Since our last newsletter, our team and Chair have been travelling across the country, visiting current and prospective grant partners.

In late July, I accompanied the Australian Environment Grantmakers Network CEO and around 12 other private environmental funders on a week-long field trip in the Northern Territory. During the week, we met with a range of environmental advocates, First Nations organisations and Indigenous ranger groups. The trip extended my knowledge and understanding of issues around water licence allocations, land erosion and degradation from feral species, and the opportunities for renewable energy projects to support remote communities.

Our Chair, Craig Drummond, also ventured to the Northern Territory in July, visiting Children's Ground, a long-time grant partner of the Foundation. Accompanied by Alberto Furlan, our Senior Program Manager – Community Wellbeing, he visited Children's Ground in Alice Springs, participated in a Truth Telling workshop, attended an ‘on country' education session at Simpson's Gap with children and parents from Larapinta Town Camp, and enjoyed a family night of campfire cooking at Emily's Gap, approximately 20 km outside of Alice Springs.

Children's Ground consistently delivers outcomes for children and families, and unprecedented employment outcomes for local staff; however, the trip highlighted the challenges Children's Ground faces in delivering effective whole-of-community programs; notably, a lack of infrastructure and crippling housing overcrowding.

More recently, we were also invited to participate in the Commonwealth Government Roundtable on the ‘Role of the Not-for-Profit Sector in Boosting Productivity’. The event was jointly hosted by the Hon Tanya Plibersek (Minister for Social Services) and the Hon Andrew Leigh (Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities & Treasury) and attended by around 40 selected leaders from the not-for-profit sector, philanthropy, and various peak bodies.

The purpose of the Roundtable was to generate ideas to boost productivity in the charity and not-for-profit sectors and in the communities they serve. In particular, there was a focus on four key areas:

• Embedding rigorous evaluation without overburdening charities
• Potential innovations to help charities do more with less
• Streamlining reporting to be less onerous for grant recipients and more meaningful for funders, and
• Potential funding reforms to unlock better productivity in service delivery.

Philanthropy Australia's website provides an overview of this roundtable and the philanthropic sector’s position on these proposed changes.

Lastly, I wish to welcome our newly appointed Board member, Professor Kathryn North AC. Professor North is the Director of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and the David Danks Professor of Child Health Research at the University of Melbourne. She is a paediatric physician, neurologist, and clinical geneticist. She received a doctorate in neurogenetics in 1994 from the University of Sydney and later completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Genetics Program at Harvard Medical School.  

Professor North was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences in 2014 and promoted to Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 2019 for "eminent service to genomic medicine nationally and internationally, to medical research in the fields of genetics, neurology and child health, and as a mentor and role model”.  We are delighted Professor North has agreed to join our Board of Governors to share her incredible expertise in the fields of medical research, public health and early childhood development.