NEW Perth-based philanthropy umbrella group Giving West has unveiled a high-powered board in the first public stage of its mission to increase charitable work among the state’s high net worth individuals, who appear to be less generous than those elsewher
NEW Perth-based philanthropy umbrella group Giving West has unveiled a high-powered board in the first public stage of its mission to increase charitable work among the state’s high net worth individuals, who appear to be less generous than those elsewhere.
Chaired by entrepreneur and investment banker John Poynton, who has pushed the development of the body during the past two years, the board includes high-profile business leaders such as marketing guru and independent director Michael Smith, and property developer Adrian Fini.
The board also includes philanthropists Tonya McCusker and Sally Burton, Lotterywest CEO Jan Stewart, University of WA finance director Gaye McMath, JBWere philanthropic services director Christopher Thorn, and ANZ Trustee state relationship manager David Stanley.
The body can also boast state Governor Ken Michael as patron, and business leaders Michael Chaney and Stan Perron as vice-patrons, the latter both known as philanthropists in their own right.
Giving West officially launched this week with the release of a research report into philanthropy, including comparisons between WA and the rest of Australia as well international jurisdictions.
The report shows the state is behind in many respects, despite the wealth generation and prosperity that has occurred in WA, especially in the past decade.
Mr Poynton said one of the issues identified early in the formative process for Giving West was the fact that the state’s wealthy did not necessarily know the best way to fund worthy causes, even when they had the best of intentions.
In true entrepreneurial fashion, Mr Poynton and a group of like-minded business and community sector leaders identified a gap in the market in WA, which included the education of those who may be willing to give and the amount of information available to them to make sound decisions.
Part of the research report, funded by Lotterywest and conducted by UWA, has highlighted the need for a portal where those with funds and those requiring funding can come together in the right environment.
The steering committee looked at what Melbourne-based Philanthropy Australia was doing and decided WA needed its own independent structure, at least for the medium term.
“We don’t want to reinvent the wheel or duplicate what is happening,” Mr Poynton said.
“We have given ourselves five years, there is a sunset clause to disband so there is some pressure to achieve some outcomes and hand over to another agency.”
The investment banker said those with wealth often had bad experiences in donating due to their inexperience and were sometimes overwhelmed by requests from charities seeking funding once they were discovered to have given elsewhere.
Mr Poynton said philanthropy in WA was getting a higher profile as those who were most active in this intensely private field realised that their positive experiences in giving had to be more overt in order to show leadership and encourage others to follow.
A good example of this is the increasing profile of Malcolm and Tonya McCusker, who have recently received and accepted significant recognition for their good works, conducted through the McCusker Charitable Foundation.
Mr McCusker was this week given the United Way ‘award for outstanding philanthropy’, the eighth annual recipient.
The UWA report release at the Giving West launch highlighted that giving in WA was behind rest of the nation, in the same way Australia lagged the rest of the developed world, especially the US.
“Western Australia is relatively prosperous, with Western Australians seeming to have high giving participation rates but comparatively low levels of giving,” the report, titled A Rising Tide?, said.
“Despite several important and notable exceptions, the affluent seem to give less than their counterparts in other states, especially New South Wales and Victoria. For example, over the past decade, the average annual donation amount appears to have increased faster for the rest of the nation than for WA despite, during the same period, private wealth increasing faster in WA than the rest of the nation.
“WA seems to compare favourably to the rest of the nation in terms of the number of people giving, but rather poorly in how much they give.
“In particular Western Australians seem to make fewer large donations than would be expected for the state’s population and prosperity.”
