On the rule of purpose and embracing the different life stages of giving

I grew up on the NSW South Coast, which back then, was a smallish rural community. We were not a wealthy family, but we had everything we needed, and my parents were very community minded. My dad was always fundraising for the local school, church and other charities, and I remember from an early age, both my parents volunteering at St Vincent de Paul. Giving was part of our family DNA; it’s always felt like a natural thing to do.

I’ve always had a rule that I want to do things with purpose in all areas of my life. Within two years at Allens as a mergers and acquisitions graduate lawyer, I worked out that it wasn't the right choice for me, so I convinced Rod McGeoch, CEO of the Sydney Olympic Bid to send me on a secondment in a non-legal role to work for him. On my fifth day there, I was in a meeting with Charlie Perkins, which was the first time I’d met an Indigenous First Nations person. The Olympics experience changed me, and I knew that I couldn't go back to being a lawyer. Doing things with purpose is what drives me. I don’t see my personal life and professional career as separate; it’s all interwoven and always will be.

I focus my giving around causes I’m interested in or areas where I’ve accumulated knowledge over the years. I've always had a strong passion for the arts, which came from my mother. She loved classical music, especially the opera. Growing up my parents had an opera subscription for three tickets each year, and the third ticket was rotated between myself and my two siblings. I was head of fundraising for the Sydney Symphony for a few years after being SOCOG’s head of sponsorships. As the founding CEO of Artsupport Australia, I spent almost a decade building the capacity of major gift fundraising in arts and culture. I’m very proud of the difference we made in those 9 years before I became CEO of Philanthropy Australia.

When I became CEO of the Future Generation listed investment companies (FGX and FGG) in 2015, we had to choose a cause area for the listed investment companies to donate 1% of their assets to each year. After a fair bit of research, we chose youth mental health. I wanted to focus on an area that wasn't well funded by philanthropy and where we could play a leadership role. At the time there were only four or five philanthropic funders in that space in Australia, and I picked up the phone to ask each of them what the challenges were and where they were funding. Little did we know that COVID would bring on a real crisis in youth mental health.

We tackled leading the push to grow philanthropic funding for mental health with a three-pronged approach. Firstly, we started an annual summit for funders and potential funders to showcase the interesting philanthropic and corporate collaborations in the non-profit sector that were tackling mental health issues. Most attendees weren’t aware of these. Secondly, we introduced an invitation-only quarterly meeting of top funders - we would bring in a guest speaker that the group would find hard to access ordinarily and then each foundation or funder could put a funding challenge on the table and we’d workshop it. Finally, we commissioned a research report with EY around why mental health funding was so low in the philanthropic sector. We interviewed about 60 philanthropists, most of which weren't funding in mental health, and then put together some recommendations. That report was published in 2019, and I’m delighted that people still today are using the report, and not just those related to mental health.

On a more personal note, my husband Dave and I have both recently turned 60, and as we’ve gotten older, we’re finding that we have more capacity to give. I think as you move through the different stages in your life, you learn to find where the next sweet spot is for your giving.

We're very interested in multiyear, untied funding and we like knowing the people who are founding and/or driving the organisation. Ten years ago, we bought a property just south of Berry on the NSW South Coast, where we live now most of the week. As a result, a lot of our giving is around supporting local causes and artists on the NSW South Coast and especially the Shoalhaven region, such as the Berry Writers Festival (BWF), OpenField, Berry’s contemporary arts festival, Berry Agricultural Show and the Shoalhaven Education Fund (part of the Country Education Foundation).

I like to get engaged and add some value with my giving, whether I’m on a Board, like with St Vincent’s Curran Foundation. I’m very passionate about St Vincent’s because my mother trained there as a nurse in the 1950s and ran Emergency in the 1950s.  I don’t always want to sit on a Board or a Committee though, like with BWF and OpenField. I’m often working behind the scenes with interesting non-profits and social enterprises that need fundraising advice. I find this incredibly interesting and rewarding.

I also believe in educating CEOs and Chairs and building the fundraising capacity of non-profit boards. We need more boards and CEOs to go beyond just giving their time and talent, to become regular and ongoing donors themselves and open their networks for fundraising. I’m not seeing as much of this happening as I’d like to.

Looking back over my career, I’d say that being the CEO of Philanthropy Australia was one of my hardest gigs. It doesn’t matter what sector you’re in, running a membership-based association is really tough. But one of the things I’m most proud of from my time at Philanthropy Australia, was introducing the New Generation of Giving (New Gen) program to encourage and nurture giving amongst millennials, whether they have self-made wealth or inherited wealth. When I look at the alumni of that program which started in 2011 and where they've ended up, that program really kickstarted the growth of impact investing in Australia.

Dave and I don't have kids, so while we’re good candidates for a bequest, we’re big believers in giving and seeing the impact of our giving while we are alive. Moving forward, I’d really like to focus more on the aging space because it’s another neglected area of philanthropic funding. An example is the Maggie Beer Foundation and the tremendous work they are doing to improve food and nutrition for older Australians. Everyone wants to fund youth, which I understand and support, but as you get older and go through the journey of caring for elderly parents and the issues and challenges that they face, it’s another world of pain – regardless of how much money you have.


I feel very passionate about growing New Gen and women’s giving as well because I think there's a lot more potential with both. The other area I really want to lean more into is the financial adviser space, because I've noticed in recent years, there are a handful of wealth management and advisory firms that are more serious about playing a role in growing Australia’s giving. Financial advisers are the key to us seriously growing giving in this country. More financial advisers need to be on non-profits board as and setting up sub-funds or other forms of structured giving to be better able to educate and inspire their client about giving; that’s how its done in the US. 

Finally, I think we will have a once-in-a lifetime golden opportunity to unlock a whole raft of new philanthropy or giving through sports with the Brisbane Olympics coming up in 2032. There are some interesting case studies around sport and giving, and I think the lead up to this event has the potential to crack open philanthropy in this country in a way that’s never been done anywhere in the world. We are a sports obsessed nation and it’s possible to turbocharge more giving via sport. I hope we don’t miss that golden opportunity in the lead up to the 2032 Games.