The World’s First One Dollar Coin Designed to be Donated

In 2020, the Royal Australian Mint embarked on a project to produce “millions of daily reminders to give“.

“The Mint … intends to distribute millions of these Donation Dollar coins in to circulation over the coming years – one for every Australian. Each of these unique coins features a green centre with a gold ripple design symbolising the ongoing impact each donation makes to those who need it most”. For reference, the Australian Bureau of Statistics gives the population as nearing 27 million people, as of late 2023. The mint setup a website to promote the idea and a Youtube clip with some artistic shots of the coin in production.

Despite the intention, the mint ended up releasing 12.5 million in 2020, and 5 million in 2021. I have never found one in change myself, so I ended up purchasing this one (it ended up being challenging to photograph in the cardboard flip it came in). On a collectors note – it is also the first colour dollar coin in Australia to be issued for circulation. There are numerous coloured $2 coin, and there are plenty of non-circulation colour dollar coins, but no other circulating colour dollars. This probably also encouraged people to quickly remove it from circulation. I would be curious to know if there are any figures of how many were received in donations from the public by charities (If I find out, I’ll update this post).

The coin featured the Jody Clark portrait of Elizabeth II. This portrait extends down through the shoulders to a rounded base parallel with the bottom of the coin. The portrait has the Queen facing forwards but with her head turned to the left (from her point of view) so she is still facing the right side of the coin as you look at it. This is in keeping with tradition. The monarch always faces the opposite way on coins to their predecessor. This goes back to the time of Charles II, and has been speculated as Charles II wanting to turn his back on Oliver Cromwell (A story for another post).

The Donation Dollar is definitely a great initiative, and I hope the Royal Australian Mint do get back to minting more.

I couldn’t find any other mint-issue coins along the same idea in any other countries, aside from coins commemorating anniversaries of specific large charities. For instance, Poland have several coins commemorating the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity. Have you encountered anything similar encouraging donating in general? Let us know in the comments!