People with Purpose: Giving it all you’ve got

Posted on 28 Jan 2025

By Greg Thom, journalist, Institute of Community Directors Australia

Genevieve Timmons

After a decades-long career learning what makes philanthropy tick, Genevieve Timmons, the author of the grantmaking bible Savvy Giving, shares what she has learned along the way.

Tell us a little bit about your background in philanthropy.

There are two answers here. One is about growing up as part of a family with very little money, and a strong ethic of generosity that went back generations.

The number one rule was that everyone was looked after. Money was not the main game in our family, except to share what we had.

In addition to this family culture of giving, our church community provided affordable housing, helping Mum and Dad to buy a house so we had a permanent roof over our heads.

The Brigidine Sisters gave us an education and taught us to appreciate community life that was creative and just.

I don’t remember being defined as "poor" or disadvantaged, and regardless of our means, we knew everyone mattered. I look back now and recognise how philanthropy was key to the pathway out of poverty for many of us in a small rural town.

The second answer is about my career in philanthropy, which spans more than 40 years now – yikes!

The CERES Project

Before becoming a philanthrocrat, I had five years in the not-for-profit sector, with the CERES project in Brunswick, Melbourne which is one of the "great ideas at work" featured in Savvy Giving (2nd edition).

As the first staff member, I witnessed how philanthropic dollars can be a unique and powerful accelerator for community ideas and visions, with deep and lasting impact.

We got started on the work of transforming a disused tip site from a moonscape with old boots and washing machine carcases scattered across more than three hectares of land, to become what it is today - an urban oasis demonstrating sustainable and forward-thinking approaches to land management, with community spaces, gardens, animals, and social enterprises generating millions of dollars each year.

The first grant to get CERES underway was from the Ross Trust for $7,000 - no strings attached other than to start creating the vision that had been sketched out.

Other early philanthropic supporters included the Reichstein Foundation, the Myer Family Foundation and Sidney Myer Fund, the Stegley Foundation and the Ian Potter Foundation, plus many more donors who were pleased to add money to match the extraordinary efforts of so many community volunteers.

After more than 45 years, millions of dollars flow through CERES today, and hundreds of thousands of people visit each year for all sorts of reasons.

The social return on investment for these early grants would amount to a staggering figure and is powerful testimony for philanthropic giving which is community led, and contributed by donors with patience, trust and curiosity.

Reichstein Foundation

After CERES, I had 14 years with the Reichstein Foundation, starting out in 1988 at a time when philanthropy and grantmaking was largely mysterious and in the hands of few people.

The number of us who were publicly visible would not have made up a cricket team. Jill Reichstein and the Foundation board appointed me as someone who knew where and how the benefit of philanthropic dollars was landing in community, which was quite unusual.

In the 1980s and 1990s, most of the thinking about who, what and where to give was behind closed doors, and decision-making was often left to retired executives, legal or financial advisers, or individuals with wealth who were interested to do their own research and gathering of ideas.

Giving was largely random acts of generosity based on hunch, and people tended to give to who they knew rather than seeking out granting opportunities.

There was no formal training or codes of practice, although we had started borrowing from the USA, the UK, Canada and New Zealand, exchanging experience and ideas with particular individuals across the world - such a boon for Australia.

The Reichstein Foundation was powering on with the mission of "Change not charity" and we produced one of the first annual reports from a philanthropic grantmaker which focused on the people and organisations receiving the funding, rather than the foundation itself.

This format for an annual report was quite radical at the time, and very well received. Today, largely thanks to technology, most philanthropic grantmakers promote the organisations and causes they support rather than focusing on themselves, which is also a tangible contribution for the many hard-working and committed not-for-profits out there bringing philanthropic money to life.

At the time, the reports impressed a number of donors who gathered together to share the funding opportunities we were showcasing. This led to establishing the first donor networks in Australia: Joint Foundation Support and the Women Donors Network, facilitated by the Reichstein Foundation.

Portland House Foundation

In 2004 I took on another long-term philanthropy appointment with the Portland House Foundation, and Stephen Hains as chair. The purpose was assisting people to move out of disadvantage and it was a time when corporate approaches to philanthropic giving were coming on stream.

The partnerships we developed with grantees were light touch, distinguished by multi-year funding, co-design for the use of grants given, and high trust with grant recipients.

We designed a process of roundtable reporting which was valued by all the grantees, who exchanged [information] with each other about progress, highlights and challenges. Our expectations were "high trust, low docs, face to face and no surprises."

Once more, these early approaches have helped find the sweet spot to shape and consolidate effective contemporary grantmaking in Australia today, bringing us closer to a bedrock of practice that amplifies the unique and significant investment of philanthropic dollars, and ensures we are delivering optimal value from every dollar.

Paul Ramsay Foundation

The past four years with the Paul Ramsay Foundation is my most recent engagement in philanthropy. This was an extraordinary opportunity to be part of the new wave of large-scale philanthropic giving, taking philanthropy to the next stage of delivery with substantial funding tied to fresh and ambitious goals for impact.

The mission is to invest substantial grants with organisations and communities, and to build partnerships and alliances to influence the conditions needed to stop disadvantage in Australia.

A highlight of the work was to invest in the philanthropic sector itself, resourcing specialist approaches to giving, including community foundations and membership organisations, to ensure philanthropic giving is responsive and aligned with this mission to address disadvantage.

Leadership in philanthropy

In addition to various executive roles in the philanthropic sector, I was fortunate to complete the Leadership Victoria program in its inaugural year, 1990 and completed a senior fellowship with the Johns Hopkins International Fellows in Philanthropy program in 1999.

Both provided a fresh global lens on how philanthropy in its early and formative stages could contribute to a civil society.

It was a thrill to be awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Swinburne University in 2017, in recognition of my three decades of work in philanthropy.

Leadership opportunities as a board member over the years have been another critical vantage point [from which] to understand philanthropy in Australia and contribute to emerging structures and approaches.

This includes founding director with the Inner North Community Foundation and the Mornington Peninsula Foundation, council member with Philanthropy Australia and board member with Australian Community Philanthropy, now known as Community Foundations Australia.

Other board roles include Fellowship for Indigenous Leadership, Studio Schools Australia and TOM Melbourne which have also been important to maintain a broad viewfinder for contemporary philanthropy as we move forward.

Consulting and professional development

In between long-term and part-time appointments, consulting with families, foundations, trusts and membership organisations was a rare window on how philanthropy was starting to emerge as a sector in Australia, New Zealand and across the world.

This consulting emphasised the diversity in approach and expansion of philanthropic giving, and the exciting ways that contemporary approaches were shaping the landscape.

For example, the Naomi Milgrom Foundation's focus on creativity, architecture and design of public spaces is a powerful illustration of how the arts can contribute to making lives better and remove social barriers.

Moving out of siloes for giving is the key to their approach, harnessing opportunities to build across disciplines and initiating collaborations to break down siloes of funding interest.

Genevieve Timmons Savvy Giving book promo
"Impressive work has been, and is being done, with philanthropic dollars, both in Australia and across the world."

What were your motivations for writing Savvy Giving?

My motivations for writing Savvy Giving and Savvy Giving (1st and 2nd editions) plus the Grantmakers Toolkit are to pass on whatever I have learned to advance philanthropic practice in an emerging ecosystem.

The information, stories, lessons and tactics are distilled from experience over many years and really belong to the sector and the many people who have been part of that experience.

At the heart of it is a call to action, to sharpen skillsets and note the lessons for how to deliver on our responsibilities as stewards of public wealth, avoiding the waste and potential damage that can result from poor practice or a confusion in roles and purpose.

My aim was also to open up new thinking and broaden minds, encouraging people at this time in our history to wake up to the social agency of our money, and understand how we can use money to respond to what is happening around us in the world.

It’s also an encouragement to expand the view finder on our history, both recent and ancient, in order to understand how contemporary philanthropy is underpinned by culture and age-old traditions which inform motivations and point to our options for the future.

The audience for Savvy Giving

People often asked me “Who is the audience for Savvy Giving?” and I wrestled with the answer, partly because the book has specialist information but is also generally useful for anyone who has money.

I want Savvy Giving to serve as an invitation to anyone interested in structured generosity, whether they know the philanthropy world or not. There are so many people with fingerprints on the work of philanthropic giving, and anyone is welcome in the philanthropy ecosystem.

Also, it was important to break down the mystery and exclusivity that can surround philanthropy, and to ensure the idea and opportunity is available to everyone.

Where Savvy Giving started: with the grantseekers

I’ve been developing training materials and resources about philanthropic grantmaking since starting in the philanthropy sector in the 1980’s.

The information and experience I gathered made it very clear that philanthropic dollars are a distinct and valuable resource for not for profits and communities and needed to be understood by both givers and receivers to generate best impact.

Early on, there was high demand and interest from grantseekers who wanted funding support from a largely uncharted and often confusing collection of grantmakers.

Of the 50,000 charities in Australia, there were many talented, hardworking and committed people out there willing to do whatever it took to meet expectations of the philanthropic grantmakers so they could take their communities and organisations forward.

But the process was often confusing, exhausting and unpredictable in outcomes - it was so well described as the "funding burden" by Kate Frykberg in New Zealand.

The first materials I designed were for not-for-profits and communities to make their way as efficiently and successfully as possible through the many processes of applying for funds and maintaining partnerships with philanthropic grantmakers.

A shift in focus

Then I realised it was more valuable to focus on training and professional practice on the other side of the transaction – with the philanthropic grantmakers.

It was obvious that everyone would benefit from more rigorous administration, operational and governance systems, and generally greater transparency.

In addition to making it easier for grantseekers to access and negotiate funding, there were far fewer people to engage and influence on the giving side, whether staff, board members or private donors.

There was also a growing recognition of the urgency for the philanthropy sector to move towards maturity as an emerging field of professional practice with compliance, governance, operations and values to be considered.

It was an interesting time for philanthropy because there were no precedents, history or codes to work with – people had been operating as boards and staff with an intuitive sense of the work, borrowing from experience in business, not for profit, law, academia and government.

The task was to start laying down more formal frameworks and principles for sectoral training in philanthropic giving, as a distinct and unique form of socio-economic investment with no expectations of profit, election success or personal gain.

Professional development resources for philanthropic giving

This is when we turned the focus on the practice of grantmaking and created the Grantmakers Toolkit: Ritenga Tuku Koha with Robyn Scott and others at Philanthropy New Zealand in 2010.

This was followed by Savvy Giving: The Art & Science of Philanthropy in 2013, with Marion Webster, Trudy Wyse, Sarah Davies and others at Australian Communities Foundation.

Now in 2025 we have the second edition of Savvy Giving, subtitled A roadmap for contemporary philanthropy in Australia, once again partnering with the crack team at Australian Communities Foundation, especially Maree Sidey, Eric Beecher, Carly Severino and Andrew Binns.

What feedback have you received on the second edition of Savvy Giving?

The one comment I hear most frequently about Savvy Giving #1 and #2 is ‘If only I’d known this when I started…’ It doesn’t matter whether they are donors with extraordinary amounts to give, or people with modest amounts searching for ways to make their financial contributions impactful.

They could be chairs or board members of giving organisations, they could be staff and executives, professional advisors or policy makers. Or they could be people from one of many not-for-profits or community initiatives wanting to establish effective partnerships and make it worth their while to seek out philanthropic granting.

Specific feedback about Savvy Giving (2nd edition) has been encouraging and constructive.

Some people have welcomed both the history and the map of our contemporary philanthropy ecosystem as it is today, identifying how many different people have fingerprints on the work of philanthropic giving. For others, the practical templates and administrative examples woven through the 24 steps in the grantmaking pathway are particularly valuable.

People have also commented on the interview about First Nations philanthropy, and signposts there for us all to establish allyship with First Nations people taking philanthropy forward in culturally appropriate and relevant ways – there is much to learn there.

I have also had comments about building contemporary funding relationships, with practical detail on how to build trust into co-design processes with not-for-profit organisations and communities, rather than grantmakers taking the lead in defining and controlling the use of funds.

And the most popular feedback is for the collection of great ideas at work, the brief stories which illustrate successful grantmaking approaches with extraordinary returns. These are just a few examples of the alchemy of offering patient money, sharing risk, co-designing funding and leaving others to lead.

IMG 2966
Genevieve (front) with fellow travellers in philanthropy from across the decades: Bhavna Joshi (Reichstein Foundation), Kath McCann (Education Foundation, Foundation for Young Australians), Ellen Merat (Education Foundation, Reichstein Foundation, Portland House Foundation and Foundation for Young Australians), Margaret McCaffrey (founding executive director, Small Change and Education Foundation) Dr Tricia McCann (academic and research support for colleagues in philanthropy).

What is the number one issue facing philanthropy today?

Looking around in 2025, there are myriad opportunities for philanthropy to go from strength to strength, and challenges to abandon old school ways of doing this work.

If I had to choose the number one issue, it would be the advancement of professional development for board members, staff, individual donors, professional advisors and researchers in the field of philanthropic grantmaking.

This picks up many of these single issues and challenges, providing a broad platform where they can be understood and addressed.

There is no question that there has been substantial progress in shaping philanthropic practice in Australia, which is especially important with so much more money coming into the philanthropy sector in the last decade at a scale not previously seen.

The fact is that we are still shaping codes of practice, operational systems, governance and compliance, and public expectations of what effective contemporary philanthropy looks like.

People are on the search for professional development opportunities, to better understand the landscape and how they fit into the philanthropy sector, and to be part of an institutional framework which guides management of public philanthropic funds.

Education tailored specifically for the work of philanthropic grantmaking and social investment flags the knotty challenges and opportunities for effective contemporary philanthropy, and promotes fundamental practice. It also fosters expertise, promotes adaptability, and builds on existing networking and specialist information exchange.

There is also the opportunity to advance possibilities of collaboration and alignment and test the values and visions which underpin philanthropic activity regardless of the individual styles and approaches which are also important.

The recent launch of the Giving Academy is another significant milestone in advancement of professional development, led by the Centre for Social Impact in collaboration with key organisations including Philanthropy Australia.

The goal is to take professional development to the next stage of delivery, engaging with both current and emerging philanthropic practices in Australia and globally.

The program will be guided by deep consultation and collaboration with philanthropic sector stakeholders, ensuring it becomes a lasting, accessible, and transformative resource for the field.

This is our best opportunity to stand together to consolidate professional practice in the time ahead and enhance future contributions that will make our country proud.

And one last observation?

The word "purpose" in the title of the Community Advocate's series of People with Purpose profiles couldn’t be more timely or relevant.

So many of us in the philanthropic giving and not-for-profit world in Australia are busy with the day to day, planning, managing, executing, and evaluating, setting our sights on high social ambitions and targets, but how do we know whether it is worthwhile?

In the end, the question is about our purpose, and to get to that we need to answer questions such as:

  • How have we advanced the sustainability, creativity and fairness of our world?
  • Whose life is better because of our philanthropic giving?
  • Who are these people, where are they and in what ways have they benefited from the money we manage from the public purse for the public good?
  • Could we have unwittingly wasted money or done damage with our efforts?

These high-level questions about why we do what we do and whether we have achieved it are fundamental challenges for everyone – as organisations, and as people in our public and private lives.

If we can’t point to our value, then we still have a way to go in understanding and fulfilling our purpose.

Philanthropic giving is regularly the subject of interrogation, with plenty of critics as well as enthusiasts. Whatever the discussions, there is substantial progress to point to, where philanthropy has moved on from secret business and random acts of generosity based on hunch.

Impressive work has been, and is being done, with philanthropic dollars, both in Australia and across the world.

While recognising these valid claims, the challenge is to remain open to questions which sharpen our attention on our core purpose, and require us to remain curious, willing to listen and learn.

Uninformed criticism may need to be dismissed out of hand, but embracing comments of people truly committed to improving practice and outcomes of philanthropic giving is an important path to optimal impact and shaping a better world with philanthropic dollars – so bring it on!

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