On investing in mental health and the power of quiet rage

I'm from the UK, and giving is just a part of how you're brought up over there. As a kid, you’d open the door and the Salvos would be there, so you'd run to the kitchen and scrabble around in the drawer to get a few coppers together to throw in the bucket. Volunteering was a big part of my childhood, but I never really catalysed how giving could change and shape lives, until I started fundraising professionally.

In my early 20s I worked in fundraising for HIV, AIDS in London. My friends were dying from it, and we were raising money to give people access to treatment that would save their lives or keep them alive for longer. Being part of the queer community, I've experienced discrimination and hate, but nowhere near the degree that many others have. I was part of the protests that fought against the horrendous ways that people with HIV and AIDS were treated and that certainly put a fire in my belly.

I've always had this quiet rage inside me. I hate injustice and I remember as a kid, feeling deeply whenever I saw something that felt unfair to me. That sense of justice and compassion has always been part of who I am, and it runs strongly through my family. Giving is a way of living those values - to stand up against inequity and to help people feel dignified in their lives. I've had incredible opportunities in my life, so I have always felt an obligation to use that privilege to help build a fairer, more equitable world. When I think about the things that matter to me, it's a happy accident I've ended up this industry. Mental health and suicide have affected those I love, so ensuring more people have access to the support they need is incredibly important.

The thing we don't talk about enough is the purpose, connection and joy that giving brings. We hear it all the time from our community volunteers and speakers at Beyond Blue. They donate their time and energy to serve others and to spread hope and resilience as part of their recovery maintenance. Giving helps them to heal from their own lived experience of suicidality or depression or anxiety. I also see that connection when I receive incredible handwritten cards from kids who have run a lemonade stand at the end of their street to raise $10 bucks because they've learnt about this cause from a school project. That's where it starts, the sense of pride and community.

People often think about the fiscal side of things, and although I donate money to several charities, I also give my time in different ways. I give through volunteering on boards, mentoring others, and giving my time to organisations and movements that align with what’s important to me. For me giving is so much more than a transaction, it's intentional, relational and it comes in many forms.

However, when I do donate financially, one of the things I always look for is whether that organisation is investing enough in itself and its people. Of course, the impact that it’s going to have on a community is important, but I like to look beyond that as well. There’s a whole argument around overheads, but I want to invest in organisations that are investing in the people, systems and processes that will make them stronger.

If you only view giving as transactional, you're missing out on the opportunity to learn and to build relationships that can be incredibly joyful and instructive of how you live your life. If you write a cheque or make your monthly donation without being curious about the organisation you’re giving to, you won’t maximise the joy.  

Philanthropy has the potential to be much more catalytic if the community sector, governments, business and industry really harness the power of giving. We need to think about how to leverage and combine different sources of funding. During my career, I’ve had situations where a single $100,000 donation has turned into a national service model of care. When you use funding to build capability and to trial new things, governments can then come in and scale it at speed. I’ve seen how one significant donation can spark millions of dollars in investment and change hundreds of thousands of lives.

Philanthropy has stepped in to fill a lot of the funding gaps. It's been catalytic for Beyond Blue, in helping us to trial and pilot and scale new models of care and products and services without asking permission. It puts fuel into the tank of innovation and gives us the opportunity to try new things. Within our organisation, philanthropy has funded some new models of workforce care that now are starting to be taken up by governments and it’s also invested in some important research around mental health and suicide prevention research. It's much harder to prove things in our sector because it's not like medical science where you develop a drug or put an intervention in place and the body has a certain response. The mind works in mysterious ways, so the research people are doing is quite blue sky and exploratory - we can't always produce a widget that shows that we've moved X from Y.

I think there's a great deal more opportunity in mental health and I think the biggest promise will come from binding together community-based knowledge with business, industry and philanthropy. Partnership and collaborative funding, that's where things will get really exciting.

I can see myself giving bigger gifts to a smaller number of organisations and I’ll keep contributing to the causes that are important to me - coaching, leadership, LGBTQI+ issues and obviously mental health and suicide prevention. I'm very passionate about investing in grassroots, non-biomedical ideas that are different to how we've done things traditionally in mental health. I want to continue to use my platforms to influence policy, but also to make some kind of contribution every day - whether it's giving a dollar, a piece of advice or just being kind to someone who looks like they need it. Generosity is something that makes all of us win.