ShareGift -The UK Experience
4 February 2003 at 12:02 pm
A UK charity that collects unwanted shares and donates the money to other registered charities called ShareGift will be under the spotlight in Sydney next month.
Elizabeth Cham, the National Director of Philanthropy Australia says ShareGift is an exciting, original idea, that stunning in its simplicity. Nothing like this is operating in Australia and the challenge of introducing a similar scheme here must be considered.
Cham says it’s an example of creative, innovative philanthropy at its best and its creator Claire Mackintosh (The Rt. Hon. the Viscountess Mackintosh of Halifax) and co-founder of ShareGift, will address delegates at this year’s Philanthropy Australia Conference.
Claire Mackintosh, a former investment manager and Matthew Orr, a stockbroker, came up with the scheme. They knew that an enormous pool of unwanted small shareholdings existed and that no simple solution was available to share holders who wanted to get rid of their small holdings.
They believed that most people in this situation would be only too happy to give these nuisance holdings away to charity if an easy way to do so existed.
The result has been a resounding success. In 1996, its first year of operation, ShareGift gave £16,000 to UK charities. In its last financial year (2001-2002), it donated a total of £1.4 million to charity, making ShareGift one of the top 150 grantmakers in the UK.
Claire began her career as an investment manager in London specialising in UK Equities. She was responsible for setting up one of the earlier core-satellite pension fund management structures, marketing and managing performance related-funds. She was also responsible for structuring and marketing the East European Development Fund, the first Pan-East Europe development capital fund.
From 1992-96, Claire worked in institutional broking specialising in the Korean market and lived in Seoul for 4 months helping to establish the first domestic and international brokerage house to be set up by a foreign organisation in Korea. She returned to London covering the Korean and other Asian (ex-Japan) markets for institutional fund management clients. Since 1996, she has served as chief executive of ShareGift.
The 1st Philanthropy Australia Conference is a two-day forum (17-18 March, 2003) bringing together national and international practitioners involved in the philanthropic sector. The Conference theme is Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: Venture Philanthropy for the Common Good.
For more details check out the Conference Website: www.www.philanthropy.org.au/whatson/conference.htm.
