There is a cautionary tale about an Australian public hospital that, in spite of having a former state premier, ex-High Court judge and other esteemed notables on its board, failed to review its $1 million insurance policy until a baby, delivered outside business hours by a midwife, suffered severe brain injury.
The board members were held personally liable and sued. Had a CPA been on the board, its risk management might have been in safer hands, says Phillip Hanson FCPA GAICD.
Then there is the story of Daylesford, an Australian rural community struggling to buy a bus to send its children to a Rudolf Steiner school 45 minutes away. With just $500.00 in the kitty, the vision was cloudy, but this little anecdote ends well.
Hanson joined the committee and put his CPA skills to work. The former treasurer of a Masonic lodge, community childcare centre and various local sports clubs had a little government allowance up his sleeve.
'If you don't have the right denomination of school in your area, [in the state of Victoria] you can get a State Government conveyance allowance. So I helped them set up an accredited bus service to get $1000 a year per child. Eight families put in $2500 each to buy the bus, and get a surplus back of about $200 a year, so it's paying for itself,' he says.
Now Hanson has turned his attention to another project, along with eight other people, to set up a community-owned wind farm 10km south of the town that aims to supply enough electricity for the community's 2300 households, as well as surplus for energy retailers. A $975,000 grant from Sustainability Victoria and a share offer are calculated to spin the two-turbine venture into action by 2011.
'My philosophy is you have to put back in to make things better, and CPAs can make such a difference at a community level by giving of their time, knowledge and expertise,' says Hanson. 'It was like when the [Australian] insurance crisis came along, you couldn't afford insurance, and lots of small community organisations closed down.'
Although Hanson has lived in Daylesford for 18 years, his lineage would require at least two more generations before he could truly call himself a 'local', he says, but this hasn't stopped him from behaving like one.
In 2005, Hanson joined local eco-builder, Per Bernhard, who first fostered the dream of establishing a community-owned wind farm similar to those he had known in Denmark, where 20 per cent of the country's energy production is gathered by gale, and where communities own 25 per cent of wind projects.
'Per approached about seven or eight people and we started talking about how we could make it happen,' says Hanson. Next came David Shapero, a developer seeking a community project to satisfy his green leanings. Then a local farmer offered the perfect site, Leonard's Hill, which is on Sustainability Victoria's wind map.
A series of street stalls providing information to enlist support enticed Simon Holmes à Court, a Daylesford weekender who lives 'off the grid', into the fold as chairman.
'It was a project whose time had come, the convergence of the right site, the right community motivation, the right developer and having the Australian Government's Mandatory Renewable Energy Targets scheme in place gave us the breeding ground ... We were able to present the project and garner a huge amount of support.'
So much so, that when the planning permit for the 4 megawatt turbines went into local council for discussion, it was passed (anything over 30 megawatts, and it becomes a State Government matter).
However, there was also a successful hearing in the Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal to quell the opposition of 17 neighbours.
Once council approved, the Hepburn Renewable Energy Association, as the venture had been known, incorporated the Hepburn Wind Cooperative with a professional board of directors and eventually a special purpose vehicle to own the asset.
'In a community sense, that's why we chose a cooperative ... The cooperative model has one major difference to a public company, you get one ownership vote per parcel of shares. If someone has 1000 shares and someone else has 200,000, they still have one vote each,' says Hanson.
The share offer, which floated at the end of July 2008 with 9.8 million shares at $1.00 each, was due to close at the end of October, but has been extended until 12 December 2008.
'We've been speaking with UK and overseas community-type funds and that's always the case ... the investors wait until the last week to maximise their interest,' says Hanson, which is understandable given that it will be another 12 to 15 months before the turbines are up and a return on investment can be generated.
Hepburn Wind will maintain a private register of buyers and sellers for shares, putting buyers into contact with those shareholders who wish to sell.
'The business is very simple. The 12,000 to 13,000 megawatt hours [a year] will bring in between $1.3 million and $2.3 million income in the later years, and we have about $300,000 worth of expenses ... We've got a post office box and insurance policies, but no permanent staff.
'We need to produce franked dividend statements and pay company tax, but that's the entire business model. There's quite a healthy trading profit that drops out each year, and we earn a bit of interest,' he says.
The prospectus also includes provision for a Community Sustainability Fund that will pay in excess of $1 million into local projects for the 25-year life of the project.
'It could be anything, if the local fire truck gets damaged, or the hospital needs a dialysis machine, but it's primarily aimed at sustainable things,' Hanson says. 'We need some truly sustainable renewable energy projects that are in the community's hands because the government is still messing around the edges,' he says.