mission.

The co-design approach of the engagement provided confidence to RSL Queensland, while also providing the subject matter expertise for commercial outcomes. 