On connected giving and the power of small actions

My family were always generous with their time, and then as their careers and businesses progressed, they did the same with their money. They really instilled the idea of giving what you can. My grandmother was very involved in the Asthma Foundation here in South Australia, and she always had me selling stickers, back in the old fundraising days when you bought a sticker from someone. One memory that has really stuck in my head is standing at Adelaide Central in my uniform selling stickers for the Asthma Foundation before school. It showed me how small actions can make a big difference.

I just get real joy out of helping people. I'm quite curious by nature and I’m always interested in learning about other people and what they do. I find other people's stories fascinating - from the people who are inside the organisations doing the work to the people who are benefiting. Connecting with people is the best part of giving.

I still give my time volunteering. It started with small things like serving drinks at the Mary Potter Hospice, a palliative care facility in South Australia and then getting my dog trained as a therapy dog, and so now whenever I can, we go into the youth legal system and sit in the courts to help calm people down.

In terms of financial giving, when the family funds came about, my brother and I wanted to honour the legacy of my parents who were both so generous. They had always wanted to create a philanthropic fund when they retired and in 2018, we decided to set up a public ancillary fund, which means we're part of a larger fund that helps us look after the compliance and governance. We started by giving to the organisations that our parents had given to and over time it’s evolved as we've developed relationships with different organisations and become involved in various causes. Although the way we've given has become more structured, as a family we give to organisations that support the South Australian community and the arts.

I’m also very drawn to women's issues but as a family fund, not everybody shares that same passion, so this has become part of my personal giving. As an idealistic 20 year old, I thought that women could have it all and be anything they wanted to be. But as I got older and took time off to have kids, I realised that women are by nature disadvantaged, particularly in the workforce because when they step out for periods of time, they lose skills, visibility, income and superannuation. Around 2022, Alex Dimos, Fiona Dorman and I all saw that unlike other states, there wasn’t a women's fund here, and so we decided to create the South Australian Women’s Fund. We all contribute the same amount of money, and it’s been slowly building over the past few years - we've given to leadership programmes that support women and girls and most recently to Dramatic Women, a State Theatre Company initiative that supports playwrights and women who are working in the creative space.

That it's not just about the giving; it's also about the connections you make. With our family fund, our giving has evolved as we've created strong relationships with different organisations. This has helped us build confidence in committing for multiple years, which gives organisations the certainty that funding will continue. We also supported some young emerging artists to create a public work of art, which is an opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have been given. We went into it with absolutely no expectations and the outcome they delivered was brilliant and that one project set up their careers and built up their skills.

Interestingly, we've found that it can be tough to give money away, especially when we put ourselves under pressure to make the most impact with a small amount of funds. We're not industrial givers, we don't huge amounts of money to give away, but we still want to have the greatest impact. So sometimes we're slow in making decisions because we second guess whether it’s the right one. But I’ve learned that when you build up trust and relationship with an organisation, you don’t need to worry as much because there’s a natural feedback loop. And now that we have these trust-based relationships, we tend to give untied funding, because we’ve realised it's actually the organisation that needs propping up so they can continue doing the work they do rather than giving to a particular program and expecting certain outcomes.

My brother and I would like our children to get involved in the family fund. If we’re invited to a concert because we're giving a prize for an emerging musician, we ask the kids if they would like to do the handshakes up on stage because it’s a good way to introduce them to it. However, when it comes to the Women’s Fund, I’m hoping that we there will come a day when we don’t need it anymore. We don't look at it as a legacy that needs to be there forever.

In terms of Australia, I think people are almost scared of giving. I know as a family we like to be private about our giving, and even though we’re not hugely wealthy, we believe that giving what we can is important. So there’s still a stigma and even a bit of embarrassment around giving in Australia - it's not a natural thing that we tend to do, unlike America where there is a real culture to give.

I think we need to make giving more accessible and approachable here and we need to let people know that it’s ok to start small. Sometimes when you look at funding pages and they need $130,000 it can feel really overwhelming which is why a giving circle like Impact100 is a great way to get started. There's a real joy in working collaboratively and I also get a kick out of supporting projects that my friends are doing, even if it means just buying tickets to their fundraising events. You don’t need to overthink giving or feel excluded from the conversation because big problems require big amounts of money. One small step really can make a difference.