Tim Fairfax Family Foundation announces nine-year partnership with Yiliyapinya Indigenous Corporation 

As a principal sponsor of Philanthropy Australia Conference 2026, Tim Fairfax Family Foundation contributed the below article.

The Tim Fairfax Family Foundation’s newest strategic partnership with Yiliyapinya Indigenous Corporation reflects a simple idea: find strong organisations doing meaningful work, fund them well and give them time to lead. 

Australian for-purpose organisations often work on challenges experienced over generations, yet many still operate within annual funding cycles. Leaders spend considerable time applying for grants, acquitting individual projects and reshaping their work to match different funding criteria. Short commitments also make workforce planning, organisational investment and honest conversations about risk more difficult. 

Queensland and the Northern Territory’s size and diversity make long-term partnerships especially important. Organisations working across regional, rural and remote communities face higher travel and delivery costs, workforce pressures and funding systems often designed with metropolitan organisations in mind. 

At the same time, both states have strong local leaders and organisations with deep community relationships. Their challenge is often less about knowing what to do, and more about securing the flexible resources and continuity to do it well. 

The Tim Fairfax Family Foundation (TFFF) is pleased to announce Yiliyapinya Indigenous Corporation as the latest organisation to join its Strategic Partner Program, with a nine-year general operating support agreement. 

Sustained investment – stability to plan

The partnership reflects TFFF’s commitment to long-term, trust-based funding and its belief that sustained investment gives for-purpose organisations greater stability to plan, strengthen their teams and pursue their mission with confidence. Yiliyapinya joins Dancenorth, Camerata and Crossroad Arts, which became the program’s first strategic partners in 2024. 

Yiliyapinya means “brain” in the Wankumara language. Founded in 2019 by Sheryl Batchelor, the organisation combines culture, neuroscience and lived experience to improve brain health and facilitate healing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and the adults who support them. 

Yiliyapinya’s work grew from a clear need for culturally responsive neuroplasticity programs. Its work rests on an understanding that the brain changes in response to experiences and environments, and that strengthening brain health supports learning, wellbeing, connection and long-term healing. It is the ultimate prevention strategy for intergenerational trauma and disadvantage! 

Yiliyapinya delivers a range of programs across South-East, Central, North and North-West Queensland and the Northern Territory, including social, emotional, and educational support for young people experiencing school disengagement or contact with the youth justice system, early childhood support through Growing Deadly Brains® and Deadly Brains Playgroup training. 

Improving understanding of brain health

The organisation also works with schools, service providers, government and community organisations to strengthen understanding of brain health among caregivers and employees through their Workforce Brain Health programs. This wider system focus supports Yiliyapinya’s goal of improving the environments surrounding children, young people and families. 

“Yiliyapinya brings together Indigenous knowledge, community leadership and brain health science in a thoughtful and practical way. Over our existing partnership, we have seen the strength of Sheryl Batchelor’s leadership and the organisation’s commitment to children, families and community. Trust-based philanthropy begins with listening to the people closest to the work, backing their expertise and giving them the flexibility to lead. This nine-year agreement reflects our trust in Yiliyapinya’s direction and our belief that long-term funding gives strong organisations the stability to plan, learn and do their work.” – Tim Fairfax AC 

TFFF first supported Yiliyapinya through its Resilience funding stream, which provides multi-year general operating support to organisations working in, or delivering programs across, Queensland and the Northern Territory. The new agreement extends this relationship and recognises Yiliyapinya as a strategic partner of the Foundation. 

Over the nine-year term, flexible general operating support will assist Yiliyapinya to invest according to its own priorities. This includes strengthening organisational capability, supporting its people, refining programs and evidence, and building relationships needed for lasting community and systems-level change. 

“TFFF is leading the way in trust-based, long-term philanthropy. What this means for organisations like Yiliyapinya is more self-determination, decreased administrative costs and a better ability to respond to current community needs. Few organisations are given this kind of runway, and we don’t take it lightly. It’s a vote of confidence not only in Yiliyapinya, but in the ability of our community to lead its own solutions.” – Sheryl Batchelor, Yiliyapinya Founder/CEO 

Trust-based philanthropy

TFFF’s approach reflects a broader shift towards trust-based philanthropy in Australia. At its heart, trust-based philanthropy recognises that for-purpose organisations understand their work, their communities and the conditions surrounding them. The funder’s role is to identify capable people doing meaningful work, resource them well and give them room to lead. 

Trust-based philanthropy also requires more than a longer grant term. It involves flexible funding, proportionate reporting, open communication and respect for the knowledge held by organisations and communities. 

General operating support allows an organisation to invest where resources are most useful. This might involve retaining skilled staff, strengthening governance, developing evidence, updating systems, or responding to a community priority which was not apparent when an application was written. 

Long-term funding also changes the relationship. A nine-year agreement reduces the time senior leaders spend preparing repeated applications and managing funding uncertainty. It creates space for honest conversations, thoughtful planning and adjustments when circumstances change. Most importantly, it recognises organisations such as Yiliyapinya as partners with expertise, rather than recipients expected to work within a funder’s view of what their communities need. 

This has particular significance when supporting Indigenous-led organisations. Trust-based philanthropy asks funders to listen carefully, respect community and cultural authority, and support solutions led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. TFFF’s partnership with Yiliyapinya recognises the organisation’s cultural knowledge, community relationships and growing evidence base, and places decisions about its work with the people closest to it. 

The Strategic Partner Program builds on TFFF’s shift towards multi-year general operating support, introduced as part of its current funding strategy and identified by the Foundation as the form of funding Australia’s for-purpose organisations need most.