Philanthropy Leadership Summit 2025 – draft program released!
Dee Rudebeck, Advisor, News and Storytelling
Fri, 30 May 2025
Amid much anticipation and registrations filling fast, Philanthropy Australia is excited to announce the first round of program highlights for its Leadership Summit 2025. They include keynote speaker, the international author and ‘polycrisis’ expert Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon, Australian social commentator Dr Rebecca Huntley, highly regarded MCs from the Australian sector, stimulating lightning talks and much more.
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The Wyatt Trust: How we embedded lived experience into funding practice to change outcomes
Dee Rudebeck, News and Storytelling Advisor, Philanthropy Australia
Fri, 16 May 2025
The Wyatt Trust has released a report on its learnings from the first four years of its journey to embed lived and living experience of financial hardship in its grantmaking, program design and beyond. In this Q&A, CEO Stacey Thomas shares key reflections to inspire and encourage others to explore this work more widely.
A deep dive into ‘better’ philanthropy with Genevieve Timmons’ new Savvy Giving
Dee Rudebeck, News and Storytelling Adviser
Fri, 23 Aug 2024
Genevieve first published Savvy Giving in 2013 and it became a widely read ‘how to’ guide for effective grantmaking and philanthropy. She’s now written a new edition that provides a roadmap for contemporary giving in Australia, reflecting the evolution of practice in the sector over recent years. Here, she reflects on what’s changed and the opportunities and challenges ahead.
How do we shift evaluation from a ‘reporting’ to a learning lens?
Brenda Solorzano, CEO Headwaters Foundation
Fri, 23 Feb 2024
Brenda Solorzano is a leading changemaker in trust-based philanthropy. Brenda had an insightful and candid conversation with our LEAF Network (formally Phil Eval Network) to share her ideas on how evaluation can be reframed to achieve learning and change through a trust-based approach.
How impact investment is making a difference in global health equity
Mark Sullivan AO, founder and managing director of Medicines Development for Global Health
Fri, 2 Feb 2024
Impact investing is playing a critical and growing role in the development of medicines to treat ‘neglected diseases’ affecting the world’s poorest and most underserved peoples. These medicines would not otherwise be developed by the pharmaceutical industry, which is primarily driven by financial returns. Here, Mark Sullivan AO, founder and managing director of Medicines Development for Global Health, an Australian biopharmaceutical not-for-profit, describes how this finance model is supporting the development of Moxidectin – a potential gamechanger for the WHO’s roadmap to ending river blindness by 2030.
The evolution of a sector – a concise history of philanthropy in Australia
Simon Lewis, Partner at GoodWolf Partners
Fri, 24 Nov 2023
Philanthropy is on the cusp of a new era of public accountability as the expectations of our time change, and the probity and transparency conferred by the sector’s relatively new governing body, the Australian Charities and Non-For-Profits Commission (ACNC), start taking effect, says Simon Lewis, Partner at GoodWolf.
Collective power is key to a fair democracy
Saffron Zomer, Lawyer, strategist and Executive Director, Australian Democracy Network,
Fri, 17 Mar 2023
I had been working on the issue of climate change for a decade when I started to wonder – why aren’t we winning? The environmental imperative for action was clear and strong public support was there – yet, successive governments failed to answer the call to deliver action.
