World Vision invites eight British entrepreneurs to spend three weeks in a remote community in Uganda.
Type Reality TV, Entertainment
Channel ABC
Date Tuesday April 29
Time 8:30 PM
In an extraordinary experiment, World Vision invites eight British entrepreneurs to spend three weeks in a remote community in Uganda. With a combined personal wealth of more than £600 million ($1.26 billion), the businessmen and women hope their problem-solving skills will help generate revenue and they have £120,000 to invest.
Straight away they discover poverty is a complex problem. Visiting the local hospital, they find a baby close to death. Millionaire Tony hands over cash to the infant's mother but it's a short-term solution and within minutes another is asking for help. The village needs a pump to bring water from a remote spring, the school needs furniture and books and the hospital needs mattresses. But solving these problems will not generate income and is not the purpose of their trip. Then they come up with a novel idea.
Absolutely compelling, this will have you debating the way forward for charities working to fight poverty and gives insight into their mammoth challenges. Continues next week.
Media Man Australia Profiles
World Vision
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Millionaires' Mission - ABC TV - 29th April 2008
Eight successful British business leaders have been challenged by leading development agency World Vision to improve the living standards of a remote Ugandan farming community. With a combined fortune of more than $1,301,102 billion (600 million pounds) and expertise ranging from construction to marketing, they will need to use their business skills to tackle the seemingly intractable issue of poverty.
To help launch their ideas, the entrepreneurs have each donated $32,500 (15,000 pounds) to a joint fund. They are exchanging five-star lifestyles for three weeks living in a makeshift camp without running water or electricity. But can eight bosses who are used to getting their own way work together to help people in the village? In a region so poor, the average daily wage is just $1.10 (50 pence) and the entrepreneurs need to be ruled by their heads, not just their hearts, if they are to succeed.
Episode one sees the entrepreneurs embark on a two-day journey to the remote Ugandan community where they will be working and confronted with the realities of life in an African village. The usually hardheaded business brains are soon overwhelmed by requests from people in desperate need. Tension surfaces in the group and construction boss Steven Morgan decides to go it alone with a project to provide clean water for school children, while media expert Seb Bishop has a brainwave that could be a real money-spinner for the community.
Websites
Channel 4 website
World Vision
Media Man Australia Profiles
World Vision
ABC
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
To help launch their ideas, the entrepreneurs have each donated $32,500 (15,000 pounds) to a joint fund. They are exchanging five-star lifestyles for three weeks living in a makeshift camp without running water or electricity. But can eight bosses who are used to getting their own way work together to help people in the village? In a region so poor, the average daily wage is just $1.10 (50 pence) and the entrepreneurs need to be ruled by their heads, not just their hearts, if they are to succeed.
Episode one sees the entrepreneurs embark on a two-day journey to the remote Ugandan community where they will be working and confronted with the realities of life in an African village. The usually hardheaded business brains are soon overwhelmed by requests from people in desperate need. Tension surfaces in the group and construction boss Steven Morgan decides to go it alone with a project to provide clean water for school children, while media expert Seb Bishop has a brainwave that could be a real money-spinner for the community.
Websites
Channel 4 website
World Vision
Media Man Australia Profiles
World Vision
ABC
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Playing The Pokies - Problem Gambling - SBS Insight - 29th April 2008
Media Man Australia is delighted that Peter Holmes a Court, co-owner of South Sydney Rabbitohs accepted the invitation to appear on SBS Insight which goes to air tonight.
Australians are one of the world’s biggest losers when it comes to the Pokies.
Officially, we lose more per capita to poker machines than any other people in the western world.
Australia’s 200,000 poker machines deliver billions of dollars each year to clubs, pubs and state governments. More than a third of it comes from problem gamblers and those who can least afford to lose money.
Meet some of the guests who will be discussing the issues.
Tim Freedman
As lead singer and pianist for the multiple ARIA award winning Australian band, The Whitlams, Tim Freedman was inspired to write the song ‘Blow up the Pokies’ in the 90s as he watched a fellow musician struggle with a pokies habit.
Peter Holmes a Court
The very rich and high profile co-owners of the South Sydney Football Club, Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court, have banded together to strip the club of all its poker machines. Executive Chairman Peter Holmes a Court joins us to discuss why they’ve decided to throw out the pokies from their Redfern premises.
Anthony Ball
Anthony Ball is the Executive Manager - Policy and Development with ClubsNSW. He works with ClubsNSW members, key stakeholders and government to develop policy in areas such as taxation, smoking, liquor reform and problem gambling.
Senator – elect Nick Xenophon
Nick Xenophon will join the Senate in July after a career in state politics in South Australia since 1997. Nick has made the switch to the federal parliament to tackle the state governments on their reliance on pokies revenue to fund essential public services.
Ross Ferrar
Ross Ferrar is the Executive Officer of the Australasian Gaming Machine Manufacturers Association. The Association represents gaming machine giants such as Aristocrat Technologies and International Game Technology Australia.
Websites
SBS Insight
South Sydney Rabbitohs
Profiles
SBS
South Sydney Rabbitohs
Gaming
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Australians are one of the world’s biggest losers when it comes to the Pokies.
Officially, we lose more per capita to poker machines than any other people in the western world.
Australia’s 200,000 poker machines deliver billions of dollars each year to clubs, pubs and state governments. More than a third of it comes from problem gamblers and those who can least afford to lose money.
Meet some of the guests who will be discussing the issues.
Tim Freedman
As lead singer and pianist for the multiple ARIA award winning Australian band, The Whitlams, Tim Freedman was inspired to write the song ‘Blow up the Pokies’ in the 90s as he watched a fellow musician struggle with a pokies habit.
Peter Holmes a Court
The very rich and high profile co-owners of the South Sydney Football Club, Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court, have banded together to strip the club of all its poker machines. Executive Chairman Peter Holmes a Court joins us to discuss why they’ve decided to throw out the pokies from their Redfern premises.
Anthony Ball
Anthony Ball is the Executive Manager - Policy and Development with ClubsNSW. He works with ClubsNSW members, key stakeholders and government to develop policy in areas such as taxation, smoking, liquor reform and problem gambling.
Senator – elect Nick Xenophon
Nick Xenophon will join the Senate in July after a career in state politics in South Australia since 1997. Nick has made the switch to the federal parliament to tackle the state governments on their reliance on pokies revenue to fund essential public services.
Ross Ferrar
Ross Ferrar is the Executive Officer of the Australasian Gaming Machine Manufacturers Association. The Association represents gaming machine giants such as Aristocrat Technologies and International Game Technology Australia.
Websites
SBS Insight
South Sydney Rabbitohs
Profiles
SBS
South Sydney Rabbitohs
Gaming
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Rabbitohs plead for faithful to keep faith, by Glenn Jackson - The Sydney Morning Herald - 24th April 2008
South Sydney director of football Shane Richardson has penned an open letter to Rabbitohs fans, imploring them not to panic amid the club's winless start to the season.
Down in confidence as well as personnel, the Rabbitohs are short odds to take the wooden spoon after losing six successive games to start the season and face a seventh defeat at Suncorp Stadium tomorrow night against second-placed Brisbane.
With supporter angst growing, Richardson told members, via a letter on the club's website, he had been through the same adversity before as Penrith's boss. And while refusing to be critical of the Rabbitohs' performances publicly, he admitted he had addressed the side about its recent woes.
"It's a time for calm, not panic," Richardson wrote. "For hard work, not quick fixes.
"There is a myriad of theories as to why we are in the position we are. As a football team, I know we are exploring every avenue to get that elusive win and kick-start our season.
"I can't give guarantees about when the next win will be. Hell, I thought we would have won more by now. I have relayed my thoughts directly to the players and coaching staff and not the papers. But what I can tell you is the following: you have a team that is sticking together on and off the field to solve the problem; you have a coaching staff that is working tirelessly to get that win; you have a group of players who are as frustrated as the members about the result and are working their butts off to turn it around.
"Don't think for one minute that we haven't been looking at the tough calls behind the scenes. Don't think for one minute that we aren't exploring every avenue."
In the first full season under the new ownership of Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court last year, the Rabbitohs were one of the biggest improvers. However, they have cartwheeled backwards this season with key signing Craig Wing injured and others underperfoming.
But Richardson urged members to "keep the faith" in the Rabbitohs "family".
"As members you have already shown your loyalty to the team by buying your membership," he wrote. "It's not your ticket into the ground that you have bought but a ticket into the family that is the Rabbitohs. I know how hard it is to go into work or school on Mondays after another loss.
"Just remember you are part of the Red and Green Army. You are a major part of the solution.
"Keep the faith, as so many of you have done for so long. We are building a strong club for the future. And me, well I'm beavering away and trying to be part of the solution and making sure that JT [coach Jason Taylor] and the players get the support to solve our current situation."
Asked yesterday about his motives for the open letter, Richardson said he wanted Souths fans to know officials were "trying to find the way out" - especially after his experiences with the Panthers, who took the wooden spoon in 2001 before winning the premiership in 2003.
"We've lost six in a row and I wanted to talk to them about where our mindset was, so they knew we were still positive and trying to find the way out," Richardson said. "I've been through this before at Penrith. We stuck at it there and the team improved dramatically, so I know from experience that things can turn around in a relatively short time. We have to keep doing our best and sticking together. I could make excuses, but that doesn't get you anywhere. We should keep supporting the coach and the players in the belief we'll come out the other side, which I'm confident we will."
Holmes a Court, the executive chairman, also reaffirmed his support for Taylor while distancing himself from the side's on-field performances.
"Any idea that I was going to lace on the boots or that I was going to impact on performance … that was never going to be the case," Holmes a Court said.
"It's in the hands of the coach and the team. We've got the right people in there to do the job.
"There's no question about our support for JT."
Media Man Australia Profiles
Peter Holmes a Court
Russell Crowe
South Sydney Rabbitohs
NRL
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Down in confidence as well as personnel, the Rabbitohs are short odds to take the wooden spoon after losing six successive games to start the season and face a seventh defeat at Suncorp Stadium tomorrow night against second-placed Brisbane.
With supporter angst growing, Richardson told members, via a letter on the club's website, he had been through the same adversity before as Penrith's boss. And while refusing to be critical of the Rabbitohs' performances publicly, he admitted he had addressed the side about its recent woes.
"It's a time for calm, not panic," Richardson wrote. "For hard work, not quick fixes.
"There is a myriad of theories as to why we are in the position we are. As a football team, I know we are exploring every avenue to get that elusive win and kick-start our season.
"I can't give guarantees about when the next win will be. Hell, I thought we would have won more by now. I have relayed my thoughts directly to the players and coaching staff and not the papers. But what I can tell you is the following: you have a team that is sticking together on and off the field to solve the problem; you have a coaching staff that is working tirelessly to get that win; you have a group of players who are as frustrated as the members about the result and are working their butts off to turn it around.
"Don't think for one minute that we haven't been looking at the tough calls behind the scenes. Don't think for one minute that we aren't exploring every avenue."
In the first full season under the new ownership of Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court last year, the Rabbitohs were one of the biggest improvers. However, they have cartwheeled backwards this season with key signing Craig Wing injured and others underperfoming.
But Richardson urged members to "keep the faith" in the Rabbitohs "family".
"As members you have already shown your loyalty to the team by buying your membership," he wrote. "It's not your ticket into the ground that you have bought but a ticket into the family that is the Rabbitohs. I know how hard it is to go into work or school on Mondays after another loss.
"Just remember you are part of the Red and Green Army. You are a major part of the solution.
"Keep the faith, as so many of you have done for so long. We are building a strong club for the future. And me, well I'm beavering away and trying to be part of the solution and making sure that JT [coach Jason Taylor] and the players get the support to solve our current situation."
Asked yesterday about his motives for the open letter, Richardson said he wanted Souths fans to know officials were "trying to find the way out" - especially after his experiences with the Panthers, who took the wooden spoon in 2001 before winning the premiership in 2003.
"We've lost six in a row and I wanted to talk to them about where our mindset was, so they knew we were still positive and trying to find the way out," Richardson said. "I've been through this before at Penrith. We stuck at it there and the team improved dramatically, so I know from experience that things can turn around in a relatively short time. We have to keep doing our best and sticking together. I could make excuses, but that doesn't get you anywhere. We should keep supporting the coach and the players in the belief we'll come out the other side, which I'm confident we will."
Holmes a Court, the executive chairman, also reaffirmed his support for Taylor while distancing himself from the side's on-field performances.
"Any idea that I was going to lace on the boots or that I was going to impact on performance … that was never going to be the case," Holmes a Court said.
"It's in the hands of the coach and the team. We've got the right people in there to do the job.
"There's no question about our support for JT."
Media Man Australia Profiles
Peter Holmes a Court
Russell Crowe
South Sydney Rabbitohs
NRL
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Monday, April 28, 2008
Illicit financial dealings tied to charity - United Press International - 19th April 2008
SYDNEY, April 19 (UPI) -- A portion of the money raised by the Australian humanitarian group Just Enough Faith was spent on gambling efforts, the Sydney Daily Telegraph reported.
The newspaper said in its Sunday edition that its investigation into the financial dealings of the homeless assistance group found that nearly $150,000 raised by the organization was allegedly spent on gambling efforts.
The Telegraph said bank records for the charitable group, run by noted philanthropist Jeff Gambin, showed the funds were withdrawn at the Balmain Tigers Leagues Club between June 2005 and June 2007.
One source within the charity said it was common knowledge Gambin was the lead suspect regarding the withdrawals made for gambling purposes.
"Everyone knew about his gambling," one anonymous source told the Telegraph.
Gambin has denied allegations he had a gambling problems, saying he would withdraw money to aid homeless people around the Sydney club.
"I couldn't have done what I've done for people in the last 15 years if what you are saying was true," the one-time Sydney Humanitarian of the Year said "My only gamble is with people.''
Media Man Australia Profiles
Charity
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
The newspaper said in its Sunday edition that its investigation into the financial dealings of the homeless assistance group found that nearly $150,000 raised by the organization was allegedly spent on gambling efforts.
The Telegraph said bank records for the charitable group, run by noted philanthropist Jeff Gambin, showed the funds were withdrawn at the Balmain Tigers Leagues Club between June 2005 and June 2007.
One source within the charity said it was common knowledge Gambin was the lead suspect regarding the withdrawals made for gambling purposes.
"Everyone knew about his gambling," one anonymous source told the Telegraph.
Gambin has denied allegations he had a gambling problems, saying he would withdraw money to aid homeless people around the Sydney club.
"I couldn't have done what I've done for people in the last 15 years if what you are saying was true," the one-time Sydney Humanitarian of the Year said "My only gamble is with people.''
Media Man Australia Profiles
Charity
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
More bang for their buck, by Stephanie Peatling - The Sydney Morning Herald - 25th April 2008
Australians are giving more than ever, but they are also asking more questions, writes Stephanie Peatling.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Michael Traill enjoyed the good life that comes with being a mover and shaker in the world of high finance.
As one of the founders of Macquarie Bank's private equity arm, Traill was doing well: "I had a good run of it, professionally and financially."
But the son of a man who dedicated his life to public education wanted more. "I wanted to do something that let me work in the community," Traill says.
In 2002 he took a year off from Macquarie Bank to run a new non-profit organisation, Social Ventures Australia, providing funding, mentoring and business expertise to not-for-profit organisations.
Today Traill and Social Ventures have raised $20 million from the top end of town to spend on a carefully selected group of programs including children in foster care, father-son mentoring and young indigenous leaders' programs.
The language of half-yearly reports, corporate governance models, succession planning and venture performance metrics caused some in the non-profit sector to at first raise a sceptical eyebrow. But chasing the money is what charities and non-profit groups have always done; it is just the methods that are changing.
"There's no question about organisations being businesses whether people want to hear that term or not. We are not-for-profit businesses," says Doug Humann, the chief executive of the conservation group Bush Heritage.
What Humann has noticed in his 11 years at the organisation is the information potential donors, particularly the large ones, seek. "Who are the board members? What is your financial situation? Where is your succession and organisational planning? These are the sharp questions people ask."
The Australian Tax Office endorses about 50,600 groups as charities and 21,900 as deductible gift recipients. About 18,100 are recognised as both.
It is less a case of charities using big business methods to raise money than charities becoming big businesses themselves, and all are chasing the billions of dollars given to charities each year.
In 2004 Australians were estimated to have given $11 billion to charities, not including the amount given to the Boxing Day tsunami appeals.
Of that figure business was responsible for $3.3 billion and gambling profits directed to charities accounted for $2 billion. About $5.7 billion was given by individuals.
A report by the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies at the Queensland University of Technology combed through Tax Office figures, as well as those in the 2005 Giving Australia report on charities, to find 87 per cent of adults donated at least once a year with an average donation of $424. About 8.6 per cent said they donated more than $1100 but most of those gave less than $3000.
To put it in context Australians claimed donations to charities as tax deductions only slightly more than they did the cost of having an agent do their tax returns. But, according to Giving Australia, many people do not claim their donations because they think they are too small.
Although it is difficult to track donations, the data collected by researchers indicates more people are giving more as the years pass.
What the university report suggests is that although low- and middle-income people are giving more, Australia's richest people are becoming more stingy.
Its research shows that although the average household income of the rich has risen 36 per cent over the past decade, charitable giving in the same period rose only from 0.36 per cent to 0.45 per cent.
When compared with America, rich Australians do not come off well, donating less than 3 per cent of their net worth while Americans donated about 10 to 15 per cent.
And rich is not defined as people whose house has rocketed in value in recent times. It defined the very wealthy as people with assets in excess of $1.2 million apart from the family home, or with annual taxable personal incomes over $100,000.
It is these people who have the power to make the "transformational donations", as the report calls them, that can make or break a project.
"Above others, the affluent hold the key to non-profit ventures that really make a difference in the wider community. They have the wealth to make transformational donations. However, their influence exceeds financial support. They are opinion leaders and trend-setters for the rest of the community," the report found.
Traill is happy to say the rich should give more. After all, it's not as if there are not people with a lot of money sloshing about. Australia's richest 200 people are worth $128.6 billion.
But Traill is also happy to push the non-profit sector to work for its money.
"What is it you are doing? Are you trying to teach life skills to kids to help them find jobs or are you providing them with shelter and food? How many kids in your program have jobs? If they haven't found jobs, why not?"
The wealthy will give, Traill believes, if spoken to in their language of profit margins and outcomes.
"I spent 15 years in the private equity sector. If I'm a shareholder I want to know why I'm losing money," Traill says. And if that means dropping projects that have not performed then so be it.
Traill speaks of a change in the way non-profit groups do business from "cheque-book charity" to "strategic philanthropy".
Traill would rather work on getting one person to make a three-year commitment to give $500,000 or $1 million to a particular project than trying to dream up a fancy charity fund-raiser or relying on many small donations.
But not all in the non-profit sector are happy to place all their eggs in one basket.
Bush Heritage began as a community group in 1990 when the Greens senator Bob Brown used $50,000 from an environment prize he had won to buy and protect Tasmanian forest from the logging industry. It now owns and manages 29 reserves across Australia covering more than 720,000 hectares.
Last financial year it raised $12 million from a combination of government grants, large donations and smaller, ongoing contributions from its expanding membership group. Humann says although the large donations are vital the organisation could not survive without people who regularly donate smaller amounts of money.
"Our general supporter base includes people giving a couple of dollars a week to $200 a year. That amounted to $2 million last year … Those smaller amounts are about managing our day-to-day activities. It's providing for the work we do on the ground as well as the administrative backbone of the organisation," Humann says.
Both Humann and Traill say the super rich are less likely to talk about their philanthropic ventures than their American counterparts.
Perhaps it is Australians' inherent conservatism when it comes to talking about topics such as sex and money.
When it comes to the latter, the people with the money, ever mindful of committing the cardinal Australian sin of big-noting oneself, have been reticent to talk about their philanthropic ventures.
Both Traill and Humann say Australia could do with just one Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, someone who is not shy about standing up and shouting about how much money they are giving away and why they are doing it.
Humann has seen what can happen when someone is prepared to talk about giving large amounts of money.
In 2006 the entrepreneur David Thomas pledged $10 million over five years to conserve Australia's most threatened habitats and species on the proviso that the donation was matched by other families or individuals.
Bush Heritage has been a considerable beneficiary of Thomas's generosity. Humann says it is only in the past couple of years that his wealthy donors have felt more comfortable about speaking out.
While their public statements give others confidence to invest there is also a good dose of shaming others into acting similarly.
"People just need a bit of a push sometimes," he says.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Charity
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Michael Traill enjoyed the good life that comes with being a mover and shaker in the world of high finance.
As one of the founders of Macquarie Bank's private equity arm, Traill was doing well: "I had a good run of it, professionally and financially."
But the son of a man who dedicated his life to public education wanted more. "I wanted to do something that let me work in the community," Traill says.
In 2002 he took a year off from Macquarie Bank to run a new non-profit organisation, Social Ventures Australia, providing funding, mentoring and business expertise to not-for-profit organisations.
Today Traill and Social Ventures have raised $20 million from the top end of town to spend on a carefully selected group of programs including children in foster care, father-son mentoring and young indigenous leaders' programs.
The language of half-yearly reports, corporate governance models, succession planning and venture performance metrics caused some in the non-profit sector to at first raise a sceptical eyebrow. But chasing the money is what charities and non-profit groups have always done; it is just the methods that are changing.
"There's no question about organisations being businesses whether people want to hear that term or not. We are not-for-profit businesses," says Doug Humann, the chief executive of the conservation group Bush Heritage.
What Humann has noticed in his 11 years at the organisation is the information potential donors, particularly the large ones, seek. "Who are the board members? What is your financial situation? Where is your succession and organisational planning? These are the sharp questions people ask."
The Australian Tax Office endorses about 50,600 groups as charities and 21,900 as deductible gift recipients. About 18,100 are recognised as both.
It is less a case of charities using big business methods to raise money than charities becoming big businesses themselves, and all are chasing the billions of dollars given to charities each year.
In 2004 Australians were estimated to have given $11 billion to charities, not including the amount given to the Boxing Day tsunami appeals.
Of that figure business was responsible for $3.3 billion and gambling profits directed to charities accounted for $2 billion. About $5.7 billion was given by individuals.
A report by the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies at the Queensland University of Technology combed through Tax Office figures, as well as those in the 2005 Giving Australia report on charities, to find 87 per cent of adults donated at least once a year with an average donation of $424. About 8.6 per cent said they donated more than $1100 but most of those gave less than $3000.
To put it in context Australians claimed donations to charities as tax deductions only slightly more than they did the cost of having an agent do their tax returns. But, according to Giving Australia, many people do not claim their donations because they think they are too small.
Although it is difficult to track donations, the data collected by researchers indicates more people are giving more as the years pass.
What the university report suggests is that although low- and middle-income people are giving more, Australia's richest people are becoming more stingy.
Its research shows that although the average household income of the rich has risen 36 per cent over the past decade, charitable giving in the same period rose only from 0.36 per cent to 0.45 per cent.
When compared with America, rich Australians do not come off well, donating less than 3 per cent of their net worth while Americans donated about 10 to 15 per cent.
And rich is not defined as people whose house has rocketed in value in recent times. It defined the very wealthy as people with assets in excess of $1.2 million apart from the family home, or with annual taxable personal incomes over $100,000.
It is these people who have the power to make the "transformational donations", as the report calls them, that can make or break a project.
"Above others, the affluent hold the key to non-profit ventures that really make a difference in the wider community. They have the wealth to make transformational donations. However, their influence exceeds financial support. They are opinion leaders and trend-setters for the rest of the community," the report found.
Traill is happy to say the rich should give more. After all, it's not as if there are not people with a lot of money sloshing about. Australia's richest 200 people are worth $128.6 billion.
But Traill is also happy to push the non-profit sector to work for its money.
"What is it you are doing? Are you trying to teach life skills to kids to help them find jobs or are you providing them with shelter and food? How many kids in your program have jobs? If they haven't found jobs, why not?"
The wealthy will give, Traill believes, if spoken to in their language of profit margins and outcomes.
"I spent 15 years in the private equity sector. If I'm a shareholder I want to know why I'm losing money," Traill says. And if that means dropping projects that have not performed then so be it.
Traill speaks of a change in the way non-profit groups do business from "cheque-book charity" to "strategic philanthropy".
Traill would rather work on getting one person to make a three-year commitment to give $500,000 or $1 million to a particular project than trying to dream up a fancy charity fund-raiser or relying on many small donations.
But not all in the non-profit sector are happy to place all their eggs in one basket.
Bush Heritage began as a community group in 1990 when the Greens senator Bob Brown used $50,000 from an environment prize he had won to buy and protect Tasmanian forest from the logging industry. It now owns and manages 29 reserves across Australia covering more than 720,000 hectares.
Last financial year it raised $12 million from a combination of government grants, large donations and smaller, ongoing contributions from its expanding membership group. Humann says although the large donations are vital the organisation could not survive without people who regularly donate smaller amounts of money.
"Our general supporter base includes people giving a couple of dollars a week to $200 a year. That amounted to $2 million last year … Those smaller amounts are about managing our day-to-day activities. It's providing for the work we do on the ground as well as the administrative backbone of the organisation," Humann says.
Both Humann and Traill say the super rich are less likely to talk about their philanthropic ventures than their American counterparts.
Perhaps it is Australians' inherent conservatism when it comes to talking about topics such as sex and money.
When it comes to the latter, the people with the money, ever mindful of committing the cardinal Australian sin of big-noting oneself, have been reticent to talk about their philanthropic ventures.
Both Traill and Humann say Australia could do with just one Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, someone who is not shy about standing up and shouting about how much money they are giving away and why they are doing it.
Humann has seen what can happen when someone is prepared to talk about giving large amounts of money.
In 2006 the entrepreneur David Thomas pledged $10 million over five years to conserve Australia's most threatened habitats and species on the proviso that the donation was matched by other families or individuals.
Bush Heritage has been a considerable beneficiary of Thomas's generosity. Humann says it is only in the past couple of years that his wealthy donors have felt more comfortable about speaking out.
While their public statements give others confidence to invest there is also a good dose of shaming others into acting similarly.
"People just need a bit of a push sometimes," he says.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Charity
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
A test of their faith, by Andrew Hornery - The Sydney Morning Herald - 26th April 2008
When Sydney's most influential types get caught up in a scandal, they usually go to ground, as witnessed this week when the high-profile names involved in the saga surrounding the Just Enough Faith charity seemingly vanished.
Last weekend, allegations the founder of Just Enough Faith Jeff Gambin had mismanaged the charity's finances sent shockwaves through some of its biggest supporters, including the Packers - in particular Gretel Packer - Alan Jones and Russell Crowe, who had all thrown their support behind the charity which feeds hundreds of Sydney's homeless each night.
And while neither the Packers nor Crowe would talk about it - though friends say they are bitterly disappointed by the allegations - Jones, who hosted a high-profile charity fund-raiser for the cause at the Hordern Pavilion three years ago, reluctantly told PS of his concern.
"I was concerned by what I'd read but that was all I knew. Against that, it's undeniable that this man [Gambin] has done a phenomenal amount of good for destitute people in this city. The task of feeding hundreds and hundreds of people every night for years is certainly beyond my comprehension. And what's to happen to those people if this charity is torpedoed, I don't know."
However, Jones said that while he had been a public supporter of the charity, his dealings with Gambin were minimal.
"If people ask me to assist with charitable causes and I can, I will. That's how I came to be at the function at the Hordern Pavilion. Beyond that, I've had little contact at all with Jeff Gambin except on one occasion I remember having him and his wife to a meal when he wanted to discuss with me some aspect of the charity. I have forgotten the detail."
Media Man Australia Profiles
Charity
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Last weekend, allegations the founder of Just Enough Faith Jeff Gambin had mismanaged the charity's finances sent shockwaves through some of its biggest supporters, including the Packers - in particular Gretel Packer - Alan Jones and Russell Crowe, who had all thrown their support behind the charity which feeds hundreds of Sydney's homeless each night.
And while neither the Packers nor Crowe would talk about it - though friends say they are bitterly disappointed by the allegations - Jones, who hosted a high-profile charity fund-raiser for the cause at the Hordern Pavilion three years ago, reluctantly told PS of his concern.
"I was concerned by what I'd read but that was all I knew. Against that, it's undeniable that this man [Gambin] has done a phenomenal amount of good for destitute people in this city. The task of feeding hundreds and hundreds of people every night for years is certainly beyond my comprehension. And what's to happen to those people if this charity is torpedoed, I don't know."
However, Jones said that while he had been a public supporter of the charity, his dealings with Gambin were minimal.
"If people ask me to assist with charitable causes and I can, I will. That's how I came to be at the function at the Hordern Pavilion. Beyond that, I've had little contact at all with Jeff Gambin except on one occasion I remember having him and his wife to a meal when he wanted to discuss with me some aspect of the charity. I have forgotten the detail."
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Charity
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Sunday, April 27, 2008
The Nonprofit Profession Lost Out in 'Oprah's Big Give', By Joshua Horwitz - The Chronicle of Philanthropy - 21st April 2008
As Oprah’s Big Give wrapped up its first season on ABC Sunday night, the big winner was Stephen Paletta, a technology entrepreneur from New York, whom the judges felt best negotiated the obstacles to effective philanthropy that they had put in his way.
He ended up walking away with a cool $500,000 for himself and another $500,000 to give away (the contestants did not know there would be a cash reward for the winner until the last moments of the show).
While Mr. Paletta did perform admirably given the parameters of the show, Big Give was a loser for the professionals who run nonprofit organizations and foundations.
Television offers a great opportunity to educate and to make people passionate about causes — especially when a philanthropist and television personality as popular as Oprah Winfrey is sponsoring the lessons.
But the show ended up featuring amateur and embarrassing efforts at giving. It passed off as entertainment people wasting thousands of dollars of donated money and did little to help the American public learn what it really takes to change the lives of other people. Oprah’s last words on the show Sunday night were to encourage the television audience to “give big,” which is a worthy goal, but the television program failed to show average Americans how they can become effective and strategic philanthropists.
The premise of Oprah’s Big Give was that 10 people were given bundles of cash they had to give away in ridiculously short time periods with all sorts of weird restrictions that changed each week. Part of each challenge was for the players to use their cash as a multiplier, and they were judged, in part, on how they got noncontestants to participate.
Their efforts were judged by several high-net-worth individuals who have developed their own philanthropic endeavors: the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver; Malaak Compton-Rock, the founder of StyleWorks and the wife of the comedian Chris Rock; and Tony Gonzalez, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs football team.
Notably absent from this group was a professional foundation officer or any person skilled in evaluating effective giving.
My irritability with Oprah’s Big Give developed after watching week two of the show and went up and down as the show progressed. In that episode, contestants were each given $4,800 and a car and just 48 hours to find a worthy cause and turn the original dollars and the car into something more.
A few of the contestants banded together and did a wonderful job raising money for a children’s home. At the end, they gave the cars to the home to help with transportation needs.
However, one of the contestants, Angelo, identified a veteran wounded in the Iraq war whom he had hoped to help, but instead he embarrassed the veteran and squandered Oprah’s resources.
Angelo persuaded the manager of a local TGIFriday’s restaurant to give the veteran free meals once a week for a year. Angelo then gave the veteran $4,600 of the cash. Then, inexplicably, and as the cameras rolled, Angelo gave the car — a brand new Ford Edge, worth more than $35,000 — to the restaurant manager, as the veteran looked on in disbelief. Angelo later explained that it was important to reward donors to “inspire” others. In a just result, the judges kicked Angelo off for his poor effort and judgment.
While I am sure the producers were overjoyed that they got an “aha” moment — the kind of moment that reality television thrives on when a person does something truly idiotic and self-destructive — I was in disbelief.
Unlike, for example, in Hell’s Kitchen, where the result is a trendy Los Angeles couple being told that the flank steak they ordered is burned beyond recognition, here more than $35,000 in charitable giving had gone up in smoke. At a feeding center for the needy in my neighborhood, that money would have provided a meal to 105,000 people. And what is worse, the veteran got a pittance.
If I was irritable in week two, I was fuming by the end of week four.
In that episode, the Maloof brothers, wealthy Las Vegas entrepreneurs and owners of the Sacramento Kings basketball team, gave each contestant $100,000 to give out in just 24 hours. The catch was that the seven remaining contestants could not give out more than $500 to one person or $10,000 to one place, and they could not give cash.
The losers that week were truly pathetic.
Kim was so directionally and geographically challenged that she could barely find a charity to which she could give the bulk of her money.
She ended up buying some toys for a pet shelter and giving away free gas to people, on a first-come-first-serve basis, rather than even attempting to figure out for whom a tank of gas would be truly helpful. She left more than $80,000 on the table.
The other loser in week four, Eric, promised the family of a deceased police officer that he would pay for the funeral but then got busy and missed it. Eric left $70,000 unused.
Even the winner in week four, Stephen, did not come out smelling like a rose. He ended up spending all of his $100,000, but he did so by going to a low-income neighborhood and, to beat the time limitation, giving away random appliances and home electronics regardless of the needs of the household. Getting a new refrigerator is not so great if your electricity is about to be turned off.
In other reality shows, the opportunity cost is low: If the contestant screws up, they don’t get something that never was theirs to begin with. But here, Oprah allocated the money for charitable purposes and it was wasted – mostly to give drama to the show so it had high ratings.
So if Oprah puts the show on for a second season, here’s what she should do if she wants to teach a serious lesson about charitable giving.
At the end of each episode, she should introduce a real hero — a trained foundation officer, perhaps, or an accomplished nonprofit leader — to save the day and make the money work.
Something like Supernanny, where an experienced child-care provider pulls the hapless parents and undisciplined kids back from the brink and creates order out of chaos.
If our hero had three golden rules for the contestants, here’s what they would be based on:
* Listen carefully. Too often donors have a preconceived idea of what needs to be done. Gifts of time or money are ineffective if they don’t match an actual need.
* Understand that general-support grants are like gold. They give an organization maximum flexibility and place resources where they are needed most. Some of the best philanthropy on Oprah’s Big Give was when contestants helped out with needs for the kinds of things donors usually hate to pay for — like salaries and utility bills. The decision to give the cars to the children’s home was something that deserved a lot of praise because it probably was something the organization would have trouble acquiring any other way.
* Move beyond the quick fix. Most contestants on Oprah’s Big Give looked to find a person in need, help them with an immediate problem, and move on. Effective philanthropy often does require a quick fix, but it can’t end there. Smart donors must spend part of their resources on understanding the problems that cause the immediate need and then develop a long-term action plan to solve the underlying issue. This requires them to focus on a few causes and, ideally in collaboration with other donors, devote resources to a mix of research, advocacy, and direct services.
If anybody has earned the right to experiment with philanthropy, it is Oprah Winfrey. She has given tens of millions of her own money away and another $51-million through her Angel Network foundation.
She has clearly inspired others to give as well.
So while her show sometimes gave me heartburn, I admire her for starting a serious discussion about the meaning and effectiveness of philanthropy among average Americans.
For those of us who depend on philanthropy and especially for those who dole it out, the conclusion of Big Give seems like an opportunity to take a hard look at our own work. After all, we don’t want our judges — the boards of directors who oversee charities and foundations —to send us packing.
Joshua Horwitz is executive director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, in Washington.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Oprah
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
He ended up walking away with a cool $500,000 for himself and another $500,000 to give away (the contestants did not know there would be a cash reward for the winner until the last moments of the show).
While Mr. Paletta did perform admirably given the parameters of the show, Big Give was a loser for the professionals who run nonprofit organizations and foundations.
Television offers a great opportunity to educate and to make people passionate about causes — especially when a philanthropist and television personality as popular as Oprah Winfrey is sponsoring the lessons.
But the show ended up featuring amateur and embarrassing efforts at giving. It passed off as entertainment people wasting thousands of dollars of donated money and did little to help the American public learn what it really takes to change the lives of other people. Oprah’s last words on the show Sunday night were to encourage the television audience to “give big,” which is a worthy goal, but the television program failed to show average Americans how they can become effective and strategic philanthropists.
The premise of Oprah’s Big Give was that 10 people were given bundles of cash they had to give away in ridiculously short time periods with all sorts of weird restrictions that changed each week. Part of each challenge was for the players to use their cash as a multiplier, and they were judged, in part, on how they got noncontestants to participate.
Their efforts were judged by several high-net-worth individuals who have developed their own philanthropic endeavors: the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver; Malaak Compton-Rock, the founder of StyleWorks and the wife of the comedian Chris Rock; and Tony Gonzalez, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs football team.
Notably absent from this group was a professional foundation officer or any person skilled in evaluating effective giving.
My irritability with Oprah’s Big Give developed after watching week two of the show and went up and down as the show progressed. In that episode, contestants were each given $4,800 and a car and just 48 hours to find a worthy cause and turn the original dollars and the car into something more.
A few of the contestants banded together and did a wonderful job raising money for a children’s home. At the end, they gave the cars to the home to help with transportation needs.
However, one of the contestants, Angelo, identified a veteran wounded in the Iraq war whom he had hoped to help, but instead he embarrassed the veteran and squandered Oprah’s resources.
Angelo persuaded the manager of a local TGIFriday’s restaurant to give the veteran free meals once a week for a year. Angelo then gave the veteran $4,600 of the cash. Then, inexplicably, and as the cameras rolled, Angelo gave the car — a brand new Ford Edge, worth more than $35,000 — to the restaurant manager, as the veteran looked on in disbelief. Angelo later explained that it was important to reward donors to “inspire” others. In a just result, the judges kicked Angelo off for his poor effort and judgment.
While I am sure the producers were overjoyed that they got an “aha” moment — the kind of moment that reality television thrives on when a person does something truly idiotic and self-destructive — I was in disbelief.
Unlike, for example, in Hell’s Kitchen, where the result is a trendy Los Angeles couple being told that the flank steak they ordered is burned beyond recognition, here more than $35,000 in charitable giving had gone up in smoke. At a feeding center for the needy in my neighborhood, that money would have provided a meal to 105,000 people. And what is worse, the veteran got a pittance.
If I was irritable in week two, I was fuming by the end of week four.
In that episode, the Maloof brothers, wealthy Las Vegas entrepreneurs and owners of the Sacramento Kings basketball team, gave each contestant $100,000 to give out in just 24 hours. The catch was that the seven remaining contestants could not give out more than $500 to one person or $10,000 to one place, and they could not give cash.
The losers that week were truly pathetic.
Kim was so directionally and geographically challenged that she could barely find a charity to which she could give the bulk of her money.
She ended up buying some toys for a pet shelter and giving away free gas to people, on a first-come-first-serve basis, rather than even attempting to figure out for whom a tank of gas would be truly helpful. She left more than $80,000 on the table.
The other loser in week four, Eric, promised the family of a deceased police officer that he would pay for the funeral but then got busy and missed it. Eric left $70,000 unused.
Even the winner in week four, Stephen, did not come out smelling like a rose. He ended up spending all of his $100,000, but he did so by going to a low-income neighborhood and, to beat the time limitation, giving away random appliances and home electronics regardless of the needs of the household. Getting a new refrigerator is not so great if your electricity is about to be turned off.
In other reality shows, the opportunity cost is low: If the contestant screws up, they don’t get something that never was theirs to begin with. But here, Oprah allocated the money for charitable purposes and it was wasted – mostly to give drama to the show so it had high ratings.
So if Oprah puts the show on for a second season, here’s what she should do if she wants to teach a serious lesson about charitable giving.
At the end of each episode, she should introduce a real hero — a trained foundation officer, perhaps, or an accomplished nonprofit leader — to save the day and make the money work.
Something like Supernanny, where an experienced child-care provider pulls the hapless parents and undisciplined kids back from the brink and creates order out of chaos.
If our hero had three golden rules for the contestants, here’s what they would be based on:
* Listen carefully. Too often donors have a preconceived idea of what needs to be done. Gifts of time or money are ineffective if they don’t match an actual need.
* Understand that general-support grants are like gold. They give an organization maximum flexibility and place resources where they are needed most. Some of the best philanthropy on Oprah’s Big Give was when contestants helped out with needs for the kinds of things donors usually hate to pay for — like salaries and utility bills. The decision to give the cars to the children’s home was something that deserved a lot of praise because it probably was something the organization would have trouble acquiring any other way.
* Move beyond the quick fix. Most contestants on Oprah’s Big Give looked to find a person in need, help them with an immediate problem, and move on. Effective philanthropy often does require a quick fix, but it can’t end there. Smart donors must spend part of their resources on understanding the problems that cause the immediate need and then develop a long-term action plan to solve the underlying issue. This requires them to focus on a few causes and, ideally in collaboration with other donors, devote resources to a mix of research, advocacy, and direct services.
If anybody has earned the right to experiment with philanthropy, it is Oprah Winfrey. She has given tens of millions of her own money away and another $51-million through her Angel Network foundation.
She has clearly inspired others to give as well.
So while her show sometimes gave me heartburn, I admire her for starting a serious discussion about the meaning and effectiveness of philanthropy among average Americans.
For those of us who depend on philanthropy and especially for those who dole it out, the conclusion of Big Give seems like an opportunity to take a hard look at our own work. After all, we don’t want our judges — the boards of directors who oversee charities and foundations —to send us packing.
Joshua Horwitz is executive director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, in Washington.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Oprah
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
'Oprah's Big Give' finale pays off, By James Hibberd - The Hollywood Reporter - 21st April 2008
The season finale of ABC's "Oprah's Big Give" (10 million viewers, 3.2 rating among adults 18-49 and a 9 share) won its time period and concluded on a solid note.
ABC is trying to avoid making any more series pickup announcements until its upfront presentation to advertisers next month, but feel free to consider "Big Give" a likely contender for the return list.
ABC won the night with the top three shows, yet had some disappointing numbers by comparison to earlier this year. "Desperate Housewives" dropped 7% to post another series low (15.6 million, 5.5/13). With the weaker lead-in, return of "Brothers & Sisters" to originals was down 18% from its prior average (10.5 million, 3.6/10).
Fox was second with six animated comedy repeats (averaging 4.3 million, 2.0/6). CBS was third with "60 Minutes" (10.6 million, 1.5/5), "Big Brother" (6.8 million, 2.3/6) and the original movie "Sweet Nothing in My Ear" (8.2 million, 1.5/4). NBC had "Dateline" (1.2/4) and repeats, including USA Network repurposed shows (averaging 1.2/4). The CW was on par (averaging 0.5/1).
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Oprah
Media Companies
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
ABC is trying to avoid making any more series pickup announcements until its upfront presentation to advertisers next month, but feel free to consider "Big Give" a likely contender for the return list.
ABC won the night with the top three shows, yet had some disappointing numbers by comparison to earlier this year. "Desperate Housewives" dropped 7% to post another series low (15.6 million, 5.5/13). With the weaker lead-in, return of "Brothers & Sisters" to originals was down 18% from its prior average (10.5 million, 3.6/10).
Fox was second with six animated comedy repeats (averaging 4.3 million, 2.0/6). CBS was third with "60 Minutes" (10.6 million, 1.5/5), "Big Brother" (6.8 million, 2.3/6) and the original movie "Sweet Nothing in My Ear" (8.2 million, 1.5/4). NBC had "Dateline" (1.2/4) and repeats, including USA Network repurposed shows (averaging 1.2/4). The CW was on par (averaging 0.5/1).
Media Man Australia Profiles
Oprah
Media Companies
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Where did all the money go?, by Kelly Burke, Debra Jopson and Erik Jensen - The Sydney Morning Herald - 26th April 2008
A charity king was a pin-up for celebrities until his inability to manage his finances and refusal to open his accounts drove many away, write Kelly Burke, Debra Jopson and Erik Jensen.
For years, he has been Sydney's nice guy, almost too good to be true.
"Only selfless service can encourage a person to reach the higher state of humanity," his charitable foundation's website declares.
He goes by the names Jeff Gambin, Geoff Gambin, Javert Gambin and Javert Herbert Gambin and, according to Australian Securities and Investments Commission records, was born in 1948 in Calcutta and Tibet.
His reported claims to fame are many: an entomology degree from Cambridge University, one-time ownership of a chain of 18 restaurants, a qualified gourmet chef with Parisian awards, holder of a commercial pilot's licence, a black belt in karate and possessor of a $7.5 million fortune that has been lavished on the homeless.
However, it was Gambin's invention of a charity to feed Sydney's homeless 15 years ago, inspired after reportedly being given a blanket on a cold, windy night by a homeless man on a park bench, that conferred on him a public image nearing sainthood, attracting stars of the screen, the corporate world and the media as money-pullers and volunteers.
Until this week.
At 9am on Thursday, investigators from the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing tried in vain to seize financial documents from the building at Rozelle that was donated so his foundation could have a kitchen from which to feed the poor. Lawyers for the foundation, appointed the night before, were given a further two weeks to produce records from Gambin's Just Enough Faith Foundation and a sister company of the same name set up by Packer family interests to assist him.
A week ago, Gambin was photographed by a newspaper playing pokies in the Balmain Leagues Club, where, as bank statements seen by the Herald show, between June 2005 and July 2007, he withdrew almost $150,000 of the foundation's money at the club's ATM.
The pattern of the bank account's transactions shows a disturbing regularity. Several afternoons each week $800 in cash would be withdrawn from the club's ATM. About two hours later, a further $200 would be withdrawn. Occasionally the pattern would change, with $500 being the initial amount withdrawn, followed 90 minutes to two hours later by another $500.
A liquor store, a beauty salon and the rates on a Gold Coast flat owned by Gambin and his wife appeared to have been paid from the charity's account, which is littered with multiple dishonour fees from cheques written for as much as $40,000. There were also many fund transfers of thousands of dollars each into at least three different credit cards.
Confronted by Channel Nine on Monday, Gambin said he had put only about a tenth of the account's funds into the pokies. He met clients and donors in the club and often he would hand out cash directly to those in need, without receipts, he said.
By Thursday night a public relations firm was helping him out, but yesterday he was still declining to answer an extensive list of questions put to him by the Herald.
Was this the charismatic entrepreneur revered on the church, school and Rotary Club speaking circuit, who wooed the Packer media executive John Alexander to roll up his sleeves and dish out hot meals alongside him, and who with his wife Alina, according to his foundation website, spent $7.5 million of his own money on helping the homeless?
Was this the same man who in 1996 claimed: "I've won several cocktail and chef awards in my time - both here and in Paris and Chicago. In fact you can say I'm credited with having invented the now-famous Blue Lagoon cocktail in 1972"?
Or who said in 2005: "I had a resort-style home, a Mercedes, a motor lodge cruiser, everything"?
Many have been helped by the man's good works. But many have also been burnt by his grand schemes gone awry. Fearing damage to the cause of aiding the poor, all have held their tongues until now.
Hidden truths have begun to tumble out about the dark side of Gambin's grandiose gestures. Perhaps most burnt of all are the volunteers who became bewildered, then disenchanted, over Gambin's cavalier attitude to accounting.
"Jeff insisted there was absolutely no money and I kept wondering how could a charity operate on such a shoestring," says Alan Byrne, former member of Friends of Just Enough Faith, a committee whose members have blown the whistle.
After seven years of feeding the homeless every Friday night and raising more than $120,000 for the charity, in January last year John Oliver, a retired investment banker with Babcock & Brown, decided to walk away.
"I was just concerned about the lack of governance and financial transparency out there. And there were rumours of Jeff having some sort of a gambling problem. People said that they'd seen him gambling, but it was just their word against Jeff's."
Oliver says that by the end of 2006, he and his fellow volunteers had been reduced to buying pigs' cheeks for 50 cents a kilogram to keep the food program going. "Once the money ran out the food deteriorated quickly. All we had was fatty rubbish, the food was absolutely dreadful and we struggled in the kitchen to make suitable quality."
In 2004, Gambin had told Qantas's inflight magazine: "I give them lobster, duck a l'orange, quail, prawns … what we try to do is ease the pain."
About the same time, a group of well-heeled corporate identities realised there was a need to ease the foundation's book-keeping pain. A separate company, Just Enough Faith Foundation Limited, which emanated out of the Packer family's Publishing and Broadcasting Limited headquarters in Park Street, was set up with the aim of raising funds "for the distribution to Just Enough Faith registered charity", according to its 2005 financial report.
Its directors included Gretel Packer, the Wizard Home Loans founder Mark Bouris, and Alexander. Its big fund-raiser was a $2000-a-ticket shindig for the premiere of the Russell Crowe movie Cinderella Man, with the full support of the star. It raised $1.4 million, which was apportioned to the charity in monthly instalments over the next 12 months. The Packer interests also provided the charity with an accountant who was on the PBL payroll to help with the chaotic book-keeping.
But not even the accountant was able to access the accounts, controlled by Gambin and his wife. When the charity failed to provide the paperwork, Park Street cut the money flow. The company was deregistered in December. "I think when PBL and Russell Crowe got involved, it just went to his head," Byrne says.
Since October 2005, the Park Street interests alone have donated almost $1.8 million into a charity that cost just $300,000 a year to run efficiently, according to Friends of Just Enough Faith committee members. Yet the charity appeared to be broke.
Gambin appears to have lived by the poet Browning's thought: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp."
Oliver says: "He was always prone to exaggeration … embellishing how much he did … Quite often he'd tell people he was feeding 600 to 700 people a night … there were seldom as many as 300 people."
In 1999, Gambin reportedly offered $6 million for Notre Dame, the 42-hectare castle estate with a private zoo at Mulgoa, before pulling out of the sale. Byrne recalls him talking about establishing an Olympics for homeless people, then becoming fixated with the idea of establishing a rural airline to reach drought-ravaged farmers.
"It was very frustrating, because we were just trying to make sure a simple service which fed 150 homeless people a night was not going to go under," Byrne says.
In southern NSW, Gambin has become a local hero over the past year.
"He's been wonderful to our town," says the licensee of the Deniliquin's Exchange Hotel, David Rogers, who is still owed hundreds of dollars from a farmers' social function Gambin organised in the pub last month.
"The money is nothing at all," Rogers says.
In February, Gambin planned an ambitious morale-boosting event for farmers. Griffith and Conargo shire councils needed little persuasion to help; Gambin had put together an extraordinary list of celebrities he claimed had volunteered for his Australia's Biggest Ever Bloke's Day Out.
On the program - advertised in press releases from both councils - were Kostya Tszyu, Wayne Gardiner, Ron Barassi, Glenn McGrath, Mark "Bomber" Thomson, Paul Vautin, Craig Parry, Paul Harrogan, the entire Holden and Ford racing teams, the Sydney Swans, Vince Sorrenti and James Morrison. More than 3000 men, many brought in by bus from hundreds of kilometres away, converged on remote Pretty Pine, 18 kilometres north-west of Deniliquin.
Brad George, a Deniliquin radio announcer who had promoted Gambin's event on his radio program, recalls: "There wasn't too much happening, I can tell you.
"Don't get me wrong. The food was all free, the blokes had a good day, but everyone was asking 'where's Kostya Tszyu?"' In Russia, as it turns out. Of all the celebrities Gambin had promised, just two - Gardiner and Sorrenti - showed up.
George confronted Gambin. "He was evasive … and just kept walking."
The general manager of Conargo Shire Council, Barry Barlow, says: "So a couple of names didn't appear on the day … but Jeff provided two tonnes of sausages and 600 kilos of onions. All we saw was smiles on people's faces and slaps on the back saying what a tremendous success the day was."
Is this man crooked or just plain eccentric and the world's worst bookkeeper? Channel Nine asked earlier this week.
Where had the Packer millions gone? "On all this," Gambin replied, as the camera panned around the interior of a new Rozelle dental and medical centre, destined to treat 28,000 patients a year, the program said.
Gambin expressed fears the centre would not open this week because of the bad publicity. But, according to five of the tradesmen who built the centre and who spoke to the Herald this week, it was finished months ago - and came in at almost zero cost to the foundation, because materials and labour worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were all donated.
The centre has been waiting for its first patient for months, says Byrne, who estimates he has ploughed more than $60,000 of his company's money into the centre's construction. Despite the dental crisis for Sydney's poor, its doors remain closed.
Transparency has been the missing element in Gambin's life mission, seeing that it involves a tax-free charity and the use of public funds, says Doug Ferris, a community affairs consultant who has worked with him in western Sydney.
"He needs to separate the private money for the business from the money for the charities, because it is not clear [which is which]. People could think it is the private money going in there [to his business or the poker machines]," Ferris says.
"He has never faced that. He allows his magnanimous gestures to overcome that. He keeps cycling through people."
On Sydney's south-west fringe there is still bad blood between Gambin and Minto real estate residents because of his handling of a slice of former Department of Housing land, according to Ferris.
Gambin's charity obtained the land in December 2001 for $1 to hold in trust for the residents to create their dream of a children's community park. But Gambin failed to sign a document drawn up pro bono by Blake Dawson Waldren. In May 2004, the foundation mortgaged the land for $350,000, unbeknown to the children's park group.
The foundation defaulted on the mortgage and Campbelltown Council stepped in and bought the land for $350,000 to ensure the park went ahead.
Ferris says even though the charity had to pay rates and land tax, it made a good profit, leaving some children's park organisers livid. Ferris tried to help Gambin's organisation to become more professional and accountable. "I offered my help. But I wasn't able to. He just wanted to control things. I just walked away."
It took Gambin five years and a legal fight to agree to pay outstanding rent on a Berala property he leased from an elderly woman under a residential tenancy agreement he signed in March 2000. He finally paid in January this year, after failing to comply with a court order, sending a cheque that was dishonoured and taking defamation action against the debt collector.
Late yesterday, a spokeswoman from the board of trustees said the foundation would be unable to comment on the events of the past week until it received legal and accountancy advice. Gambin had told Channel Nine earlier in the week: "I regret it. If I had to spend more time on book-keeping, I would have spent less time on what I do best."
After seven years of volunteering and fund-raising for the foundation, Oliver says that like many other volunteers, he feels more frustrated than angry that it has come to this.
"We've met some wonderful people and have helped a lot of people out. But if the funds had been used effectively, we could have achieved so much more," he says.
"If [the foundation] doesn't continue, we just hope another organisation can step in and use the facilities."
Media Man Australia Profiles
Charity
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
For years, he has been Sydney's nice guy, almost too good to be true.
"Only selfless service can encourage a person to reach the higher state of humanity," his charitable foundation's website declares.
He goes by the names Jeff Gambin, Geoff Gambin, Javert Gambin and Javert Herbert Gambin and, according to Australian Securities and Investments Commission records, was born in 1948 in Calcutta and Tibet.
His reported claims to fame are many: an entomology degree from Cambridge University, one-time ownership of a chain of 18 restaurants, a qualified gourmet chef with Parisian awards, holder of a commercial pilot's licence, a black belt in karate and possessor of a $7.5 million fortune that has been lavished on the homeless.
However, it was Gambin's invention of a charity to feed Sydney's homeless 15 years ago, inspired after reportedly being given a blanket on a cold, windy night by a homeless man on a park bench, that conferred on him a public image nearing sainthood, attracting stars of the screen, the corporate world and the media as money-pullers and volunteers.
Until this week.
At 9am on Thursday, investigators from the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing tried in vain to seize financial documents from the building at Rozelle that was donated so his foundation could have a kitchen from which to feed the poor. Lawyers for the foundation, appointed the night before, were given a further two weeks to produce records from Gambin's Just Enough Faith Foundation and a sister company of the same name set up by Packer family interests to assist him.
A week ago, Gambin was photographed by a newspaper playing pokies in the Balmain Leagues Club, where, as bank statements seen by the Herald show, between June 2005 and July 2007, he withdrew almost $150,000 of the foundation's money at the club's ATM.
The pattern of the bank account's transactions shows a disturbing regularity. Several afternoons each week $800 in cash would be withdrawn from the club's ATM. About two hours later, a further $200 would be withdrawn. Occasionally the pattern would change, with $500 being the initial amount withdrawn, followed 90 minutes to two hours later by another $500.
A liquor store, a beauty salon and the rates on a Gold Coast flat owned by Gambin and his wife appeared to have been paid from the charity's account, which is littered with multiple dishonour fees from cheques written for as much as $40,000. There were also many fund transfers of thousands of dollars each into at least three different credit cards.
Confronted by Channel Nine on Monday, Gambin said he had put only about a tenth of the account's funds into the pokies. He met clients and donors in the club and often he would hand out cash directly to those in need, without receipts, he said.
By Thursday night a public relations firm was helping him out, but yesterday he was still declining to answer an extensive list of questions put to him by the Herald.
Was this the charismatic entrepreneur revered on the church, school and Rotary Club speaking circuit, who wooed the Packer media executive John Alexander to roll up his sleeves and dish out hot meals alongside him, and who with his wife Alina, according to his foundation website, spent $7.5 million of his own money on helping the homeless?
Was this the same man who in 1996 claimed: "I've won several cocktail and chef awards in my time - both here and in Paris and Chicago. In fact you can say I'm credited with having invented the now-famous Blue Lagoon cocktail in 1972"?
Or who said in 2005: "I had a resort-style home, a Mercedes, a motor lodge cruiser, everything"?
Many have been helped by the man's good works. But many have also been burnt by his grand schemes gone awry. Fearing damage to the cause of aiding the poor, all have held their tongues until now.
Hidden truths have begun to tumble out about the dark side of Gambin's grandiose gestures. Perhaps most burnt of all are the volunteers who became bewildered, then disenchanted, over Gambin's cavalier attitude to accounting.
"Jeff insisted there was absolutely no money and I kept wondering how could a charity operate on such a shoestring," says Alan Byrne, former member of Friends of Just Enough Faith, a committee whose members have blown the whistle.
After seven years of feeding the homeless every Friday night and raising more than $120,000 for the charity, in January last year John Oliver, a retired investment banker with Babcock & Brown, decided to walk away.
"I was just concerned about the lack of governance and financial transparency out there. And there were rumours of Jeff having some sort of a gambling problem. People said that they'd seen him gambling, but it was just their word against Jeff's."
Oliver says that by the end of 2006, he and his fellow volunteers had been reduced to buying pigs' cheeks for 50 cents a kilogram to keep the food program going. "Once the money ran out the food deteriorated quickly. All we had was fatty rubbish, the food was absolutely dreadful and we struggled in the kitchen to make suitable quality."
In 2004, Gambin had told Qantas's inflight magazine: "I give them lobster, duck a l'orange, quail, prawns … what we try to do is ease the pain."
About the same time, a group of well-heeled corporate identities realised there was a need to ease the foundation's book-keeping pain. A separate company, Just Enough Faith Foundation Limited, which emanated out of the Packer family's Publishing and Broadcasting Limited headquarters in Park Street, was set up with the aim of raising funds "for the distribution to Just Enough Faith registered charity", according to its 2005 financial report.
Its directors included Gretel Packer, the Wizard Home Loans founder Mark Bouris, and Alexander. Its big fund-raiser was a $2000-a-ticket shindig for the premiere of the Russell Crowe movie Cinderella Man, with the full support of the star. It raised $1.4 million, which was apportioned to the charity in monthly instalments over the next 12 months. The Packer interests also provided the charity with an accountant who was on the PBL payroll to help with the chaotic book-keeping.
But not even the accountant was able to access the accounts, controlled by Gambin and his wife. When the charity failed to provide the paperwork, Park Street cut the money flow. The company was deregistered in December. "I think when PBL and Russell Crowe got involved, it just went to his head," Byrne says.
Since October 2005, the Park Street interests alone have donated almost $1.8 million into a charity that cost just $300,000 a year to run efficiently, according to Friends of Just Enough Faith committee members. Yet the charity appeared to be broke.
Gambin appears to have lived by the poet Browning's thought: "A man's reach should exceed his grasp."
Oliver says: "He was always prone to exaggeration … embellishing how much he did … Quite often he'd tell people he was feeding 600 to 700 people a night … there were seldom as many as 300 people."
In 1999, Gambin reportedly offered $6 million for Notre Dame, the 42-hectare castle estate with a private zoo at Mulgoa, before pulling out of the sale. Byrne recalls him talking about establishing an Olympics for homeless people, then becoming fixated with the idea of establishing a rural airline to reach drought-ravaged farmers.
"It was very frustrating, because we were just trying to make sure a simple service which fed 150 homeless people a night was not going to go under," Byrne says.
In southern NSW, Gambin has become a local hero over the past year.
"He's been wonderful to our town," says the licensee of the Deniliquin's Exchange Hotel, David Rogers, who is still owed hundreds of dollars from a farmers' social function Gambin organised in the pub last month.
"The money is nothing at all," Rogers says.
In February, Gambin planned an ambitious morale-boosting event for farmers. Griffith and Conargo shire councils needed little persuasion to help; Gambin had put together an extraordinary list of celebrities he claimed had volunteered for his Australia's Biggest Ever Bloke's Day Out.
On the program - advertised in press releases from both councils - were Kostya Tszyu, Wayne Gardiner, Ron Barassi, Glenn McGrath, Mark "Bomber" Thomson, Paul Vautin, Craig Parry, Paul Harrogan, the entire Holden and Ford racing teams, the Sydney Swans, Vince Sorrenti and James Morrison. More than 3000 men, many brought in by bus from hundreds of kilometres away, converged on remote Pretty Pine, 18 kilometres north-west of Deniliquin.
Brad George, a Deniliquin radio announcer who had promoted Gambin's event on his radio program, recalls: "There wasn't too much happening, I can tell you.
"Don't get me wrong. The food was all free, the blokes had a good day, but everyone was asking 'where's Kostya Tszyu?"' In Russia, as it turns out. Of all the celebrities Gambin had promised, just two - Gardiner and Sorrenti - showed up.
George confronted Gambin. "He was evasive … and just kept walking."
The general manager of Conargo Shire Council, Barry Barlow, says: "So a couple of names didn't appear on the day … but Jeff provided two tonnes of sausages and 600 kilos of onions. All we saw was smiles on people's faces and slaps on the back saying what a tremendous success the day was."
Is this man crooked or just plain eccentric and the world's worst bookkeeper? Channel Nine asked earlier this week.
Where had the Packer millions gone? "On all this," Gambin replied, as the camera panned around the interior of a new Rozelle dental and medical centre, destined to treat 28,000 patients a year, the program said.
Gambin expressed fears the centre would not open this week because of the bad publicity. But, according to five of the tradesmen who built the centre and who spoke to the Herald this week, it was finished months ago - and came in at almost zero cost to the foundation, because materials and labour worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were all donated.
The centre has been waiting for its first patient for months, says Byrne, who estimates he has ploughed more than $60,000 of his company's money into the centre's construction. Despite the dental crisis for Sydney's poor, its doors remain closed.
Transparency has been the missing element in Gambin's life mission, seeing that it involves a tax-free charity and the use of public funds, says Doug Ferris, a community affairs consultant who has worked with him in western Sydney.
"He needs to separate the private money for the business from the money for the charities, because it is not clear [which is which]. People could think it is the private money going in there [to his business or the poker machines]," Ferris says.
"He has never faced that. He allows his magnanimous gestures to overcome that. He keeps cycling through people."
On Sydney's south-west fringe there is still bad blood between Gambin and Minto real estate residents because of his handling of a slice of former Department of Housing land, according to Ferris.
Gambin's charity obtained the land in December 2001 for $1 to hold in trust for the residents to create their dream of a children's community park. But Gambin failed to sign a document drawn up pro bono by Blake Dawson Waldren. In May 2004, the foundation mortgaged the land for $350,000, unbeknown to the children's park group.
The foundation defaulted on the mortgage and Campbelltown Council stepped in and bought the land for $350,000 to ensure the park went ahead.
Ferris says even though the charity had to pay rates and land tax, it made a good profit, leaving some children's park organisers livid. Ferris tried to help Gambin's organisation to become more professional and accountable. "I offered my help. But I wasn't able to. He just wanted to control things. I just walked away."
It took Gambin five years and a legal fight to agree to pay outstanding rent on a Berala property he leased from an elderly woman under a residential tenancy agreement he signed in March 2000. He finally paid in January this year, after failing to comply with a court order, sending a cheque that was dishonoured and taking defamation action against the debt collector.
Late yesterday, a spokeswoman from the board of trustees said the foundation would be unable to comment on the events of the past week until it received legal and accountancy advice. Gambin had told Channel Nine earlier in the week: "I regret it. If I had to spend more time on book-keeping, I would have spent less time on what I do best."
After seven years of volunteering and fund-raising for the foundation, Oliver says that like many other volunteers, he feels more frustrated than angry that it has come to this.
"We've met some wonderful people and have helped a lot of people out. But if the funds had been used effectively, we could have achieved so much more," he says.
"If [the foundation] doesn't continue, we just hope another organisation can step in and use the facilities."
Media Man Australia Profiles
Charity
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Net widens as celebrity fund raided, by Erik Jensen, Debra Jopson and Kelly Burke - The Sydney Morning Herald - 26th April 2008
The Rozelle headquarters of the Just Enough Faith Foundation has been raided by gambling officials in a attempt to seize papers from its founder, Jeff Gambin, and a related company affiliated with the Packer family.
The raid occurred days after Mr Gambin admitted he fed poker machines with money donated to feed the homeless.
NSW authorities have determined that the foundation breached laws governing charitable fund-raising three times in the past 11 years but, after barring the foundation's registration to raise funds, did little to alert members of the public that they should not donate to it.
The foundation's website was still calling for donations yesterday, saying it was a registered charity and urging those wanting to give cash to contact Mr Gambin or his wife by phone.
The Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing, which registers charities in NSW, is investigating the finances of both the incorporated foundation established by Mr Gambin 15 years ago and a company of the same name set up by people associated with Packer media interests, a spokesman for the liquor office said.
The board of the company, which was deregistered in December, included John Alexander, the chairman of James Packer's company Consolidated Media Holdings; Mr Packer's sister, Gretel; and the founder of Wizard Home Loans, Mark Bouris.
Mr Gambin was not at the headquarters when officers raided it on Thursday morning but the foundation's lawyers, appointed the night before, undertook to provide financial documents within two weeks, said the spokesman, Mark Nolan.
The foundation was banned from raising funds in NSW in 2002, after it was found in breach of the Charitable Fundraising Act three times. But it is exempt from paying tax and is staffed by offenders placed by the Department of Corrective Services. Donations to it are tax-deductible.
A restaurateur and philanthropist whose food vans have fed the homeless since 1993, Mr Gambin has won the support of prominent people other than members of the Packer circle.
The broadcaster Alan Jones said he was concerned by what he had read about the charity but Mr Gambin had done "a phenomenal amount of good for destitute people" in Sydney. "And what's to happen to those people if this charity is torpedoed, I don't know," he said.
According to bank statements seen by the Herald, Mr Gambin has withdrawn almost $150,000 from the foundation's bank account at Balmain Leagues Club. Other withdrawals had been made to pay for liquor and rates on the Gold Coast unit Mr Gambin owns with his wife, Alina.
On Monday, Mr Gambin told the Channel Nine program A Current Affair he had put foundation money into poker machines. By yesterday he had secured the services of Professional Public Relations but declined to answer questions from the Herald.
At the foundation's Rozelle kitchens, 23 staff who have been sentenced to community service are supplied by the Department of Corrective Services.
"Since these allegations [of financial mismanagement], we're reviewing the offenders working there," a spokeswoman for the department said. "But at the moment it seems they are doing charitable work."
Asked about the discrepancy between the charity's deregistration in NSW and its federal tax status, a Tax Office spokeswoman said the laws were separate.
The Herald has also found that in 1997 the charity regulator asked police to investigate a fund-raising dance held without authority and with no record of money going to the foundation. There was not enough evidence for police to act.
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Charity
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
The raid occurred days after Mr Gambin admitted he fed poker machines with money donated to feed the homeless.
NSW authorities have determined that the foundation breached laws governing charitable fund-raising three times in the past 11 years but, after barring the foundation's registration to raise funds, did little to alert members of the public that they should not donate to it.
The foundation's website was still calling for donations yesterday, saying it was a registered charity and urging those wanting to give cash to contact Mr Gambin or his wife by phone.
The Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing, which registers charities in NSW, is investigating the finances of both the incorporated foundation established by Mr Gambin 15 years ago and a company of the same name set up by people associated with Packer media interests, a spokesman for the liquor office said.
The board of the company, which was deregistered in December, included John Alexander, the chairman of James Packer's company Consolidated Media Holdings; Mr Packer's sister, Gretel; and the founder of Wizard Home Loans, Mark Bouris.
Mr Gambin was not at the headquarters when officers raided it on Thursday morning but the foundation's lawyers, appointed the night before, undertook to provide financial documents within two weeks, said the spokesman, Mark Nolan.
The foundation was banned from raising funds in NSW in 2002, after it was found in breach of the Charitable Fundraising Act three times. But it is exempt from paying tax and is staffed by offenders placed by the Department of Corrective Services. Donations to it are tax-deductible.
A restaurateur and philanthropist whose food vans have fed the homeless since 1993, Mr Gambin has won the support of prominent people other than members of the Packer circle.
The broadcaster Alan Jones said he was concerned by what he had read about the charity but Mr Gambin had done "a phenomenal amount of good for destitute people" in Sydney. "And what's to happen to those people if this charity is torpedoed, I don't know," he said.
According to bank statements seen by the Herald, Mr Gambin has withdrawn almost $150,000 from the foundation's bank account at Balmain Leagues Club. Other withdrawals had been made to pay for liquor and rates on the Gold Coast unit Mr Gambin owns with his wife, Alina.
On Monday, Mr Gambin told the Channel Nine program A Current Affair he had put foundation money into poker machines. By yesterday he had secured the services of Professional Public Relations but declined to answer questions from the Herald.
At the foundation's Rozelle kitchens, 23 staff who have been sentenced to community service are supplied by the Department of Corrective Services.
"Since these allegations [of financial mismanagement], we're reviewing the offenders working there," a spokeswoman for the department said. "But at the moment it seems they are doing charitable work."
Asked about the discrepancy between the charity's deregistration in NSW and its federal tax status, a Tax Office spokeswoman said the laws were separate.
The Herald has also found that in 1997 the charity regulator asked police to investigate a fund-raising dance held without authority and with no record of money going to the foundation. There was not enough evidence for police to act.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Charity
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Friday, April 25, 2008
Virgin Unite (Wikipedia profile)
Virgin Unite is the working name of The Virgin Foundation, the independent charitable arm of the Virgin Group. Created by Richard Branson and Virgin employees in September 2004, Virgin Unite pools volunteering efforts from across the Virgin Group and its hundreds of subsidiaries and associated companies to grow the efforts of smaller grassroots charitable organizations. Partnered with more than a dozen charities worldwide the company also provides a resource through the Internet by serving as an online donation centre for those wanting to contribute.
The primary aims of the foundation are to make sustainable change through economic development towards tough social and environmental issues. These include addressing the issue of delivering healthcare to rural parts of Africa. Branson and Virgin underwrite all the operating costs of the organization, so 100% of contributions can be applied towards causes.
History
Parent charitable organizations - 1987
AIDS was first recognized on June 5, 1981. In 1986, it was reported that three to five million Americans would be HIV positive and one million would be dead of AIDS by 1996. In response to such reports, Virgin incorporated a charitable group called The Healthcare Foundation on August 3, 1987 to provide research in and education about AIDS.[4] In July 1988, the foundation's charitable objectives expanded to include the relief of poverty and the relief of disabled persons from their disabilities.
Virgin Unite - 2004
In 2003, the foundation sought to determine what others thought it should focus on. After spending six months speaking with social issues groups, Virgin Group suppliers and partners, and numerous Virgin staff members in South Africa, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, the organization concluded that many people and companies were deterred from participating in philanthropic activities by the complexities of the charity sector. The foundation sought then to use the Virgin Group's corporate and organizational experience to identify the best practices in this sector and to facilitate the entry of new participants.
Between 1987 and 2004, Virgin Unite operated first as The Healthcare Foundation and then the The Virgin Healthcare Foundation. In mid-September 2004, Virgin established the subsidiary The Virgin Foundation doing business as Virgin Unite in the United Kingdom to coordinate all Virgin's worldwide charitable ventures. Citing the spread of HIV in Africa and the twin problems of malaria and malnutrition as the first priority issues, Branson explained his reasoning behind Virgin Unite:
I've reached the age [54] where I've made a lot of money, the companies are going really well and we've got a lot of talented people working for us. Now we are going to turn our business skills into tackling issues around the world where we can help. ... In the next 30 years or so I can make an enormous difference to a lot of people's lives just by using the strength of my own brand name and being able to pick up the phone and get through to the President of Nigeria or Thabo Mbeki. We have the financial resources and the business know-how. If the Virgin foundation works as I hope it will, it could be that Virgin becomes better known for that than for the businesses we are in.
Branding
Virgin Unite has created a branding scheme based around the idea of redemption to encourage Virgin company employees to donate their time, rather than their money, to one of twelve partner charities. The launch scheme included the strapline 'Spend time with your better side', a brochure, posters and promotional items that juxtapose the seven deadly sins with seven good deeds: lust is contrasted with love, for instance, and gluttony with generosity. According to Virgin Unite, this approach was largely driven by the principles of having fun and celebrating the reality of how people live their lives, while encouraging them to donate time.
Distribution of educational materials
Also in 2004, Virgin Unite helped launch "Your Finest Hour", a campaign that distributed more than one million copies of educational materials across the United Kingdom. The campaign also raised more than GB£50,000 for South Africa's "Women and Men on the Move Project",[ uniting three South African charities and targets vulnerable young women between ages 15 and 24, who comprise four of every five new HIV infections among South Africans in this demographic. For these actions, Virgin Unite received the Business Excellence Leadership award from the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GBC) in September 2005.
Outside the UK
In 2006, Virgin Unite established itself in the United States and Canada and presently is operational in the South Africa and Australia. In addition, Virgin Unite was cited in 2006 as an example of organizations founded by philanthropic entrepreneurs, young billionaires putting the benefits of capitalism to charitable use.
Activities
The foundation is involved in several activities, including to end obstetric fistula. It has also been involved in youth AIDS awareness campaign, and helped organize a clothing drive for homeless and at-risk youth at Virgin Megastores in cooperation with the charity StandUp for Kids. A main activity of Virgin Unite is to raise money and awareness to help defeat on a global scale what the foundation refers to as The Big 3: AIDS, HIV, and malaria/tuberculosis. In the United States, Virgin Unite is focusing on global warming and rehabilitating homeless children.
Website
Virgin Unite
Media Man Australia Profiles
Virgin Unite
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Disclaimer: Media Man Australia director, Greg Tingle, is a pro active member of Virgin Unite
The primary aims of the foundation are to make sustainable change through economic development towards tough social and environmental issues. These include addressing the issue of delivering healthcare to rural parts of Africa. Branson and Virgin underwrite all the operating costs of the organization, so 100% of contributions can be applied towards causes.
History
Parent charitable organizations - 1987
AIDS was first recognized on June 5, 1981. In 1986, it was reported that three to five million Americans would be HIV positive and one million would be dead of AIDS by 1996. In response to such reports, Virgin incorporated a charitable group called The Healthcare Foundation on August 3, 1987 to provide research in and education about AIDS.[4] In July 1988, the foundation's charitable objectives expanded to include the relief of poverty and the relief of disabled persons from their disabilities.
Virgin Unite - 2004
In 2003, the foundation sought to determine what others thought it should focus on. After spending six months speaking with social issues groups, Virgin Group suppliers and partners, and numerous Virgin staff members in South Africa, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, the organization concluded that many people and companies were deterred from participating in philanthropic activities by the complexities of the charity sector. The foundation sought then to use the Virgin Group's corporate and organizational experience to identify the best practices in this sector and to facilitate the entry of new participants.
Between 1987 and 2004, Virgin Unite operated first as The Healthcare Foundation and then the The Virgin Healthcare Foundation. In mid-September 2004, Virgin established the subsidiary The Virgin Foundation doing business as Virgin Unite in the United Kingdom to coordinate all Virgin's worldwide charitable ventures. Citing the spread of HIV in Africa and the twin problems of malaria and malnutrition as the first priority issues, Branson explained his reasoning behind Virgin Unite:
I've reached the age [54] where I've made a lot of money, the companies are going really well and we've got a lot of talented people working for us. Now we are going to turn our business skills into tackling issues around the world where we can help. ... In the next 30 years or so I can make an enormous difference to a lot of people's lives just by using the strength of my own brand name and being able to pick up the phone and get through to the President of Nigeria or Thabo Mbeki. We have the financial resources and the business know-how. If the Virgin foundation works as I hope it will, it could be that Virgin becomes better known for that than for the businesses we are in.
Branding
Virgin Unite has created a branding scheme based around the idea of redemption to encourage Virgin company employees to donate their time, rather than their money, to one of twelve partner charities. The launch scheme included the strapline 'Spend time with your better side', a brochure, posters and promotional items that juxtapose the seven deadly sins with seven good deeds: lust is contrasted with love, for instance, and gluttony with generosity. According to Virgin Unite, this approach was largely driven by the principles of having fun and celebrating the reality of how people live their lives, while encouraging them to donate time.
Distribution of educational materials
Also in 2004, Virgin Unite helped launch "Your Finest Hour", a campaign that distributed more than one million copies of educational materials across the United Kingdom. The campaign also raised more than GB£50,000 for South Africa's "Women and Men on the Move Project",[ uniting three South African charities and targets vulnerable young women between ages 15 and 24, who comprise four of every five new HIV infections among South Africans in this demographic. For these actions, Virgin Unite received the Business Excellence Leadership award from the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GBC) in September 2005.
Outside the UK
In 2006, Virgin Unite established itself in the United States and Canada and presently is operational in the South Africa and Australia. In addition, Virgin Unite was cited in 2006 as an example of organizations founded by philanthropic entrepreneurs, young billionaires putting the benefits of capitalism to charitable use.
Activities
The foundation is involved in several activities, including to end obstetric fistula. It has also been involved in youth AIDS awareness campaign, and helped organize a clothing drive for homeless and at-risk youth at Virgin Megastores in cooperation with the charity StandUp for Kids. A main activity of Virgin Unite is to raise money and awareness to help defeat on a global scale what the foundation refers to as The Big 3: AIDS, HIV, and malaria/tuberculosis. In the United States, Virgin Unite is focusing on global warming and rehabilitating homeless children.
Website
Virgin Unite
Media Man Australia Profiles
Virgin Unite
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Disclaimer: Media Man Australia director, Greg Tingle, is a pro active member of Virgin Unite
Charitable unity, by Steve Creedy - The Australian - 25th April 2008
Qantas is consolidating its charitable and community activities in a single charitable foundation under a separate board of directors.
Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford announced yesterday that the new board, headed by Starlight Foundation chair Doug Jukes, would oversee a fund of more than $5 million, including $3.4 million raised from the sale of some artworks. He said it would co-exist alongside the airline's existing community programs and allow it to expand into new areas, including the environment, humanitarian relief and Australian contemporary art.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Qantas
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford announced yesterday that the new board, headed by Starlight Foundation chair Doug Jukes, would oversee a fund of more than $5 million, including $3.4 million raised from the sale of some artworks. He said it would co-exist alongside the airline's existing community programs and allow it to expand into new areas, including the environment, humanitarian relief and Australian contemporary art.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Qantas
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Charity had high-profile support but no trace of paper trail, by Connie Levett and Erik Jensen - The Sydney Morning Herald - 21st April 2008
Two former supporters of Just Enough Faith, a charity that feeds the homeless in Sydney, expressed serious concern yesterday about the way its founder, Jeff Gambin, has managed it.
The charity, which once had the support of the Packer family and such high profile backers as Alan Jones and Russell Crowe, is in the spotlight after The Sunday Telegraph published allegations that Mr Gambin financially mismanaged it.
The stockbroker Tim Buckley was a volunteer with the charity when Mr Gambin asked him to join a six-member committee, Friends of Just Enough Faith, that was to take over the operations of Just Enough Faith.
He became public officer on the committee but resigned from that post, and from the committee, last July.
"My No. 1 concern was the lack of any financial records, any bank statements, any paperwork, any procedures that suggested the charity was even remotely complying with the requirements for a charity," Mr Buckley said yesterday. "That was my observation. If those procedures were being done, I was not privy to them, yet I had 100 per cent access to the offices of Just Enough Faith. If such paperwork existed I never saw it."
Mr Gambin has been lauded for his work with the homeless. He received a humanitarian of the year award in 2000. In 2005 Russell Crowe premiered his film Cinderella Man at a charity fund-raiser hosted by Alan Jones and sponsored by the Packers that raised $1.3 million.
"PBL had agreed under Kerry Packer's guidance it would fund up to $66,000 a month to the extent that documentation was provided," Mr Buckley said.
"The first $1.3 million was paid without documentation and only one more payment was made after that, because we were unable to provide documentation."
Alan Byrne, another committee member of Friends of Just Enough Faith, told the Herald Mr Gambin "comes across as brilliant, very charismatic. He undoes more than he does".
"I never saw any money physically go into the charity," Mr Byrne said. "He used to sit in the committee and say 'I know I've done wrong'. I think he meant the money wasn't going where it was supposed to be going."
At Callan Park yesterday, the charity's operations manager, Ian MacGregor, said he did not know of Mr Gambin's gambling and had not seen details of the charity's finances. He said Mr Gambin often paid running costs without him knowing whether it was Mr Gambin's money or the charity's.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
The charity, which once had the support of the Packer family and such high profile backers as Alan Jones and Russell Crowe, is in the spotlight after The Sunday Telegraph published allegations that Mr Gambin financially mismanaged it.
The stockbroker Tim Buckley was a volunteer with the charity when Mr Gambin asked him to join a six-member committee, Friends of Just Enough Faith, that was to take over the operations of Just Enough Faith.
He became public officer on the committee but resigned from that post, and from the committee, last July.
"My No. 1 concern was the lack of any financial records, any bank statements, any paperwork, any procedures that suggested the charity was even remotely complying with the requirements for a charity," Mr Buckley said yesterday. "That was my observation. If those procedures were being done, I was not privy to them, yet I had 100 per cent access to the offices of Just Enough Faith. If such paperwork existed I never saw it."
Mr Gambin has been lauded for his work with the homeless. He received a humanitarian of the year award in 2000. In 2005 Russell Crowe premiered his film Cinderella Man at a charity fund-raiser hosted by Alan Jones and sponsored by the Packers that raised $1.3 million.
"PBL had agreed under Kerry Packer's guidance it would fund up to $66,000 a month to the extent that documentation was provided," Mr Buckley said.
"The first $1.3 million was paid without documentation and only one more payment was made after that, because we were unable to provide documentation."
Alan Byrne, another committee member of Friends of Just Enough Faith, told the Herald Mr Gambin "comes across as brilliant, very charismatic. He undoes more than he does".
"I never saw any money physically go into the charity," Mr Byrne said. "He used to sit in the committee and say 'I know I've done wrong'. I think he meant the money wasn't going where it was supposed to be going."
At Callan Park yesterday, the charity's operations manager, Ian MacGregor, said he did not know of Mr Gambin's gambling and had not seen details of the charity's finances. He said Mr Gambin often paid running costs without him knowing whether it was Mr Gambin's money or the charity's.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Community and Philanthropy Websites
Media Man Australia recommends the following websites and resources relating to community and philanthropic matters
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
The Elders
Virgin Unite
Australian Specific Websites
Grants Link (Government Grants website)
Philanthropy Australia
Community Builders NSW
Social Ventures Australia
Media Man Australia Profiles
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
The Chronicle of Philanthropy
The Elders
Virgin Unite
Australian Specific Websites
Grants Link (Government Grants website)
Philanthropy Australia
Community Builders NSW
Social Ventures Australia
Media Man Australia Profiles
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Community Media - Social Entrepreneur (Wikipedia)
Social entrepreneurship is the work of a social entrepreneur. A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurialship principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.
History
The terms social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurship were first used in the literature on social change in the 1960s and 1970s [1]. It came into widespread use in the 1980s and 1990s, promoted by Bill Drayton the founder of Ashoka, [2], and others such as Charles Leadbeater [3]. From the 1950s to the 1990s Michael Young was a leading promoter of social enterprise and in the 1980s was described by Professor Daniel Bell at Harvard as 'the world's most successful entrepreneur of social enterprises' because of his role in creating over 60 new organizations worldwide, including a series of Schools for Social Entrepreneurs in the UK.
Although the terms are relatively new, social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship can be found throughout history. A list of a few historically noteworthy people whose work exemplifies classic "social entrepreneurship" might include Florence Nightingale, founder of the first nursing school and developer of modern nursing practices, Robert Owen founder of the cooperative movement and Vinoba Bhave (founder of India's Land Gift Movement). During the 19th and 20th centuries some of the most successful social entrepreneurs successfully straddled the civic, governmental and business worlds - promoting ideas that were taken up by mainstream public services in welfare, schools and healthcare.
Current practice
One well known contemporary social entrepreneur is Muhammad Yunus, founder and manager of Grameen Bank and its growing family of social venture businesses, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.[4] The work of Yunus and Grameen echoes a theme among modern day social entrepreneurs that emphasizes the enormous synergies and benefits when business principles are unified with social ventures. [5] In some countries - including Bangladesh and to a lesser extent the USA - social entrepreneurs have filled the spaces left by a relatively small state. In other countries - particularly in Europe and South America - they have tended to work more closely with public organizations at both the national and local level.
The George Foundation's Women's Empowerment program empowers women by providing education, cooperative farming, vocational training, savings plan, and business development. In 2006 the cooperative farming program, Baldev Farms, was the second largest banana grower in South India with 250 acres under cultivation.[6] Profits from the farm are used for improving the economic status of the workers and for running the other charitable activities of the foundation.[6]
Some have created for profit organizations. A recent example is Vikram Akula founder CEO of SKS Microfinance, the McKinsey alumnus who started a microlending venture in villages of Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Though this venture is for profit, it has initiated a sharp social change amongst poor women from villages.
There are continuing arguments over precisely who counts as a social entrepreneur. Some have advocated restricting the term to founders of organizations that primarily rely on earned income – meaning income earned directly from paying consumers. Others have extended this to include contracted work for public authorities, while others still include grants and donations. This argument is unlikely to be resolved soon. Peter Drucker, for example, once wrote that there was nothing as entrepreneurial as creating a new university: yet in most developed countries the majority of university funding comes from the state.
Today, nonprofits and non-governmental organizations, foundations, governments and individuals promote, fund, and advise social entrepreneurs around the planet. A growing number of colleges and universities are establishing programs focused on educating and training social entrepreneurs.
Organizations such as Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, the Skoll Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, New Profit Inc. and Echoing Green among others, focus on highlighting these hidden change-makers who are scattered across the globe. Ashoka's Changemakers "open sourcing social solutions" initiative Changemakers uses an online platform for what it calls collaborative competitions to build communities of practice around pressing issues. The North American organizations tend to have a strongly individualistic stance focused on a handful of exceptional leaders, while others in Asia and Europe emphasize more how social entrepreneurs work within teams, networks and movements for change.
Youth social entrepreneurship is an increasingly common approach to engaging youth voice in solving social problems. Youth organizations and programs promote these efforts through a variety of incentives to young people.[7]
Fast Company Magazine annually publishes a list of the 25 best social entrepreneurs, which the magazine defines as organizations "using the disciplines of the corporate world to tackle daunting social problems."[8]
The International Business Leaders Forum, an NGO that promotes responsible business practices, has shown how multinational companies can support social entrepreneurship - either through in their businesses, engaging in public policy debate or creating better internal climates within their organisations. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Charity
History
The terms social entrepreneur and social entrepreneurship were first used in the literature on social change in the 1960s and 1970s [1]. It came into widespread use in the 1980s and 1990s, promoted by Bill Drayton the founder of Ashoka, [2], and others such as Charles Leadbeater [3]. From the 1950s to the 1990s Michael Young was a leading promoter of social enterprise and in the 1980s was described by Professor Daniel Bell at Harvard as 'the world's most successful entrepreneur of social enterprises' because of his role in creating over 60 new organizations worldwide, including a series of Schools for Social Entrepreneurs in the UK.
Although the terms are relatively new, social entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurship can be found throughout history. A list of a few historically noteworthy people whose work exemplifies classic "social entrepreneurship" might include Florence Nightingale, founder of the first nursing school and developer of modern nursing practices, Robert Owen founder of the cooperative movement and Vinoba Bhave (founder of India's Land Gift Movement). During the 19th and 20th centuries some of the most successful social entrepreneurs successfully straddled the civic, governmental and business worlds - promoting ideas that were taken up by mainstream public services in welfare, schools and healthcare.
Current practice
One well known contemporary social entrepreneur is Muhammad Yunus, founder and manager of Grameen Bank and its growing family of social venture businesses, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.[4] The work of Yunus and Grameen echoes a theme among modern day social entrepreneurs that emphasizes the enormous synergies and benefits when business principles are unified with social ventures. [5] In some countries - including Bangladesh and to a lesser extent the USA - social entrepreneurs have filled the spaces left by a relatively small state. In other countries - particularly in Europe and South America - they have tended to work more closely with public organizations at both the national and local level.
The George Foundation's Women's Empowerment program empowers women by providing education, cooperative farming, vocational training, savings plan, and business development. In 2006 the cooperative farming program, Baldev Farms, was the second largest banana grower in South India with 250 acres under cultivation.[6] Profits from the farm are used for improving the economic status of the workers and for running the other charitable activities of the foundation.[6]
Some have created for profit organizations. A recent example is Vikram Akula founder CEO of SKS Microfinance, the McKinsey alumnus who started a microlending venture in villages of Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Though this venture is for profit, it has initiated a sharp social change amongst poor women from villages.
There are continuing arguments over precisely who counts as a social entrepreneur. Some have advocated restricting the term to founders of organizations that primarily rely on earned income – meaning income earned directly from paying consumers. Others have extended this to include contracted work for public authorities, while others still include grants and donations. This argument is unlikely to be resolved soon. Peter Drucker, for example, once wrote that there was nothing as entrepreneurial as creating a new university: yet in most developed countries the majority of university funding comes from the state.
Today, nonprofits and non-governmental organizations, foundations, governments and individuals promote, fund, and advise social entrepreneurs around the planet. A growing number of colleges and universities are establishing programs focused on educating and training social entrepreneurs.
Organizations such as Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, the Skoll Foundation, the Omidyar Network, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, New Profit Inc. and Echoing Green among others, focus on highlighting these hidden change-makers who are scattered across the globe. Ashoka's Changemakers "open sourcing social solutions" initiative Changemakers uses an online platform for what it calls collaborative competitions to build communities of practice around pressing issues. The North American organizations tend to have a strongly individualistic stance focused on a handful of exceptional leaders, while others in Asia and Europe emphasize more how social entrepreneurs work within teams, networks and movements for change.
Youth social entrepreneurship is an increasingly common approach to engaging youth voice in solving social problems. Youth organizations and programs promote these efforts through a variety of incentives to young people.[7]
Fast Company Magazine annually publishes a list of the 25 best social entrepreneurs, which the magazine defines as organizations "using the disciplines of the corporate world to tackle daunting social problems."[8]
The International Business Leaders Forum, an NGO that promotes responsible business practices, has shown how multinational companies can support social entrepreneurship - either through in their businesses, engaging in public policy debate or creating better internal climates within their organisations. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Media Man Australia Profiles
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Charity
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Companies should 'adopt' schools, by Sid Marris - The Austrralian - 19th April 2008
The nation's top 100 companies should "adopt" a high school and provide students with mentors and examples of success.
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard today told the Australia 2020 Summit that the idea would be a practical way to help link education and business.
The idea was one of dozen different suggestions from some of the 100 participants of the Productivity stream at today's summit, just prior an afternoon of brainstorming sessions that were expected to generate many more.
With 2650 secondary schools across the country, the challenge would be for firms to adopt up to 27 schools - from the least to the most advantaged - and provide mentors or practical support on areas such as information technology and human resources.
``I meet all the time with representatives of the top 100 businesses who want to give back,'' she said.
``I also visit a lot of schools and in many of those schools students rarely would have access to adults who can talk to them about what it is like to succeed in our society.
``...Those top 100 could provide mentors for people about what succeeding in life is like.
``They could provide work experience for students at the appropriate point and they could provide the knowledge and expertise they have got in-house to school councils, on things like IT knowledge or human resource knowledge that they might have on tap but which schools might not have access to.''
On a similar theme, Ernesto Peralta, has suggested a "peace corp" of retired Australians who could be engaged across the community providing training and mentoring.
The theme of collaboration and sharing information between schools, training providers, higher education and industry permeated many of the discussions in the Productivity session - one of 10 different topics being covered by the summit of 1000 delegates.
A teacher from Victoria, Gail Davidson, said the acknowledging and encouraging the ``interconnectedness'' of modern education, careers and the needs industry was essential.
``I would hope that there would be some sort of link that says you can't just do this research, it has to be research that is connected with business, schools or whatever,'' she said.
NSW education and training public servant Marie Persson adopted a similar approach in a different session stressing the need for greater collaboration across government, industry and educational institutions in what they were doing and where they were spending their money.
At the end of the first sessions of the two day summit, the groups had devised a range of draft goals that would steer their discussions: the ambition that all children would be ready for school when they started, that education not be tied to institutional demands of when you start and when you finish, that participation should mean helping people access they work the wanted at the level they chose and that by 2020 there should be a doubling of both public and private spending on research and development.
While some participants favoured setting targets for increasing workplace participation, other resisted the idea and said a greater emphasis was needed on the quality of the contribution.
Indigenous representatives, such Professor Marcia Langton, said all available human resources in Australia, such as young indigenous people but increasingly rural white people as well, should be job ready before bringing in skilled migrants and guest workers.
Business executive Ken Loughnan, however, warned that by 2020 Australia would need an additional one million workers, which meant that the needs could not be met within Australia alone.
Others warned that skills shortages were hitting businesses now and they did not have time to wait for an increase in the numbers of job ready workers.
Western Australian academic Marilynne Paspaley said that the restrictions on the movement of labour should be reduced, making its flow similar to the flow of capital.
An NSW academic Marion Baird said the demands being placed on women in the modern society meant a paid maternity scheme was need as a matter of urgency.
``We are expecting women to both participate in the workforce and producing more children; we need to do both and we need to pay for it,'' she said to loud applause.
``We need that on the agenda for 2020 and before that by 2010 at least.''
Siddhartha Chakrabarti, who attended the youth summit last week, believed it should be expanded to fathers as well. That summit proposed that the Government introduce a scheme of 14 weeks at the minimum wage supplemented by the employer at a rate of 25 per cent of normal salary.
Bruce Chapman, an academic who helped developed the higher education contribution scheme where university students pay for their degree when they take paid employment, said the scheme could be expanded to all other forms of education and skills training.
A policy director at progressive Think Tank Per Capita, Michael Cooney, said there needed to be more thought on getting private investment into the development of early childhood education, identified as a crucial way of making sure children were ready to learn when they hit schools.
``We haven't talked at all about how you get more private income into these areas through better design of markets,'' he said.
Federal minister for small business Craig Emerson offered his own version of an ambition for the summit's productivity session to consider.
``By 2020 every Australia fundamentally believes that every child who is born in Australia has the same talent, the same capacity to have a fulfilling life and we then invest and ensure that those talents are unleashed,'' he said.
Participant Lucia Macali said that more thought needed to be given when designing policies, or building to those who suffered impairment.
There should be a general principle that policies and buildings should ``meet most of the needs of most of the people most of the time''.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard today told the Australia 2020 Summit that the idea would be a practical way to help link education and business.
The idea was one of dozen different suggestions from some of the 100 participants of the Productivity stream at today's summit, just prior an afternoon of brainstorming sessions that were expected to generate many more.
With 2650 secondary schools across the country, the challenge would be for firms to adopt up to 27 schools - from the least to the most advantaged - and provide mentors or practical support on areas such as information technology and human resources.
``I meet all the time with representatives of the top 100 businesses who want to give back,'' she said.
``I also visit a lot of schools and in many of those schools students rarely would have access to adults who can talk to them about what it is like to succeed in our society.
``...Those top 100 could provide mentors for people about what succeeding in life is like.
``They could provide work experience for students at the appropriate point and they could provide the knowledge and expertise they have got in-house to school councils, on things like IT knowledge or human resource knowledge that they might have on tap but which schools might not have access to.''
On a similar theme, Ernesto Peralta, has suggested a "peace corp" of retired Australians who could be engaged across the community providing training and mentoring.
The theme of collaboration and sharing information between schools, training providers, higher education and industry permeated many of the discussions in the Productivity session - one of 10 different topics being covered by the summit of 1000 delegates.
A teacher from Victoria, Gail Davidson, said the acknowledging and encouraging the ``interconnectedness'' of modern education, careers and the needs industry was essential.
``I would hope that there would be some sort of link that says you can't just do this research, it has to be research that is connected with business, schools or whatever,'' she said.
NSW education and training public servant Marie Persson adopted a similar approach in a different session stressing the need for greater collaboration across government, industry and educational institutions in what they were doing and where they were spending their money.
At the end of the first sessions of the two day summit, the groups had devised a range of draft goals that would steer their discussions: the ambition that all children would be ready for school when they started, that education not be tied to institutional demands of when you start and when you finish, that participation should mean helping people access they work the wanted at the level they chose and that by 2020 there should be a doubling of both public and private spending on research and development.
While some participants favoured setting targets for increasing workplace participation, other resisted the idea and said a greater emphasis was needed on the quality of the contribution.
Indigenous representatives, such Professor Marcia Langton, said all available human resources in Australia, such as young indigenous people but increasingly rural white people as well, should be job ready before bringing in skilled migrants and guest workers.
Business executive Ken Loughnan, however, warned that by 2020 Australia would need an additional one million workers, which meant that the needs could not be met within Australia alone.
Others warned that skills shortages were hitting businesses now and they did not have time to wait for an increase in the numbers of job ready workers.
Western Australian academic Marilynne Paspaley said that the restrictions on the movement of labour should be reduced, making its flow similar to the flow of capital.
An NSW academic Marion Baird said the demands being placed on women in the modern society meant a paid maternity scheme was need as a matter of urgency.
``We are expecting women to both participate in the workforce and producing more children; we need to do both and we need to pay for it,'' she said to loud applause.
``We need that on the agenda for 2020 and before that by 2010 at least.''
Siddhartha Chakrabarti, who attended the youth summit last week, believed it should be expanded to fathers as well. That summit proposed that the Government introduce a scheme of 14 weeks at the minimum wage supplemented by the employer at a rate of 25 per cent of normal salary.
Bruce Chapman, an academic who helped developed the higher education contribution scheme where university students pay for their degree when they take paid employment, said the scheme could be expanded to all other forms of education and skills training.
A policy director at progressive Think Tank Per Capita, Michael Cooney, said there needed to be more thought on getting private investment into the development of early childhood education, identified as a crucial way of making sure children were ready to learn when they hit schools.
``We haven't talked at all about how you get more private income into these areas through better design of markets,'' he said.
Federal minister for small business Craig Emerson offered his own version of an ambition for the summit's productivity session to consider.
``By 2020 every Australia fundamentally believes that every child who is born in Australia has the same talent, the same capacity to have a fulfilling life and we then invest and ensure that those talents are unleashed,'' he said.
Participant Lucia Macali said that more thought needed to be given when designing policies, or building to those who suffered impairment.
There should be a general principle that policies and buildings should ``meet most of the needs of most of the people most of the time''.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Monday, April 14, 2008
Social and Community Entrepreneurs, Virgin Unite and more
The Media Man Australia profile on Social and Community Entrepreneurs has been updated.
Have a good look at the great work of Virgin Unite, who we are pro activivly doing our litle bit for.
Best Regards
Greg Tingle
Director
Media Man Australia
Have a good look at the great work of Virgin Unite, who we are pro activivly doing our litle bit for.
Best Regards
Greg Tingle
Director
Media Man Australia
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Two-thirds of Aussies more positive to Earth Hour firms - B&T - 31st March 2008
Almost two-thirds of Australians said they felt more positive toward a company if it took part in Earth Hour, while just under half said a firm’s participation would make them more likely to use their products or services, according to research out today.
Figures from AMR Interactive which carried out a survey on behalf of Earth Hour organisers WWF found that 47% of those questioned agreed and 15% strongly agreed that a company’s participation in Earth Hour would make them more positive toward it, while 33% of the 3393 questioned agreed and 10% strongly agreed that this would make them more likely to use its products and services. When asked if participation would make them more likely to recommend the company to family and friends, 32% agreed and 10% strongly agreed.
The online survey was started the moment Earth Hour started at 8pm on Saturday.
Figures comparing people’s attitudes in Sydney last year to this show that 60% felt positive toward a participating Earth Hour company, compared to 51% last year. 42% said they were more likely to use their products this year, compared to 33% in 2006, while 40% said they were more likely to recommend the company to family friends up from 32% last year.
“Earth Hour has moved from being an event that simply encourages people to turn their lights out. It clearly now has a tangible effect on how people view and organisation and its products,” Gary Wilkinson, managing director of AMR Interactive said.
“How a company operates within the environmental field is starting to be noticed by employees. However, there is still considerable scepticism that exists around the environmental claims made by businesses. Businesses will need to provide continuing evidence of their commitment to the environment and climate change issues.”
AMR Interactive surveyed 3393 Australian adults living in capital cities about their attitudes and participation rates for Earth Hour 2008. Results show that an average of 58% of Australian adults living in capital cities took part in this year’s event.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Earth Hour
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
Figures from AMR Interactive which carried out a survey on behalf of Earth Hour organisers WWF found that 47% of those questioned agreed and 15% strongly agreed that a company’s participation in Earth Hour would make them more positive toward it, while 33% of the 3393 questioned agreed and 10% strongly agreed that this would make them more likely to use its products and services. When asked if participation would make them more likely to recommend the company to family and friends, 32% agreed and 10% strongly agreed.
The online survey was started the moment Earth Hour started at 8pm on Saturday.
Figures comparing people’s attitudes in Sydney last year to this show that 60% felt positive toward a participating Earth Hour company, compared to 51% last year. 42% said they were more likely to use their products this year, compared to 33% in 2006, while 40% said they were more likely to recommend the company to family friends up from 32% last year.
“Earth Hour has moved from being an event that simply encourages people to turn their lights out. It clearly now has a tangible effect on how people view and organisation and its products,” Gary Wilkinson, managing director of AMR Interactive said.
“How a company operates within the environmental field is starting to be noticed by employees. However, there is still considerable scepticism that exists around the environmental claims made by businesses. Businesses will need to provide continuing evidence of their commitment to the environment and climate change issues.”
AMR Interactive surveyed 3393 Australian adults living in capital cities about their attitudes and participation rates for Earth Hour 2008. Results show that an average of 58% of Australian adults living in capital cities took part in this year’s event.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Earth Hour
Social and Community Entrepreneurs
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