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NFP Leader Liz Gillies To Be Awarded Inaugural Charitable Fellowship

23 February 2012 at 10:52 am
Staff Reporter

Not for Profit sector leader, Liz Gillies, is to be awarded a three year fellowship as part of a new partnership between one of Australia’s oldest independent trustee companies and Melbourne Business School (MBS).

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Staff Reporter | 23 February 2012 at 10:52 am

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The Trust Company and the MBS Asia Pacific Social Impact Leadership Centre (APSILC) are launching the research fellowship as part of “a new approach to managing $5 million in charitable distributions over the next three to five years”.

The Trust Company CEO John Atkin says the three-year fellowship, worth $75 000 per year, is funded by the Fred P Archer Charitable Trust and represents a unique collaboration between academia, commerce and philanthropy and will help maximise the impact of the distributions from its discretionary charitable trusts.

The Fellowship will be announced in Melbourne tonight when The Trust Company will lead a panel discussion on its new approach to giving called – Engaged Philanthropy – Theories of Change and Social Impact – in conjunction with the Melbourne Business School.

“Last November, we announced we would be moving away from awarding one-off grants towards a closer, longer-term relationship with strategic partners working on three priority areas – education, ageing and disability – and social enterprise and innovation in the sector more broadly,” Atkin said.

“We wanted the expertise of a business school to help us move towards this model and to adopt a more sophisticated approach to measuring social impact across our portfolio to best maximise the charitable bequests.”

Melbourne Business School Dean Professor Zeger Degraeve welcomes the partnership.

“The one-off grants approach is widespread and understandable, given the pressures on philanthropic budgets and the not-for-profit sector,” he said.

“It is, however, very satisfying to be pioneering evidence-based approaches that will yield long-term results that are more economically and socially sustainable.”

Each year, The Trust Company is responsible for distributing around $40 million from more than 800 charitable trusts across Australia and New Zealand. As trustee, The Trust Company has a degree of discretion on about one quarter of these distributions. This includes the Fred P Archer Charitable Trust.

The inaugural Fellow is Liz Gillies, who has extensive experience in the Not for Profit sector. and across a range of sectors including government, commerce and philanthropy including five years as Grants Executive at of one of Australia’s largest Charitable Trusts, The Helen McPherson Smith Trust.

In her role as Fellow, Liz Gillies will work with The Trust Company and the seventeen strategic partners and programs of the Fred P Archer Charitable Trust in a collaboration to identify what has been achieved as a result of grants made and provide guidance in regard to additional opportunities and areas for collaboration as funding programs evolve.

The 17 inaugural strategic partners by program area are:

Socially Inclusive Education:

Social Ventures Australia Education Collaborative – Director of Education
Australian Indigenous Education Foundation – Scholarship Program
The Kokoda Track Foundation – Archer Scholars Program
Foundation for Young Australians – National Indigenous Youth Leadership Academy
The Smith Family & Outward Bound – National Aspiring Leaders’ Summit
WA Community Development Foundation – Passport Program
National Gallery of Victoria – NGV Kids Space
Interplast (reconstructive and plastic surgeon volunteers) – PNG Burns Unit Program

Positive Ageing:

Mercy Health & Australian Catholic University – Chair in Aged Care
National Stroke Foundation – National Stroke Survivor Needs Survey
Florey Neuroscience Institute – Women in Science Fellowship & Brain Challenge Event

Living with Disability: