The Philanthropy Leadership Summit Compass launches
Fri, 17 Oct 2025
Philanthropy Australia is pleased to share the Philanthropy Leadership Summit 2025 Compass with the sector. This guide to practice in response to the polycrisis has been informed by our 2025 strategic planning process and shaped by insights and ideas from participants in the Summit funders’ workshop and from individual members.
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Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation unveils new name: Greater Melbourne Foundation
Fri, 17 Oct 2025
After more than 100 years of operation in Melbourne, the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation this week entered a new chapter. It revealed its new operating name: the Greater Melbourne Foundation. The change reflects the Foundation’s recently launched strategic focus on social justice and equity, and its renewed commitment to tackling some of Greater Melbourne’s most pressing challenges.
Beyond the 5% Rule: Why charity trustees should invest for impact
Paul Ronalds, CEO, Save the Children Global Ventures
Fri, 11 Jul 2025
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Or some would argue that if you want to generate social or environmental impact from your investments, you have to compromise financial returns. This debate matters because society desperately needs to unlock large, patient chunks of capital to use to scale innovations that can solve the planet’s biggest social and environmental challenges, writes Paul Ronalds, CEO of Save the Children Global Ventures.
Best practice lives at home too: Insights from North American philanthropy
Andrew Binns, CEO, Australian Communities Foundation
Fri, 11 Jul 2025
North America often looms large in the philanthropic imagination. It’s home to some of the world’s most storied foundations, biggest givers and boldest initiatives. Andrew Binns, CEO of Australian Communities Foundation, has had two weeks of meetings and conversations across Canada and the US. He has returned with a powerful reminder: the most effective and innovative philanthropy isn’t confined to one part of the world. Best practice lives here, too.
The power of Five Bucks: founder Brianna Kerr on ‘going small to go big’
Dee Rudebeck, Advisor, News and Storytelling
Fri, 27 Jun 2025
Five Bucks – a giving community where members chip in $5 a week – is all about ‘going small to go big’. Giving News talks with the founder of this collective giving initiative as the community distributes its first $62,000. In this Q&A, Brianna Kerr shares fascinating insights on the democratisation of giving in action – and what’s in store for year two.
Philanthropy Leadership Summit 2025 – draft program released!
Dee Rudebeck, Advisor, News and Storytelling
Fri, 30 May 2025
Amid much anticipation and registrations filling fast, Philanthropy Australia is excited to announce the first round of program highlights for its Leadership Summit 2025. They include keynote speaker, the international author and ‘polycrisis’ expert Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon, Australian social commentator Dr Rebecca Huntley, highly regarded MCs from the Australian sector, stimulating lightning talks and much more.
Sector leaders react to Gates Foundation’s historic plan to spend down US$200bn
Fri, 16 May 2025
Bill Gates has announced that the Gates Foundation plans to spend its endowment and ‘virtually all’ of his personal wealth totaling US$200 billion in the next 20 years to accelerate its mission of ‘saving and improving lives around the world’. Here, four leaders from the Australian philanthropic sector, Daniel Petre, Audette Exel, Peter Johnstone and Maree Sidey react.
