On the quality of giving and the purpose of capital

I grew up in a family that had very strong values and my parents both role-modelled many different ways of giving. The sharing of time, talent and treasure with community was a constant part of my upbringing. My parents volunteered their time and expertise in the community, and they often donated money to those less fortunate. When I was in Year 12, my school made me the Charity Captain – even at that young age I had a passion for social justice and was committed to making the world a better place. 

I think it comes back to my family values and that desire to do something good in the world. I established the Social Impact Hub over 11 years ago on the belief that there are two fundamental levers that we can use to change the world: education and using capital for good. I've always been an educator at heart; I love facilitating immersion programs or running master classes to build the capability of others. And I also believe that using capital as a force for good has so much power. These two levers – education and capital – are what drive my work with Social Impact Hub.

I wear a few different hats and give in different capacities. Personally, my husband and I have been part of a Giving Circle with other like-minded families and together we’ve chosen causes to support philanthropically.

I'm involved in my family's philanthropy across education, medical research and civil society, and I give my time in volunteer community board roles. I also established an organisation called Wait Mate with a group of fellow primary school parents.  which asks parents to pledge to delay giving their child a smartphone until at least high school. The idea is to empower parents through collective action. You have strength in numbers so you're not the only one saying no to your kid who is desperate for a smartphone. 

At Social Impact Hub, we also have the privilege of mobilising capital on behalf of other people. For example, we have just concluded the first year of Catalysing Impact, where QBE Foundation’s $1.05m and Social Impact Hub’s capability building, has “crowded in” $2.75m of other investment.


I'm passionate about the quality of giving being just as important as the quantity of giving. Sometimes we get captured by large numbers and forget that you can have a huge impact with relatively small grants. I’ve learned over the years to stay very focused on the quality of giving and to trust the people on the ground. I’ve found that good operators make the best decisions and it’s not the job of a philanthropist to second-guess that on the ground experience. I also like to support multi-year giving and unrestricted ‘general operations’ support. 

We need stop focusing on minimising overheads as a measure of success for organisations and look at the impact instead. At Social Impact Hub, we do a lot of impact measurement work to help people identify the outcomes that they’re trying to achieve – because if they don’t know what their goals are or how to assess whether they have achieved them, it’s hard to communicate back to donors the difference they’re making. I think the focus on overheads is an outdated lens on philanthropy – we’d never apply that logic to the for-profit sector because we expect them to invest in the systems and IT that will enable people to do their best work. However a lot of not-for-profits are still expected to do things on the ‘smell of an oily rag’ and that doesn’t equip them for success. You need a strong organisational backbone to make a big impact. We ran the Australian impact campaign for Dan Pallotta’s film UnCharitable, which I highly recommend you watch.

The intergenerational transfer of wealth means that the next generation of givers will have a large amount of funding, and I’m really optimistic about how they’ll embrace the challenge of good giving. For many of them, it's not about making money and giving it away - there’s an emerging view around the purpose of capital. At the Social Impact Hub, we do a lot of impact investing work and we’ve actually created the Impact Investing Hub. Impact investing is where you make an investment with the expectation and intention of both a financial and a measurable social or environmental return. The next generation don’t want their investments to contribute to the problems that their grants are trying to solve. It makes much more sense for them to have an integrated approach across their portfolio. I also think that the next generation are seeing all forms of capital, including time and talent, as tools for good in the world. 

The federal government has set an exciting target to double giving, and I’d love for that to eventuate. But I also want the target for the quantity of giving to be followed up with messaging around the quality of giving. We need to give well and not create more power imbalances. If we're using philanthropy at scale in the future, we need more people to embrace ‘best practice philanthropy’, including multi-year grants and general operating support/unrestricted grants. It is also critical to combine capital with capability. because building capacity is what enables organisations to achieve their goals and deliver on impact sustainably. 

Imagine if every philanthropic organisation said to its partner organisations: we want to support you with money but how else can we help? Do you also need introductions or support to undertake leadership development? Do you need support on your strategy? Do you need help to refine your impact measurement and communicate your story? Would you like a mentor or a coach? I think leaning into all forms of capital could unlock a huge amount of impact across this country. My other ambition is to grow impact investing, so we are using all forms of capital for good. 

The future of giving is not necessarily about growing the number of charities, but about ensuring high performing charities have the funds and capability they need to really deliver on impact.