philanthropyOz Blog

Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 11

History of Community Foundations

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Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 10

The Collectors

While Alfred Felton (profiled in Issue 5) is arguably the best-known benefactor of an arts organisation in Australia, there have been others who left their donations in the form of cultural items, rather than money, who have been equally significant. In this edition we profile two of them, and the institutions which were created as a result of their benefactions.

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Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 9

The Collier Charitable Fund: Celebrating $50 Million of Philanthropy

This week in Melbourne, the Lord Mayor John So addressed a gathering to celebrate $50 million of gifts, over more than 50 years, from the estates of three extraordinarily benevolent philanthropic women: Alice, Annette and Edith Collier.

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Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 8

The Philanthropy Australia Resource Centre – a decade of development

In this edition we start with Philanthropy Australia’s very first Journal, and a grant to establish a “small resource centre”…

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Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 7

A History of Planned Charity

In this edition we go back as far as we can, to the very beginnings of planned giving, and investigate how organised giving began, where the notion of perpetual foundations came from, and how things have changed.

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Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 6

Great Grants: The Potter Farmland Plan

In 1984, The Ian Potter Foundation initiated a three-year program aimed at demonstrating methods for ecologically and economically sustainable farming. This project was instrumental in the development of Landcare, as well as tremendously influential on public policy. It proved that farmers could address some of the main causes of land degradation and work within the bounds of sustainability, whilst still gaining maximum production from their properties. Continue reading Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 6…

Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 5

"Wealth! Get it spent." - Alfred Felton, 1903

In January 1904, an elderly gentleman passed away in St Kilda’s Esplanade Hotel, where he had lived quietly for twelve years in a modestly furnished apartment. Never married, he had no living heirs; while he lived modestly, his rooms were full of the artworks he had collected during his lifetime.

A few months before his death, he had scrawled in a notebook “Wealth!! Get it spent.” He had spent much of his life as a quiet benefactor, following the guidelines he had laid out for himself – several years before he had determined to spend his money on “the sick and poor; on servants and employees; on art works, travelling, and also on desirable things — personal or other”. But Alfred Felton’s legacy after death was one of the richest and most remarkable in Australian history.

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Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 4

Looking From the Past to the Future

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A Big Year for Philanthropy in Australia

Recently in the Resource Centre here at Philanthropy Australia we’ve been doing in-depth researching of the history of philanthropy in Australia. The gathering of these ‘stories’ of Australian philanthropy is a fascinating process, and our plans to archive them in order to better share the history is coming along well.

Of course, we’ve started sharing these stories through our Celebrating 30 Years project, as part of Philanthropy Australia’s 30 year anniversary.

Through this research process – and of course, communication with our Members – we’ve discovered more than once some serendipitous convergences of dates and numbers in the Australian philanthropy sector.

The following philanthropic organisations in Australia are celebrating significant anniversaries this year:

• Philanthropy Australia – 30th (and 10 years since we changed our name from “The Australian Association of Philanthropy”)
• Commonwealth Bank Staff Community Fund - 90th
• Queensland Community Foundation – 10th
• Melbourne Community Foundation – 10th
• RACV Foundation – 10th

It’s also been 100 years since the Administration and Probate Duties Act (in Victoria) established that “no duty whatsoever shall be payable thereunder in respect of any public charitable bequest or public charitable settlement”. It was this ruling that fostered the establishment of philanthropic trusts and foundations, and its beginning in Victoria explains why so many private philanthropic foundations are still based in the state today.

Last but definitely not least, we’d like to take this opportunity to wish Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, Life Member of Philanthropy Australia and inspiring philanthropist, many happy returns on her 98th birthday today.

Celebrating 30 Years: Issue 3

This edition includes the features - Foundation Focus & Recognising Philanthropists: The Sir Albert Sakzewski Foundation and History of Australian Philanthropy: State Based Philanthropy.

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