On deep engagement and understanding the numbers

I had a very traditional middle-class upbringing in regional Victoria. In our house giving was about volunteering. My parents helped run the local tennis club and volunteered at different community sports clubs for cricket, footy and netball. During school holidays we volunteered at holiday programs for kids who had nowhere to go.

We were always made aware of how lucky we were and that if you could give to anything financially or through your time, then that's what you did. I watched both my parents do that in our community and it formed a foundation of values.  Around my mid to late twenties when I was in the workforce with a good job with good income, the world of formalised giving opened up for me.

My first board role was with the Victorian Women's Trust and that was a great board to start with. The president of the Women's Trust, Duré Dara, had been my husband Andrew’s babysitter as a child. She came to Australia from Malaysia as a university student and remained a close family friend. She was the one who encouraged me to become part of formalised feminist activism.

For me, it doesn't start with the giving, it starts with engagement. The giving is really the end game because it’s usually a small transaction that comes once or twice a year and takes about five minutes. What drives me is everything else leading up to that point. It's the engagement and spending hours with people who are experts in their field. The giving is just one tiny technical mechanism.

When it comes to choosing which areas I give to, inequality always drives me. It doesn't matter whether it's feminism or something else, when I see inequality and can then work with grantees and experts to shift that dial, that's what I look for. But I also look at the people who are leading that organisation and what the culture is. I joined the board of Climateworks Centre this week and my first question was how they described the culture of the organisation? I don't like answers that include labels like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion.’ I want to know what kind of people work there, how long they have been there, what the staff turnover is and what areas of expertise people have.

When I'm deciding where I'm going to give, I always look at the leadership and the culture of the organisation. I want to understand how they put the jigsaw puzzle together and how people with different areas of expertise share their knowledge. I'm not interested in cups of coffee and meeting someone once. I actually don't take meetings with people until I want to seriously invest my time in getting to know that organisation. And I don't want to waste their time either. I prefer deep engagement rather than broad engagement.

Privately we have our own PAF, and we were an early adopter of that structure. Our children are now in their twenties, so they're both directors alongside Andrew and me. Most of our giving as a family involves longstanding multi-year giving. We worked out the other day that we have been giving to the Sacred Heart mission for 22 years.

We also give through our roles with the Myer Foundation - Andrew is a chair of the Sidney Myer Fund and I sit on the Arts and Culture Committee. I've been involved with the Australian Chamber Orchestra for 28 years and Andrew has been involved with the Australian Film and Television School for over 30 years. We are long-term givers, which means we don’t necessarily give every year, but we are part of a family of givers that support special events. I helped set up a perpetual fund for the 50th anniversary of the ACO because I was a board member for nine years. We tend to give to organisations that we've been very deeply involved with.

I've learned not to repeat mistakes that I've seen in other organisations. I've learned to be a better leader; to have a better instinct for danger and to mitigate small problems so they don't become big ones. You certainly develop a nose for trouble!

I've also learned to be more astute financially. Finance was never my strong point, and I’ve pushed myself to become better educated about reading balance sheets. I invest in financial experts and appointing top people to lead the finance, risk and audit committee and then I make sure that I attend every finance meeting.

If you don't get that right, you don't get anything right. A lot of women neglect that area in their education and very often rely on men who come into those roles. I think it's really important for women to step up and make sure that they are really comfortable around finance. I've learned to ask difficult questions, invest in experts and to troubleshoot and bring others in. Probably one of the best things I've learned in the last 10 years is to delegate; to not try to do everything myself and to share the load. It’s a lesson that I wish I'd learned when I was 40 years old, not 55.

It's the world's largest international funder of women and it’s both a grant making and an advocacy organisation. Over the past year, they've granted $11 million to projects, and then given the same amount to advocacy.

They direct a lot of funds to the parts of the world that are the hardest to reach - 46% of giving over the past 12 months has been to new grantees and the most marginalized people on earth. We invest locally, in local experts. We don't have a physical office, instead we have ambassadors and industry experts in every country that we fund in, and we pay those people. It's really best practice.

It’s a big board of around 20 women and an outstanding CEO, PeiYao Chen. Everything they do is done with great intentionality and they have outstanding staff. I'm really excited to be helping them with the Women Deliver conference in Melbourne next April.

The rise of the right wing around the world is seriously concerning. So, I want to invest a lot more into access to abortion. It’s a huge issue in Australia but people think it's done and dusted because it's legal. The reality is that access is terrible. There are only two teaching hospitals that actively train medical students to perform terminations and if you are a woman in regional and rural Australia, it’s expensive and difficult both emotionally and physically to attain a legal termination. If we don’t do something about increasing access, we're going to see more illegal terminations and a rise in maternal deaths. And that's shocking in a country like Australia.

I think it’s about building community and coming together. I'm always interested to meet women from different backgrounds, demographics and professional circles. I love introducing people and connecting someone who specialises in climate with someone who specialises in abortion and then someone working in international development.

I love what comes out of unexpected relationships. Some of the most exciting things I've ever done have sparked from just having a chat to someone new. I got involved with Global Fund for Women because I met the CEO in a lift at the Philanthropy Australia conference.

I'm a great believer in conferences. I just think putting yourself in a professional environment of people who are there with the same purpose of learning is a lot of fun. I want my philanthropic life to be engaging and fun and stimulating. And it is!