What is the philanthropy ecosystem asking of us?

Following the release of Philanthropy Australia Strategy 2033 and in the lead up to the Philanthropy Australia Insights Series, we are inviting key sector leader to reflect on what the Strategy 2033 means to them at this time.

CEO of the Siddle Family Foundation, Jo Taylor shares her reflection on the Strategy 2033, collective leadership and the mindset shift philanthropy needs

There’s a question I’ve been sitting with since reading Philanthropy Australia’s new Strategy 2033. Not the questions the strategy asks of the sector, but a quieter, more personal one: Am I asking the right question of myself?

For much of my career, I’ve moved through the philanthropic sector in the company of people who are deeply motivated by impact. What can my giving create? What can my foundation achieve? What difference can I make? These are generous impulses. They come from good places. But I’ve been wondering lately whether they’re the right starting point. 

A report dropping this month puts it more precisely than I have managed to. Shaping & Fuelling Change: The role and practices of philanthropy in the social enterprise ecosystem in Australia argues that foundations need to stop asking “How can I create impact with my available money?” and start asking “What does this community or sector need, and what is my role in that?” 

Ask not what your country can do for you…

Kennedy’s words from his 1961 inaugural address feel newly urgent this week. “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” It’s a call away from entitlement and toward service. Away from extraction and toward contribution. Away from the individual and toward the collective. 

I think Strategy 2033 is making a version of that call to Australia’s philanthropic community. And globally, we’re seeing this reorientation gather momentum. The Trust-Based Philanthropy movement, the growth of donor organising, the increasing pressure on foundations to shift power – these aren’t fringe ideas anymore. They’re the leading edge of a profession reckoning with its own assumptions. Australia has a real opportunity with this strategy to be part of that global conversation rather than catching up to it. 

The shift that matters most 

Of all the shifts in Strategy 2033, From Benefitting Philanthropy to Strengthening Civil Society is the one I keep returning to. It asks us to put civil society, not the giving community, at the centre of the story. To ask not what philanthropy can achieve, but what civil society needs and how we can show up in service of that.

That’s a different kind of leadership. It’s leadership as listening. Leadership as learning. 

What shaping and fuelling change taught me

Shaping & Fuelling Change was led by May Miller-Dawkins and made possible by funders, field catalysts and social enterprise leaders across the country, supported by Westpac Foundation, English Family Foundation and the Siddle Family Foundation. The research was designed to put civil society’s voice at the heart of the inquiry – not philanthropy’s voice, not the funders’ perspective, but the ecosystem’s. 

What came back was illuminating, uncomfortable and necessary. The research found much to celebrate: catalytic funding that proved new approaches before government would, active stewardship that brought time and networks alongside money, patient capital that stayed long enough to matter. And it found that funders were, sometimes in the same relationships, constraining what they thought they were enabling. Relationships experienced as partnerships were, from the other side, often transactions. Funding cliffs. Geographic concentration. First Nations commitments that didn’t translate to meaningful resources or governance. 

Sitting with what the ecosystem is actually telling you, rather than what you hoped to hear, is what the Knowledge Exchange shift in Strategy 2033 means to me in practice. Not outputs. Not dissemination. Genuine two-way learning that changes the learner. 

The platform we already have

Here’s what gives me hope: we don’t have to build this from scratch. The collaborative, collective work is already happening across funders and civil society, across geographies and issues, across generations of practitioners who have been quietly building the infrastructure for a more generous, just and effective ecosystem and I’m fortunate to be part of building some of it. 

Resource Generation Australia is bringing young wealth holders into community with each other, reorienting them from ‘benefactors of’ to participants in systems change. Leaders within the Pay What It Takes Coalition have spent years doing the slow, unglamorous work of changing how funders think about what it actually costs to sustain the organisations doing the work — work that Reframe Overhead has been advancing in parallel. 

I’ve seen how knowledge built at the edge of practice can shift the assumptions that sit underneath it. The Giving Academy, shaped and honed by leaders across the ecosystem, and all the better for it, is opening its doors wider through 75 new Field-Building and Access Scholarships, made possible by Minderoo Foundation and Equity Trustees. These scholarships are prioritising First Nations leaders, people of diverse gender identities, women and those working on climate. 

None of this belongs to one organisation or one leader. And that’s exactly the point. 

Leaders and learners

Strategy 2033 is asking us to be both leaders and learners. To hold those two things simultaneously – the confidence to act and the humility to listen. To ask not what our philanthropy can create, but what the ecosystem is asking of us.

That shift sounds modest. In practice it changes almost everything. 

Invitation to contribute

If you have a reflection or would like to submit a thought piece for consideration on the on the Philanthropy Australia Stratey 2033, please email [email protected].

About the author 

Jo Taylor is CEO of Siddle Family Foundation, Co-founder of PRISM Co, Adjunct Professor at UNSW Business School’s Centre for Social Impact, and Co-founder and Ambassador for Pay What It Takes.