On building resilience and giving as a family

Sue Evans:

I was born and bred on a farm in Busselton. My parents had a dairy until the sixties and then went into beef. Both my parents gave to this community, but I don't feel like it was ever a big decision; it was just when opportunities arose, and people needed help. I stayed in this community and got married, and when my children were at primary school that's when I started giving, mainly through my time. My idea of giving has always been that whether you are giving or accepting the giving, the reward is the same.

Jocelyn Evans:
I remember that mum was always involved in things like the school fate and Lamington Drive. Whenever there were raffle tickets, she would always buy in. I think it’s because of this that I see giving and volunteering in a similar way, because when you don’t have the means to give money, you can still give your time.

As the eldest daughter of three children, I remember that we didn’t buy anything that we didn’t need. But then as we became more well off, each one of us developed a different relationship with money. I ended up working in outdoor education, which is where my passion for giving to nature comes from.

Sue Evans:

I still predominantly give through my time. I run a cancer support group and I'm a hospice volunteer. I also think that there are a lot of young people struggling today. Growing up on a farm we had to be resilient because mum and dad were busy, we had to make our way. We had to be responsible. But I don't think the kids nowadays get the opportunity to make mistakes and build that resilience. We’re in a position as a family to give back to people who aren't as fortunate. And while I like giving my time, if time isn’t what people need, then we can give money to the causes that can help them become resilient. 

Jocelyn Evans:
Environmental issues are really important to me. The planet doesn't have its own voice and we're so quick to trample it. I’m really concerned about biodiversity loss and because I’m not a scientist, the only way I can help is to give my money and my time to activities like tree planting. The first donation that I set up as a regular debit, was Greenpeace and then by chance, I heard about Bush Heritage, and I’ve donated to them on a regular basis ever since.

Sue Evans:
When my children were leaving school, I wondered how I was going to fill the gap, and that’s when I started volunteering at a hospice here. I’ve had a melanoma, and my parents died of cancer, so it made sense. I’ve been doing it for around 24 years. Before the foundation started, we were giving to a place called Teen Challenge. They have a farm here where people with addictions can go whenever they need support. But once the organisation was on its feet, we moved onto supporting other small organisations. We try to choose charities that don’t have a huge amount of government support and that we have a connection with. Once we started the family foundation, we decided to all choose a focus area and we can all support a charity up to a certain amount without going through the board. If someone wants to give more than that amount, they need put in a submission and have someone from that charity come to speak with us all so that we can all learn more about the charity. I tend to support organisations that are focused on health and my husband Peter is quite involved with giving to communities overseas that don't get a lot of money.

Jocelyn Evans:
We have two generations in our family foundation, and we all have very different interest areas. We had an external expert come in to help us identify our shared values, which was really helpful, and we created four pillars to structure our giving. These core areas are International development, health (physical and mental), life skills development and conservation. We have found many organisations that operate in more than one of our pillars, for example Human Nature Adventure Therapy, works with at risk young people in nature, to improve their life skills and mental health. When we find new charities that fit our giving strategy, we usually start with smaller grants to get a feel for the organisation and how it works. After the initial year we revisit this and we often provide multiyear grants to provide more certainty.

Jocelyn Evans:
With a family foundation, it’s really important to go through the process of understanding what your shared values are and to have a direction. The other thing that’s worked for us is inviting people from the that charities we support, to come and talk about what they do which has been a great way to give everyone some buy-in, even if it’s not the charity they chose. The best part is actually talking about the giving because that's why we do it.

Sue Evans:

One of the benefits is that we get together more often and learn about the areas that everyone is interested. You don’t always get the opportunities to have these conversations and it’s great to learn what your kids are passionate about. I think as well, our kids have seen how happy it makes us to give our money. It's great to understand the way they think about issues, and it’s brought us closer together because we're meeting like that more often.

I’ve learned that you've got to give for the right reasons and from your heart. And when you stop working, you need a reason to get out of bed. We've always been busy and haven't had the normal five-day week where you have every weekend off. Once I got more time, I didn't want to go to coffee four times a day, I wanted to do something meaningful. I think this is important.

Sue Evans:
To keep helping people become more resilient when they hit that bump in the road. We all come up against challenges but some of us are able to move through them more easily than others. And often people are struggling through no fault of their own. If you can help people get to a space of resilience, then they can move forward.

It’s common for a lot of people my age to feel like they can't give what they have. They’re worried about what will happen if they live longer or that they should give it to the kids. I don't agree with that. It's a nice thing to leave something for family but you don't have to give it all to them. If giving is something that makes your heart sing, then I say give it to the charities you believe in and your family will manage.

Jocelyn Evans:
I don’t have a really targeted, specific goal in the conservation space because it’s so broad, and I think it needs to be. I'm lucky that the two conservation organisations I've researched and we now provide ongoing funding too, have strong leadership, are really passionate and deliberate with their spending. These qualities really resonate with our family and therefore have supported my push in our foundation for the need for conservation and the impact that can be had by these organisations across our population including empowering indigenous communities.  

From my experience, there are a lot of people who still don’t understand what philanthropy is and how it all works. I think we need to have more conversations and find better ways to explain it because it can be quite hard to define exactly what it is. The other thing I’ve noticed is that when there's a disaster, people are quick to contribute to GoFundMe pages, but they won’t necessarily set up a regular giving, which means there’s a willingness to give in Australia that we can try to tap into.