The power of trust and the service of speaking up

My family immigrated from Wales to Adelaide when I was four years old, so I don’t have any early memories of Wales; my complete outlook on the world was as an Australian child. My family were regular attenders at the local Baptist Church, and we lived two doors up from the pastor, so I was conscious that giving was predominantly through church drives and collections. But there were also other times during the year when my family, given our heritage, would celebrate things like the harvest. Of course we weren't a farming family, but we would all donate food to families in need. This was the kind of giving that was on my radar growing up, and I think if you'd asked me back then about giving, I would have said that it’s just something that everybody does.

Giving has a much broader meaning for me today, than when I was a child. Back then it was about giving money or things away to other people. Now it’s about giving time, giving expertise and sharing whatever talents I have. I think it's important to emphasise different forms of giving because some people still think that philanthropy is only for high-net-worth individuals like Bill Gates and therefore isn't for them.  This broader concept of giving time, talent and expertise is much more inclusive. 

In this phase of my life, I donate money, but my bigger contribution is through giving time and lending my profile to causes I care about, particularly education, mental health and women's leadership. These were issues that I worked on in politics because I believed in them and I’ve found ways to keep working on them post-politics.

My involvement with the Wellcome Trust has really given me an insight into what thoughtful philanthropy aimed at impact, looks like. Through the Wellcome lens, I get to learn all about best practises in philanthropy and as the Chair of Wellcome, my job is to help drive those best practises. 

The trust isn’t out there seeking donor funds – it’s in the happy position where we have the endowment of a man name Henry who died in the 1930s, which is presently worth around $80 billion Australian dollars, and it’s managed in-house. The Wellcome Trust has a very specific purpose around health and medical research. Although we don't just let the science speak for itself, we believe that people have to speak for the science, which brings in advocacy and communications work. 

Such a huge amount that we'd have to write a book rather than this article to capture it all! Predominantly, I've learned about people and the circumstances they face in contexts that are very different to anything I’ve lived through. It’s given me a real insight into people, cultures and contexts I would never have known otherwise.

For example, through the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED), I’ve travelled through Africa, meeting girls who are being supported in school through CAMFED scholarships. It’s incredible to witness how these empowered young women are changing their communities and nation because they had the benefit of going to school.

And back home in Australia, even though I'm familiar with the context, through working with an organisation like Beyond Blue I've learned about what some Australians have to live through and live with. My giving has really opened my eyes to different nations, different places, different lives and the different forms of resilience and capacity. 

Firstly, it’s to keep growing the number of people who are prepared to give – and that’s particularly important to emphasise in the face of cost-of-living pressures all around the world. For a lot of our community-based giving strategies, like the Fun Run and morning teas where people are asked to put $20 or $50 into the pot, there's less going into these now because of the financial pressures on families. This puts a new kind of pressure on trying to grow the base of people who do have resources and capacity to give at more substantial levels.

The second thing is growing the maturity of the sector, especially in Australia. By this I mean getting people to embrace agility, so we can move and mobilise resources as quickly as possible. I'm a big believer in tracking impact and I think this culture in philanthropy should be welcomed. However, I’ve also seen people who want to embark on a journey of giving get so stuck studying the impact and metrics that you go back to them five years later and they still haven’t made a substantial investment.

Within the charitable sector this plays out as endless amounts of time spent trying to satisfy potential donors around what they do and what the impact is. This can result in these tiny pilot programmes that are designed to prove impact but never scale up. We need more courage to say ‘yes’! Of course, we still need to do all the due diligence, but at some point, you've got to jump. There's always a leap of faith involved in jumping.

The third thing is to help people embrace relationships of trust. When this focus on metrics is taken to an extreme, it can turn a giving relationship into a ‘head contractor’ and ‘subcontractor’ dynamic.  The people who know best what works in a particular community, are the people in that community. We need to focus on building relationships of trust, and to acknowledge the wisdom of other. I think that wisdom is an important thread of giving that we’ve got to continue growing. 

I think there are quite a few barriers and I think they apply to women but also more broadly. But because women have got this intergenerational wealth transfer, there will be many women who are new to giving. Statistically there are a lot of women who are going to have to puzzle this through. 

However, I don't think these are necessarily sector specific barriers, as much as all the usual forms of sexism and misogyny that exist are also in this sector. I think women can find it harder to be taken seriously when they approach organisations. When people look at families who have the resources to be substantial donors, there’s still a tendency to assume that if there’s a man in the family, he’s the principal decision maker. 

I've seen it play out in real-time at donor networks. People will be in earnest conversation with the husband until at some point he has the grace to say, “Actually, my wife makes all the decisions about our family's philanthropy so you really should be talking to her. She's the one who's studied this, I'm just here to hang out with her.” 

I also think there are still some stereotypes out there of women as do-gooders and meddlers. Or that empowered and resourced women aren't very caring and can be too demanding. I think these stereotypes certainly apply in the philanthropic sector. And when you join all these points together, I think the absence of role models across society is still an issue for women. In some ways it would be surprising if it was different in this sector. And sadly it's not different. 

I understand why many women want to maintain a sense of privacy around their giving, because they don't do it for the public accolade. I've certainly met women philanthropists from all around the world who are allergic to anything that makes it look like it’s all about them, rather than all about the giving. But there are also many women who are prepared to speak publicly but are unsure if anybody really wants to hear what they’ve got to say? 

I would like to offer some words of reassurance and say that in a world where we are lacking a variety of women role models, to have women come to the forefront and be prepared to tell their stories of giving is an act of service in itself.

For women who have reached a stage in their life where they have the capacity to either donate resources or time and talent I would say find the thing that really motivates you and focus on the thing you really care about, rather than taking a scatter gun approach. 

I think you can make more of a difference if you concentrate on a few things and be an active contributor. Of course there’s always a need for passive contributions, like when 

humanitarian agencies raise for a crisis in our world that's immediate and you want to put some money in, and you should. I think it’s a very important instinct. 

But if you’re looking for an involvement that will last over years, the key is to marry resources with activity. Get involved, lend your time and your talent because when you donate your money along with your time and talent, it makes for a hugely powerful combination.