Administrative Structure

Image: Mt Field National Park, Tasmania, Emily Chapman-Searle

About Our Structure

Our national body is The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia Inc. and is incorporated in the ACT. It consists of a number of regional groups called Regional Meetings and Local Meetings or Worshipping Groups.

We also use two other names: Quakers Australia colloquially, and Australia Yearly Meeting (or AYM). The term Yearly Meeting is used by Quakers around the world to refer to a group of Quaker Meetings which come together on an annual basis for business and spiritual purposes (e.g Britain Yearly Meeting, New England Yearly Meeting, etc.).

We also tend to refer individual people interchangeably as 'Quakers' or 'Friends'. We have mainly used Quakers in this website, but you will often hear us refer to Friends.

Quakers Australia Office

At the national level, we have four new positions which comprise the Quakers Australia Office team:

Coordinator, whose focus is on Australian Friends and the support of YM business
Communications & Publicity Manager, whose focus is on external bodies and outreach including social media
Staff Oversight & Support, the Friend who acts for the Presiding Clerk in supervising and supporting the paid staff
Probity Adviser, who is responsible for all the compliance functions previously managed by the Secretary

All these new positions formally report to the Presiding Clerk. These positions replace the role of AYM Secretary.

Regional Meetings

Each of our Regional Meetings is also incorporated under their local legislation, as are a couple of the Local Meetings. Regional Meetings are autonomous with a (usually brief) set of Rules. More importantly, they are guided by our Handbook of Practice and Procedure which is a national publication produced by the Yearly Meeting. This explains the details of our administration arrangements.

All meetings in Australia are also governed by our national policies, which cover Child Protection, ensuring a Safe Quaker Community, and Privacy.

Membership is determined by each Regional Meeting and all such members are automatically Members of Quakers Australia.

Each of the Regional Meetings owns one or more Meeting Houses, as do two of our Local Meetings. The only property owned by Quakers Australia is the Sanctuary, which is a domestic rental property in Sydney.

Local Meetings

The Worshipping Groups and most Local Meetings are informal gatherings for worship together who largely look after their own arrangements, under the care of their Regional Meeting.

To read the Rules of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia, and gain a deeper sense of our Administrative Structure, visit our Administration Resources page.

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