On accountability and big levers for generational change

My fundamental belief is that we all have an opportunity to make whatever impact we can, on the people and places around us, with whatever resources and roles we have. I also love the meaning of the word philanthropy: a love of humanity. For me, giving is the gift of anything. The power of a smile, acts of love and kindness, the gift of sitting with someone when they're in need. There are lots of people who give in amazing ways in their day-to-day roles - practical work by volunteers, activists, innovators, leaders, elders, mums and dads, as well as giving financially. For me, giving started when I was 13, when I became a volunteer in disability care alongside my twin sister and another friend. That was my introduction to the for-purpose sector and I’ve volunteered ever since.

From a financial perspective, my family was not wealthy, but I grew up in a culture that said you give what you can to charity. Giving financially continues to be really important to me. And now I’m in this incredibly privileged role as CEO of the Paul Ramsay Foundation, giving away Paul Ramsay's bequest. It is an incredible legacy of funding to enable people and places to thrive and I have the privilege of working alongside others, across multiple sectors, to help stop disadvantage in Australia.

There are two parts to this. Firstly, yes, it is an incredible responsibility to be a good custodian of the funding and to help steward the resources in, potentially, the most impactful and effective way possible. That is something I take very seriously. But then also, how can I hold the joy and the privilege of this opportunity to give away these resources? I've spent most of my career working for social, environmental and cultural change where you're asking for money, not giving it away. Balancing the social responsibility with the great privilege and joy around the ability to give, and give well, that’s the duality of it. I'm a great believer in thinking about how we can be good ancestors of the future. Collectively, we're not always going to get it right. Personally, I'm not always going to always get it right either. Things may not always be done as well as we might have intended, in terms of the impact we seek to have, but I often question whether the world will say that we were good ancestors of the future. I hope the answer is that we gave it a really good crack and we made a significant difference with the resources we had and the time we were gifted.

For me personally, it comes back to time, talent, and treasure, and how to make that count. I've spent a lot of years volunteering on for-purpose Boards because I love the idea of strengthening the capability of others. Similarly, I love giving my time to mentoring and coaching because building capacity in others is important to me. 

In terms of the Paul Ramsay Foundation, I think there are much broader questions here around how we give as a country. This includes looking at our role in giving as individuals in helping to build a nation of generous people. We are already generous, but how do we build on that? If we think about time, talent, and treasure as a nation, Australia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We rank 4th on the World Giving Index, which includes money, time and service contributions, which are really important. However, when we look at financial giving alone, we lag behind the US, Canada and New Zealand in terms of how many dollars we give. Some people stick by the 1% rule, however, there are all sorts of other opportunities around giving. Current ATO data tells us that roughly half of people earning $1million or more are not claiming a tax deductible donation. So, two hypotheses, we're either not claiming the money we give or not enough of us are giving. For us to hold on to that idea that we are generous as a country we need to personally reflect on how we give as individuals.

There is another piece around how we shift thinking around investing in good social and environmental progress while we're doing well. Australia has had 30 years of unprecedented growth in wealth in terms of GDP but we haven’t invested in good social and environmental progress at the same rate. Different people give money for different reasons in different ways. But if we are serious about tackling really complex social, environmental and cultural issues, and being good ancestors of the future, then we have to recognise that complexity can never be solved by one individual, one organisation or one big foundation. I believe we need to work on that collectively as a country.

To become more effective collaborative givers and to work together to understand what roles we can play requires some letting go of owning the outcome and stepping away from personal legacy to say, instead, how we contributed to change, not how change was attributed to us. In saying that, of course, there are individual things we can give to and simpler problems to solve. Some people want to leave legacies and I recognise we need people who are going to meet immediate needs; things you can touch, feel and see that are very cause-and-effect. But we also need people in the ecosystem looking at how we work alongside others to create changes collectively, as opposed to what individual difference can we make, which is where the Paul Ramsay Foundation and my personal role comes in.

I’ve been working for decades as a Professor of Social Policy, as a researcher and collaborator across all sectors on all sorts of social issues so it’s hard to separate all my different hats because I’ve been wearing them for so long but here are a few things I’ve learned.

I've learned that Australia is a very generous country and we have great scope for giving. I've learned that some of the most generous people have the least to give, which I always find incredible. I've learned that we have not invested enough in social and environmental progress when we are doing well and that we need to stop simply responding to urgent needs, in the moment. That doesn't mean we don't respond to urgent needs, but we do need to think more long-term about what change looks like. If we go back to our grandparents’ generation, we see fundamental social, environmental, technological and other changes in society over that time. Even one generation ago, things have shifted enormously. Take gun control, gender equality and some of the big human service responses like Medicare as examples. Huge shifts are possible in just one generation and we can absolutely tackle more of that. 

At the Paul Ramsay Foundation, one of the things we're trying to do is to lean more into that systems approach to think about the policies and programs that need responding to. We try to apply technical fixes and try different things based on evidence. And we also think about policy and regulatory change and where the resources go. Who gets funded? How do they get funded? Who makes those decisions? Can we think differently about resource flows and how work gets done? 

Another piece to this is how we consider hearts and minds because the stories we tell ourselves matter. We need to craft new stories and let people tell their own stories around what’s needed within communities. But we mustn’t be naïve about that either. In significant change there are things some people will win and things some people will lose. We need to understand what systems change might mean for different people in different contexts and consider how we steward the change we want to see while recognising what will play out. 

I’ve also learned that we need to think differently about the effectiveness of giving. What do we invest in? How do we grant money or give to social impact investing? How do we stack capital for social and environmental change? How do we collaborate? How do we convene? How do we influence others? Because, yes, we can give money. But let's be frank, philanthropy on average is around 7 cents in the dollar of giving. We need to think about how we use our money in the context of all the other time, talent and treasure that exists across this incredible country of ours. Government holds some of the biggest levers for change so being aware of that influence and thinking about how we might work effectively with government to play different but complementary roles as levers for change in society. And that stands for philanthropic peers as well. Sometimes we work together, sometimes we fund things separately. So many people intersect with charities every day that cater to different social needs. How do we ensure different people are supporting the things that matter most to us to create the important social fabric and the kind of life we want today and the life we want to produce into the future.

My ambition is less about ‘me’ and more about ‘we’. As CEO of the Paul Ramsay Foundation, I have this incredible opportunity to work alongside others to make a difference and I prefer to think about how I can be accountable to future generations. I want people to say, ‘She used the opportunity she had with the resources she was gifted to make some kind of difference in collaboration with others.’ I feel this in my heart and soul. It’s what I've shown up to do ever since I was a little kid, thanks to my family and those around me. Both of my grandmothers left school at the age of 13, which was the norm in those days. One of my grandmothers hoped to stay on and finish high school but she missed the scholarship exam with a burst appendix. We always talked around her kitchen table about social justice issues and I often wonder what she would have done had she been born into a different generation. As a woman with a great sense of social purpose, I’m incredibly aware of the position I’m in today. I know that change is possible and we can shift things over time, but it takes effort. Just thinking about what's happened for women over recent generations, the amazing people who've come before us who've done the work to this point - they're not just passing the baton, we’re in this together. This isn't quick work but it feels like a collective fight. One that is purposeful and important; and feels socially and morally responsible to continue.

As kids we didn’t have a lot of money but every now and again we were taken shopping to pick an outfit for summer or whatever. I remember choosing a t-shirt that said, ‘Anything boys can do’ across the front and ‘Girls can do better’ across the back. That was me to a tee! Burning gender equality has been etched into my soul from a little kid. We still have progress to make and there's work to be done but women have done incredible things and still are. As a result, those of us who are in a position to help, and have the resources to, need to think about how we use them to support the people around us. Women's giving is a key part of that. And going back to the generosity of Australians, we know that women are incredibly kind and generous people. So much giving happens day-to-day, some of which is unseen, happening in families and in communities. And some we see in terms of public dollars going out. Women's wealth has increased and there are incredible opportunities for women to be real leaders in how we craft a different future through giving.