UK Experience Comes to ACF

Australian Communities Foundation has secured a new program manager fresh from a position at an innovative trust in the UK to take on its role as Community and Donor Manager.

Australia Communities Foundation's new Community and Donor Manager Sarah Thompson.

Australian Communities Foundation, one of the oldest and largest community foundations in Australia, has appointed Sarah Thompson to the position.

Thompson recently returned to Australia from the UK where she was the Program Manager with Local Trust, an innovative new Trust established by a consortium of partners with Community Development Foundation and the UK Big Lottery Fund.

Australian Communities Foundation Chief Executive Officer, Jonathan Chapman said in this role Thompson had worked with 150 regions across the UK to empower and enable communities to identify community and social concerns, to make decisions and to implement them.

“Prior to going to the UK Sarah was Program and Policy Manager for the Community Renewal and Microfinance Programs in DPCD where she worked with declining neighborhoods to generate places of opportunity and activity across eight sites in outer metropolitan Melbourne,” he said.

“Sarah brings to ACF a wealth of knowledge and experience and will bring strategic leadership to ACF’s research and grant making initiatives, including new expressions of philanthropy, to ACF’s donors and sub fund holders as well as to the broader philanthropic, corporate and government sectors.”

Thompson will replace Rebekah Lautman. Also accepting a position at ACF as a Grants Officer is Sarah O’Leary, who previously held positions at Oxfam Australia and was Trust Services manager at the Johnson and Johnson Citizenship Trust in Belgium and the UK.

The Australian Communities Foundation (formerly the Melbourne Community Foundation) has more than $45 million under management.