Delegates join in Melbourne to start their journey to impact
The ‘Endowments for Impact’ program officially recommenced in Victoria this week and included a diverse and engaged group of trusts and foundations from family, institutional, university and religion/faith segments.
Hosted by the Centre for Sustainability and Business (‘CSAB’) at Melbourne Business School, the five-part workshop series will run monthly taking the group of Trustees, Directors and Senior Management through a deep dive into the case for transition and the tools and strategies to better align investments with the charitable purposes of their respective organisations.
The delegates joining a supported network who can tap into the collective wisdom and expertise of GoodWolf, Brightlight and Milner+Huang, and take this journey alongside their peers. They will be joining the original 12 organisations who completed the pilot program last year and by further workshop delegates starting up in NSW and Queensland.
Trusts and Foundations in Australia have immense potential for impact through their corpus. This is a $50 billion sector in Australia, however, astonishingly we estimate around 70% of these investments do not yet even negatively screen for impact.
Simon Lewis, Partner at GoodWolf and program co-founder said “This is an exciting next step for the sector after a generation of strategic advances on the granting side. The timing is right for Trusts and Foundations to start exploring this next paradigm shift in investment strategy, and shifting its capital towards greater impact.
But Trustees, Directors and Senior Managers need sustained support to navigate this journey, and an opportunity to work alongside their peers in the process. The transition ahead is a ‘doing’ problem and starts with building consensus at the Board about why and how to effect the transition.”
The first workshop focused on topics such as fiduciary duty, threading purpose and values with investment strategy and overcoming areas of resistance at the Board level. There was genuine interest from the group to understand questions such as:
How do we get the conversation started at the Board around why and how to allocate our assets to better align with the purpose and charitable objects of our organisation?
What are the financial trade-offs to investing with greater impact? What evidence is there in Australia?
Should and can we align our corpus impact with our granting priorities?
What are the strategies to bring all our stakeholders into alignment?
As participants complete the five workshop series, they will examine these and other questions through the lens of experts, case studies, sector reports and a model portfolio developed by Brightlight that draws on the inputs of the charitable and investment objectives of each of the participants in the program.
Not only this, but participants will be supported at every stage of their journey. With opportunities to engage further with the topics throughout the series and beyond, this is an exciting first step for trusts and foundations sector in Australia.
Endowments for Impact is presented by GoodWolf in partnership Brightlight and Milner +Huang. GoodWolf gratefully acknowledges the Minderoo Foundation and the Centre for Sustainability and Business at the Melbourne Business School for supporting this workshop series.
The Victoria series workshop marks the first in the 2022 program and will run over the next five months.
The NSW series will commence 22 July, proudly supported by Minderoo Foundation. Places for the NSW series are available. Click here for dates, location and registration details.
If you are interested to learn more connect with Claire Hanratty via email claire@goodwolf.com.au.
