On giving wholistically and why gender matters

My strongest reflections are not from when I was little but from when we made a film about our family history. Going through that process, I learned about my paternal grandparent’s generosity. They lived a subsistence lifestyle in a small village in Italy which meant there was very little leftover, but my grandparents had a reputation for sharing whatever they had with others who were less fortunate than them.  

When we established our family foundation, we decided to support children and young people to meet their full potential. My grandparents made great sacrifices to come to Australia to give their own children more opportunity and so it made perfect sense for us to name our foundation in honour of our grandparents, Grace and Emilio.   

My dad was eight years old when he arrived in Australia. My aunt remembers going to the dock in Port Melbourne and seeing my father, a tiny boy, standing alone zealously guarding his family’s possessions.  No one had asked him to do it, he just naturally assumed that responsibility. Being responsible for other people has been the driving force in my father's life; from the way he runs his businesses to his engagement within our family and the broader community. Both these stories confirmed what I instinctively knew about the DNA of how my family engaged with the world but had never heard articulated.

Giving feels innate. Whenever I’ve done one of those exercises where you list your values, I always choose service. At school, I was one of those over enthusiastic kids who was always involved in helping and in my legal career, I coordinated my firm’s pro bono practice and volunteered at community legal centres.  I’m now in the fortunate position to be able to give through a family foundation but I also have skills that I continue to contribute.

Making my skills available in the service of others is an important driver for me. There are so many amazing people in the social sector who take enormous risks and are so innovative, but they often need some wind beneath their wings. I like to support these real gems in our community who see a possibility to do things differently and help them break through the barriers to make it happen. 

Wholistically. I like to consider every resource that my family has and then make those resources available to others. Although we have a structured foundation, we all contribute through our connections, time and skills. On an individual level, even when I give financially, I’m always thinking about how else I can help an organisation or person? Sometimes you can't give the thing that someone has asked of you, but you can always connect them to someone or something else that helps them get closer to what they need.  

I’ve learned how important it is to give through a gender lens. There continues to be such inequality globally between men and women which means there’s this enormous untapped potential. If more women were enabled to fully participate in life, we would all benefit from that. 

Personally, my grandmother and mother-in-law are these intelligent women who've played a vital role in their family's life, but they’re disappointed that they couldn’t pursue the opportunities that they wanted to when they were young. Both women were the brightest in their class at school and were encouraged by teachers to progress to the next level of schooling, but they were held back by family who didn’t see their education as a possibility because of social norms and economic factors. The fact that they were denied this opportunity and that it continues to happen to girls around the world today, is something that drives me personally. 

There's so much evidence that whatever you give to women, they will return it in spades. Women  have this mindset around contributing back to their family and community, so when you give to women and girls, you get a more impactful outcome. But I want to be clear that it's not about giving to women and girls over men and boys. It's about driving awareness that gender matters.

There have been lots of programs that were set up to benefit both men and women only to discover that women weren’t engaging. One example is Fruit2Work, a great organisation that provides people who are coming out of the justice system with work packing and delivering fruit and milk to corporates. However, because the work involves labour and early hours, a lot of women with family responsibilities were precluded from involvement, something Fruit2Work never intended. So they developed a new business model tapping into the Victorian recycling scheme engaging more women in their programming during hours that worked for them. It’s a big learning that a one size fits all model can cause women and girls to miss out.

By focusing on the rich and diverse ways women already give we can motivate more Australians to see themselves as givers and step deeper into that. I think we need to think about some of the structural barriers that may impede women’s giving and empower them with resources to give and give well.  

This is a big part of our work at Australians Investing in Women (AIIW). We have many resources that support donors to be gender wise. We also have a portal which is designed to help those who want to fund women and girls connect to those who need funding.  Giving well can be challenging, especially when the best projects are often those closest to the issue, run by organisations that don’t have the resources to find the financial support they need.  AIIW’s portal helps connect community organisations and funders, something we need more of. 

The best solutions are likely to come from us working together rather than in a disparate way.  I think we can foster more giving by enabling funders to work together and connect the with key players involved in solving an issue.   At the moment, AIIW has a focus on housing, a huge social issue in Australia.  By connecting philanthropists to the key players in housing – developers, investors and government - we can help ensure more and better housing is delivered that serves the particular needs of women, a hugely important cohort.  

One of my ambitions is to embed a culture of giving in young people as early as possible. I want us to democratise and celebrate all forms of giving because there are so many people who give in Australia with very limited means. I see it in community volunteering and when we have fundraisers in our family business. If the issue resonates, our manufacturing teams give as generously as our executive teams. It's incredible. I would like to see more place-based giving that gets deep into issues impacting a community and enables people across sectors and walks of life come together with philanthropy to uplift their community.  I think there’s enormous potential for giving in Australia to be much more impactful and much bigger.