On trust-based giving and helping communities thrive

My earliest professional connection with giving was with the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal (FRRR), where I now work as CEO. We're a national philanthropic foundation who partner with others to strengthen the social and economic fabric and resilience of regional Australia. I studied social sciences and policy at university and after finishing my degree, I decided the not-for-profit sector might be where I could find some joy. I stepped into a role as a very young person and was given the task of trying to find some money for a youth program. I applied for funding from FRRR and got my first grant. In those days we received cheques for grants, so we went along to an event to collect the cheque and I remember encountering all these people, board members and funders, who were doing amazing things and giving their time. It was a real eye-opener to see philanthropy operating as a formal thing. My personal connection to giving stems from the experience of benefiting from charity from a very young age. I grew up in a very low socioeconomic setting and I remember receiving food parcels and being given places on programs and camps that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to do otherwise. The notion of work being done to lift people up, who didn't have the same things as others, became a very real thing for me from an early age.

I’m inspired by those people who are willing to step up and do the heavy lifting in society, overcoming the hardest issues and challenges going on in the world. I'm constantly humbled and amazed by the people who make so many sacrifices to do so much for others and the people who have the guts and the courage to look at something and think, ‘This isn't right. I can do something about this.’ I don't have the courage or guts to do that, but I want to back the people that do. Giving in a regional community setting is about ensuring that those places survive and thrive. Nothing really happens in those areas without the volunteer effort or without the local fundraising committees. I live in a small town of a couple of thousand people. We just had a group of cyclists raise $5000 for the local hospital. For a small hospital in a country town, $5000 is a lot. Quite often, the motivation behind giving in regional communities is connected to place. It’s connected to a collective desire to make it the best place possible and create the most opportunities for people. A lot of small towns are disadvantaged because they don’t have access to basic things that others take for granted, so giving is often driven by that awareness and by connectedness and a sense of identity. You see that playing out in the volunteering space.

You’ll often find me at the canteen or scoring netball. Sports clubs don't operate without people who are willing to turn up. I was on the preschool committee for the entire time my kids were there. I was also president there for a stint and helped maintain the local facility, which didn't receive any government money so operated on local support.

Financially, I make donations to a few causes, including the things I'm passionate about, which includes First Nations self-determination. I try to be mindful about the way I shop, buying from social enterprises or ethical, locally-owned businesses and supporting small businesses. That’s really important in a regional setting. Animal welfare is another area I really care about.

At FRRR, we have thousands of donors, if you count the many individual day-to-day donors. We've got some people who donate to us every month and have done so for years, never asking for a thing in return. Obviously, we keep them informed about what’s going on, but they just continue to give. As an organisation, we really love supporting regional communities. We know our money will end up somewhere impactful, and that it will make a difference in people's lives in regional Australia.

On a professional front, I think it's very tempting to try to get things right and make decisions on where to put your money based on a scientific method. Yet, as I move through this work and engage and experience more, my thinking around this has simplified. In the right hands, donations will impact social change or environmental change or whatever it is we're working on. A lot of the incidental outcomes from initiatives that we support turn out to be the most powerful, and they're the ones you can't plan for. Every time we get feedback from granting programs or our place-based programs, we discover that it’s the things we didn't even really consider that are where we end up seeing the most impact. I think my lesson is to just keep it simple and focus on the who rather than what. Of course, not everyone thinks that way. A lot of our partners are still very interested in making sure that there's a more scientific factor to giving. But as far as my own philosophy goes and from what I've learned, it's kind of liberating and it certainly aligns with some of the practice around ‘pay-what-it-takes’ and trust-based philanthropy. It feels risky to be in a trust-based space because you have to relinquish a lot. But I'm becoming more comfortable with that, and I suspect that's what we need to do more of. On a personal level, when I give a financial donation with no strings attached, it brings me a lot of joy to know that donation is in the right hands. I recently donated to an organisation, and I was really delighted not to receive an epic amount of gratitude in response. I got a receipt, and I knew that the organisation I donated to was going to do really powerful work, but I didn't want them to spend any of that time or money thanking me or using those resources on marketing back to me. All I need to know is that my money is going to go towards the really great work that they’re doing.

As a whole sector I want to see us moving towards trust-based giving. It’s fairly courageous and can feel risky and it requires a whole lot of mindset, cultural and behavioural change. But I really think we need to move towards both a trust-based approach and a pay-what-it-takes approach. 

My other ambitions revolve around the idea that we've got a lot of work to do in truly transitioning power and dealing with our reconciliation journey as a nation. First Nations philanthropy is a very beautiful thing. In First Nations cultures, philanthropy is not even a word because it's just about reciprocity. And that’s what philanthropy really is – the cycle of give and take. If we can develop our humility and embrace that way of thinking and knowing and interacting, we will actually see some really substantial change as a nation.

The bold thought that occasionally pops into my head is that we shouldn't even have philanthropy. We should be working in a way that ensures wealth is shared equitably, so we don’t have as much disadvantage and disparity. We should be asking: how do we deal with inequality? How do we deal with wealth inequality? How do we deal with better inclusion and pathways? If we can do that work, philanthropy should almost do itself out of a job. Or in the very least, it could shift its purpose from being about alleviating disadvantage to strengthening our societies through investing in a more ambitious, forward-looking vision for who we are.