It started with three friends in 2020; me, Clare Ainsworth Herschell and Anna Rose. Anna was a 20-year climate campaigner who started her advocacy when she was in high school. Clare came from a family of philanthropists and was working in philanthropy when we started. I came from a background in storytelling and was the newest to climate action.

We started spending all our waking hours working on this idea. Anna could see that there was a massive opportunity to resource the climate movement so that it could grow the way it needs to. Clare could see that there were people in her networks who wanted to give to climate change but didn't have the confidence to step in alone. I could see that there was a story that needed to be told about the power of a collective, and how easy and impactful it is to back these brilliant organisations working so hard to turn the climate crisis around.

The three of us put our heads together and created this giving circle. It was the combination of our different talents that created Groundswell Giving.

The way it works is that everybody donates a set amount of money, which we pool together, and then experts in our network guide us around where to direct it. Over the past few years, we've raised and distributed over $2.8 million, and we've catalysed greater giving by creating connective tissue between the movement and donors.

Today, we have 750 members around the country who donate regularly and who have contributed to over 80 grants towards the climate movement. We have a lot of great men in our stable but 60-70% of our members are women.

When we started Groundswell, we were advised to bring in more men and to work on our optics as an all-female giving circle, because men won't fund work led by women. We chose to ignore that. From early on, we had the support of good men who were really interested in what we were doing. Equally women have been inspired to take leadership in their own ways because they saw themselves reflected in us.

Leadership doesn't have to look like male leadership to be done well. The things that make us strong and unique have a lot to do with a feminist style of leadership. I've learned to embrace a leadership grounded in love. The reason why so many people are motivated to give is because they love this planet, they love their children, they want to look after the places and the people that they love. You can crunch numbers and data, and all that matters, but to tap into and lead from that spirit of love is incredibly powerful.

We've been able to fund an incredible amount of advocacy within the climate movement. I think we've also helped build more visibility around the climate movement and created greater connections between people with solutions and people with resources.

We've built a powerful community that has broken down some of the traditional barriers between funders and change makers. We've always understood that we're all equal agents in change. Which is why we define ourselves as a community with different skill sets and different resources rather than an old hierarchical power structure. I feel like we've been part of a wave of philanthropists who are doing things differently and that’s helped move the dial.

When we started, the traditional approach was to donate $1,000. As co-founders, we all had different levels of privilege and economic realities, and that helped us think about what inclusivity could look like when it comes to financial contributions and collective impact.

We're in a cost-of-living crisis. For many people, donating $20 a week is a lot. It means that some members join by giving up a Netflix subscription but it is a testament to how much they care. Equally, members who have more capacity can give $5,000 or $10,000 and we're about to introduce a $50,000 giving circle as well.

We also have gratis memberships for people who give in other ways and First Nations memberships to acknowledge that we need to engage in reparations as givers. It’s like an ecosystem, the more diverse it is, the stronger it is.

The beauty of a giving circle is that no matter how much you're pitching in, everybody gets a vote. It’s the difference between equality and equity. Philanthropy and inclusivity aren't natural bedfellows, so you have to take proactive steps to create equity within decision-making structures and be prepared to think-outside-the-box. [2] It can look like quotas, it can look like different criteria, it can look like lots of different things. What’s important is that you name it and create structures to ensure you're working towards that rather than assuming that inclusivity will happen purely by good intent.

There are so many powerful things about collective giving. The first thing that comes to mind is that you don't have to be an expert to start because you can tap into collective expertise. This is what Groundswell does well; it gathers a collective of funders resourcing incredible work and a collective of experts guiding the allocation and this collective impact can turbocharge climate action.

In the context of the climate crisis, we only have a few years to do everything we can, while we can. We can't wait until we're all climate experts to get started. We have to start wherever we are. The power of collective giving is that you can lean into that expertise and have the confidence to step in straight away and know that whatever you're giving, it will be directed to really impactful things.

Be willing to learn. You have to grow with your community and learn the wants and needs of the collective that you’re working with. You need to have strong relationships with your granting partners and community members, and you also need to be able to tell the story of what you do.

I don't think there is just one kind of person who is right for this. I see people with all sorts of different skill sets and from different walks of life doing it. As long as you are willing to invest the time and stay motivated and organised, it's not rocket science. If you have passion for what you're doing, that's how you bring people along with you.

There are so many. I think it's very easy to look at the big political landscape of what's happening with climate change in Australia and feel hopeless. But when I look at our hard-fought wins over these years, I see the progress that we’re making.

It’s really important to create moments of joy along the way. A few weeks ago, we threw a ‘Party for the Planet’ because there are so many hard-working people in this space who don't get to celebrate the wins because they're part of big systems change. They’re just in the slog 24/7.

So, we brought together our grant winners and people from the broader climate movement for a night of dancing so they could let their hair down. Being able to create joy for the people who are doing the hard work and backing their organisations – that’s the most joyous part of this work.

We're about to launch a major giving circle for people with the capacity to give $50,000 or more each year. I see too many people with significant capacity not giving because they feel overwhelmed by how to fund systems change effectively, at that level.

Climate change straddles so many different areas like energy, science, justice and politics. There are so many big sets of knowledge that you need to tap into, to help you fund effectively. And it's not realistic for most people to make the most strategic decisions alone. I see a lot of hunger for opportunities to learn and be guided from experts.

I feel incredibly motivated to use this giving circle to make transformative change in the Australian climate landscape. And I'm excited to see this grow, as exponentially as our first giving circle has. We have some of the greatest climate experts around the country guiding our strategy and wanting it to succeed.

There are so many brilliant organisations and individuals working so hard to deliver the climate future that we know is still within our grasp, but the sector is under-resourced. And that's such a simple problem to fix. We've got to be collaborative - in our expertise and in the way that we do things. The phrase that always comes to mind is, ‘We're not here to f@*# spiders!’ We are here to change the world.