Libby Prell is the director of NT Link and the Chair of Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation (MASCF), Australia's first intercultural Community Foundation. She is passionate about empowering people and organisations in the Northern Territory for the future.
I can’t really remember not giving. I was always very aware that as the fourth child growing on an intergenerational farm near Goulburn, that having the opportunity to go to a tier one boarding school from 10 years old was not the average. And it was something that I questioned the whole way! My earliest giving was not treasure, but time and my ability to have awareness for questioning the difference between my life – always safe with our three meals a day - when there are kids sleeping on the streets wondering where their next meal could come from. When I arrived in Alice Springs as a 23 year old, that gap between the haves and have-nots was so obvious, contrary to the spirit of the land. However, I felt much more comfortable in my soul being a part of this community than the privilege of where I came from, and so I became really involved very early on.
I think it’s the awareness of what a white, privileged life I have had. I have never wanted for a meal, I have never felt unsafe, and I believe that life’s blessings are an accident of birth. That drives me to give in time, treasure and talent.
Initially I gave through my time and talent on committees/Boards and in the last twenty years I’ve been giving through financial donations. I have an incredibly generous husband, and he has taught me a lot. My stepdaughter died by suicide 25 years ago and we set up a scholarship in her name at St Philip's College in Alice Springs. We borrowed the money to set up the foundation and that was really eye opening for me. The scholarship was set up for Aboriginal kids because Tania played softball and in that softball community there were a lot of Aboriginal players that she connected with who didn’t have the same opportunities as her. We really wanted that reflected in her memory.
I’ve been in Alice Springs for 45 years now, and my giving through time and treasure has been a constant. I’ve been actively involved in schools, community organisations and events including School Boards/Councils, Olive Pink Botanic Gardens, the Alice Springs World Chamber Orchestra and the Beanie Festival. I love supporting these amazing events because they underpin how extraordinary the Alice Springs community is. And thanks to the hard-earned business enterprises we've grown, we are now in a position to be far more philanthropic in the dollar amount of how we can contribute.
I am proud to be the founding donor of our Community Foundation. The main driver was losing our local newspaper after NewsCorp shut down around 60 rural publications around Australia. We were reading damning media about our town in the national press, but had lost sight of who we were as community. I was on the Eyre Peninsula at the time and picked up the inaugural edition of the Eyre Peninsula Advocate and thought - if they've got a local paper, then we can have one too.
I brought six copies back to Alice Springs and engaged a consultant to look at how we could make it work. I brought in a couple of others, and we had a meeting with the Today Media Group. John Hugin, who is now the Community Foundation’s executive director, had background in this space and during the meeting we offered to buy a page of the newspaper each week to make it commercial. After we said it, John and I looked at each other and went, “ok who’s the ‘we’?” and decided to create a Community Foundation. We wanted to amplify all the good things that were happening in our town. Within four months, we’d incorporated the Community Foundation, and the newspaper was launched. For me it’s about partnership and enabling a community lead initiative - I guess that’s what giving is. And it speaks to the lengths I will go to for this community. I want to bring to life my belief in Alice Springs, as an extraordinary intercultural community in the heart of Australia. [NB2] It’s the pulse of our nation.
It's hard work and you have to be courageous, but it all comes back at you in bucket loads and is greatly fulfilling in the short and long-term. The measurable reward and satisfaction I get from giving, is up there with being a mother.
My ambition is around amplification. And I think it’s amplification through leading by example and promoting more awareness around giving. I want this to spread into our family office and through our teams and community. The privilege of owning business that employ 80 people who are safe and valued in the workplace; it ripples out. We’re just at the point of seeding this into our strategy, and giving is a key agenda item. We have to ask more questions around how we do this strategically, so it has legacy and impact. The magnitude of the number of people this could affect in a positive way is really quite remarkable.
Growing up and educated in rural NSW, Libby has lived in Alice Springs since 1985.
After nearly ten years working in tourism in the ‘80’s Libby became a hands on co-owner/director of a transport business. In the last 35 years Libby has thrived in the ‘school of hard knocks’, built a successful group of businesses, with her husband Tony Smith. Today they proudly employ 80 people in Alice Springs and Darwin.
The birth of her children distracted her from completing her Bachelor of Business, however she is proudly a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Good governance is her passion and she uses her skills (usually as Chair) to guide both community not for profit, education or their own boards.
Currently Chair of the Mparntwe Alice Springs Community Foundation.
