The Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network (AEGN) is Australia’s peak membership organisation for environmental philanthropy. United by a vision for a future where our climate is stable, and people and nature thrive, the AEGN are on a mission to grow environmental giving in Australia.
With a collective corpus of over $3.6 billion, CEO Claire O’Rourke says that the power of the network is that it creates a brave and nourishing space for environmental groups and philanthropists to learn from and support each other. “Within our community, there's an enormous diversity of thought, political orientation, in both life and giving experience.”
“What I find unique is the deep understanding AEGN members have of the intersections between different issues, and that no simple solution can fix the serious environmental and societal challenges we are facing,” she says. “As a planet, we’re grappling with real complexity, and the network has evolved to meet that complexity with courage.”
Claire O’Rourke:
In the early 2000s a group of passionate philanthropists were inspired by collaborative funding models in the United States. Convinced that an Australian group had potential, Poola trustees Eve Kantor AO and Mark Wootton AO asked Amanda Martin OAM to convene a gathering of Australian environmental funders for a field trip to Cape York.
Around the same time, Jill Reichstein OAM of the Reichstein Foundation and Sue Mathews of The Mullum Trust had formed an environmental donor's circle and successfully funded a campaign to stop catastrophic land clearing in Queensland in 2004.
Harnessing the collective power of what already existed, in 2006 a symposium was held to gather the different foundations with other funders and experts who were interested in environmental giving. The founding meeting brought together 80 people with a shared a vision to do something about our environmental challenges.
At the time there was no place to connect people with the passion, knowledge and resources to help support the environment. The network was officially formed in 2008 and 17 years on, we have more than 200 members ranging from foundations and trusts to high-net-worth individuals who are united by that collective purpose.
Claire O’Rourke:
The AEGN is the largest membership organisation for environmental philanthropy in the Southern Hemisphere. To join the network, you need to have capacity to give $25,000 (AUD) a year or more annually to any issue (not just environment) and you must have an interest in environmental giving. We have different causes that people can engage in: for example, if members are interested in First Nations empowerment, they can join our First Nations funding circle to help them go deeper. We also have a circle for larger philanthropies’ CEOs, who find it useful to connect with others working with scale and the structures and processes to enable giving.
Our aim is to create spaces of connection, collaboration and learning across our membership. This is about knowledge sharing and resource building, and the relationships that develop within our community accelerate the pathways to giving.
The invitation of the AEGN is for people to step into their leadership. I’ve watched people come in and once they’ve connected with the community and had some success, their confidence and motivation builds, and they start thinking about how they can collaborate and harness their influence, along with allocating increased resources to their passions. It's always inspiring to see more and more women stepping into their leadership. It doesn't mean that the blokes aren't there too, but it’s exciting to watch these women grow their passions and networks as their journey with the AEGN evolves.
Claire O’Rourke:
In the last financial year (FY24), at least $247 million was given to core areas including biodiversity, accelerating the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy, climate action, First Nations justice and sustainable food systems. The scale of environmental giving is still small when you consider it accounts for just under 4% of Australian philanthropy. Yet our recent Giving Trends report reveals environmental philanthropy has expanded significantly in recent years, as donors increasingly recognise the urgent need for transformative action. This upward trend spans both international and domestic giving, with funders demonstrating heightened commitment to supporting an equitable and sustainable future.
For people who are not yet giving to the environment, the AEGN provides resources to help philanthropists consider the co-benefits in their giving strategies. Our Climate Lens toolkit, climate change funding framework and nature funding framework are designed to help people better understand the connections to health, poverty and gender because these issues are all impacted by the environmental challenges that we are facing. We also release specific reports, like our 2025 report on the economic benefits of climate philanthropy.
It’s also important to consider the variety of solutions the funds are going to. One thing that’s really changed in the network is funding advocacy, because this work secures policy outcomes, often with associated funding and regulations. In Australia’s economy and society, policy change creates systemic change across the public and private sectors.
Philanthropy might contribute a couple of million dollars to advocacy or policy work, but the outsized impact runs for decades. There’s certainly been a rise in that kind of strategic philanthropy, but we’ve also made sure there’s space for more members to invest in direct projects, especially around early-stage innovation.
We have a popular co-funding platform called Project Clearinghouse that enables AEGN members to share and invite other members to support specific projects that need urgent backing or funding at a smaller scale. It helps support those projects that often fall through the cracks of government funding, and some of the projects have created a lot of momentum very quickly.
The platform has a strong track record - in the last financial year, 84% of Project Clearinghouse projects went ahead with member funding and over the last five years the platform has given $31.9 million. A recent example was when the Nature Glenelg Trust wanted to buy and protect a wetland and in 24 hours our members reduced the funding gap from $39,000 to $15,000.
Claire O’Rourke:
The stakes are really high. We are halfway through the critical decade and the actions we take now will set the terms of how our children and grandchildren live; how many species they see, the quality of the air that they breathe, the water they swim in and the land they inherit.
Any action that we take now is a worthwhile investment. So, I'm keen for us to organise ourselves around more strategic philanthropy and to inspire more people to consider scaling their giving now. It’s going to be a challenge, but prevention is better than cure.
A big motivator for us is ‘what can we do right now?” Where can we inject resources into projects on the ground that are catalytic and invest in the people who are doing the advocacy work?
We’re in an emergency, and I know that can be hard to believe when it's a nice sunny day and the forest looks lovely outside my back window on Dharawal Country in the northern Illawarra NSW. But this week, my daughter sent me images of king tides that had washed up the car park at our local beach because she’s worried about the world that she’ll be living in twenty years from now. This is what the AEGN is fundamentally about; to do as much as we can to protect the future. After all safe and healthy communities, and strong economies, rely on a healthy environment.
