On impact investing to create social change

I started my career as a lawyer but after my children were born, I moved into working in the philanthropic space. Personally, I am a giver, but I also have some professional practice in this area. In my early career, I worked at Australians Investing in Women, which is focused on giving with a gender-lens and then I moved into a role in philanthropic services at the Myer Family Company where I helped multi-generational families identify their common values, figure out what kind of problems they wanted to solve, and then find ways to do that strategically. It was a fantastic introduction to philanthropy and both of those experiences were about engaging people in the practice of giving.

I then served as chair at Kids in Philanthropy, which is an organisation which encourages young children and their families to become engaged in giving. I also worked with NEXUS who focus on connecting social entrepreneurs with young funders and impact investors who can create change. Now with my role as Co-Chair of Philanthropy Australia, again it is about engaging people with giving, trying to grow giving, and to make giving more strategic. The Australian Jewish Funders, which I am actively involved with, plays a similar role within the Jewish community.

The common thread through all these experiences has been my motivation to light a fire within people to encourage them to give. I’ve seen what it is like to give. All you have to do is introduce someone to that first experience and they get hooked on it and realise how rewarding giving is. You begin to understand that you can bring all this meaning and purpose into your life, particularly if you give both your time and money. All you need to do is get started.

Originally, my family values have been a driver behind my giving. Growing up and being given the opportunity to have a good education and then having children myself and seeing the kind of lifestyle they were living inspired me to question, ‘How can we show them that although we might be living like this, 10 minutes down the road there is an entirely different situation? How can we show them that life isn't like this for everybody and that we have the ability to make it better for everyone?’ A lot of it was trying to demonstrate and role model to my kids that this is a way to have a purposeful life. We don’t just think about ourselves, we think about other people. And that has become more strategic as time has gone on.

I also wanted to show my children that you don’t need to have financial resources to make an impact. Kids can do a lot of things that aren't necessarily related to money. They can create social media campaigns, run collections at school and they can talk to their friends about it. A lot of it was about trying to show them that the power to create change comes from giving everything to it. And that was extended when I became involved in impact investing, my kids learned about that as well. We would bring social entrepreneurs home and the kids would have all these questions for them about their business models. What they learned from that is that you can work in a business that's creating positive social change. You can still earn money, but you can do it in a way that creates positive change rather than negative change.

The way I give is dependent on what organisations and causes I'm involved with. The model has never been about simply writing out a cheque. I don’t necessarily look to support a particular project that has been created in a certain way and that ticks all the boxes. I’m more interested in building trusted relationships with people who are passionate and have lived experience; where I can see what drives them in the area that they're trying to create change. And then it’s about just backing them and saying, ‘I trust you. You know much more than me about this area. I'll support you on this journey.’

The importance of developing relationships based on trust. You need to be able to trust in the relationship enough to ask where this funding is going, and then say, ‘I'm prepared to back you on that.’ And if some of that is to pay to turn the lights on or to pay a staff member or to pay to increase the capacity of the people running the organisation, then you trust them to do that.

Another lesson I learned very early is that giving is an opportunity, not a burden. Once I thought of it like that, it changed my whole perspective because really, we're just the support act. The people in the organisations are the ones doing the hard work.

Through Philanthropy Australia and other initiatives I'm involved with, I know there are always new ways of thinking and growing. To continue giving is one goal but another is to be more strategic in how we’re giving. The Pay What It Takes initiative, that Philanthropy Australia has been involved with, is a great example of that. I think it is crucial to be thinking about funding operational capacity and capacity building.

On a personal level, I think impact investing is the way of the future. We still need pure philanthropy—for organisations that can never be businesses because it's not in the makeup of the organisation—but if you can create change through a business model, then there should be investment that backs that. Impact investing makes sense for foundations and philanthropists, who are already trying to create positive change through their donations, especially where there in an opportunity to receive a lower financial return in exchange for higher social impact. I hope people will consider their philanthropy and investments much more holistically, rather than having separate buckets. The point is, we can use all our resources – our time, our connections, our donations and our investments – to create social change.

We also need to dispel this concept of waiting until you reach a certain age to start engaging with philanthropy. I think people can become engaged in giving in different ways, at all different stages in their life.

I think women have a slightly different perspective when it comes to giving. The women I've been involved with are very collaborative. They like to work together; they like to grow together. They like to feel that they are involved. It is a team endeavour where everyone learns from one another. And I think we are far more effective when we collaborate and learn from one another.