How dreaming big and taking risks can turn the dial

It's hard for me to look back and say that there was a single lightbulb moment because it's always been there for me. My parents were such generous people, and it was simply how we were nurtured. I guess it comes back to the idea of nature and nurture; although it feels innate, I was also born into an incredibly privileged position that has given me so many opportunities.

I’ve always been aware of white privilege and that’s what drives my giving. I talk about my privilege as “through the grace of God”, not because I’m religious but because I understand that the reason I’m in this position is by some chance of birth. My wealth is inherited and whatever I've contributed to that wealth still comes from the fact that money begets money. What I can influence however is how that money is spent. When there’s a kid out there who is born into poverty with parents who are struggling with addiction, I am driven by a heartfelt motivation to help them leverage some change in their lives. 

I want to smooth out a few bumps on the playing field, and at the end of the day, that feeling you get from getting alongside people beats retail therapy a billion times over. 

The real key to how we give is in the decisions that we make around our giving. We want to find the gaps and turn the dial on things. Business as usual isn't in our wheelhouse and although traditional and well-established charities do a great job, that path is not for us.

Our focus is on changing social and environmental outcomes for the better  through four pillars: being ecologically sound, keeping people from harm, walking with traditional custodians and empowering communities. We believe in embracing people in place. Most of our place-based work is in Newcastle and we use it as a testing ground for business models that can be scaled up and replicated throughout different parts of Australia.

We deliberately picked Newcastle as a base over a capital city because we live in the region, and there is no doubt that regional Australia experiences  disadvantage, often in a very different way to our city counterparts. I think grassroots work is important because having worked in local government I’ve seen how much it can benefit a community.

We're also very agile in the way we fund. We learned, especially through COVID, how important it is to help meet the changing priorities of the people and organisations we're funding. We do multi-year funding, so we can travel the journey, support necessary pivots and deepen our understanding of what are often very complex issues. We love funding innovation and when we remain agile, we can go on that journey with our partners without causing any grief about annual KPIs – because it’s just not what we’re about.

Giving is not hard. Finding fantastic people to give to and making an impact is a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. It’s been a real eye-opener to watch how complicated some people make it because there are so many good organisations and people out there who want to turn the dial and are already doing amazing things.

Another lesson has been the importance of having a huge risk appetite, and we're lucky to have a board who share this approach. That’s not to say that we take blind risks. If we can see that an organisation already has good bones, we'll ask them, “what's your moonshot?” because we want to know what they’d do if there were no barriers. And if we believe in the organisation and their vision, and its foundations are well built, we're happy to take that risk.

Interestingly, we’ve noticed that when we take a risk on a grassroots project and it starts working, suddenly the more traditional philanthropists come in and fund an organisation that they probably wouldn’t have previously funded. It’s something we’re seeing time and time again.

As an organisation, we've pivoted away from traditional philanthropy, where the focus is on growing your corpus and then giving away. We've always given far above the 5% and we’ve always been invested in the future. But now that we've got this supersonic team and a board that’s willing to take risks, my brother, sister and I want to see the results of our donations while we’re still alive.

This is such a crucial time. There are so many emergent and pressing priorities that we don't always see. For example, what are we doing about domestic violence and the women who are dying in violent homes? That’s a crisis, but often it doesn’t get framed as one in comparison to other issues.

We've got a ten year window where we want to spend down our corpus actively in real time, putting the money where it is needed now. We've still got significant funds coming in and my sister, brother and I give money every year, but our ambition is to spend it all down. In the future if our younger family members on the Board want to continue, then we can ramp it up again. Until then, we want to do the maximum that we can do now and have the most impact while we've got this sensational board and team who are all so brave.

I was asked to speak about legacy a while ago, and for me legacy isn't that we’ve set up this foundation that will outlive generations of our family. We want our legacy to be that we helped to change the way philanthropy works in Australia.  And hopefully not just the philanthropic sector, but the service provision sector as well. If we can't change the way that works, we haven't done our job.

Ten years from now, we don’t want there to be a need for the Ian and Shirley Norman Foundation. We’re not working towards business as usual. I know it’s a big dream but isn't this exactly what it’s all about - to put ourselves out of a job?