2021 Chair’s Report

Some of the crew at the 2021 Grant Awards Dinner

It is with great pleasure that I present the Chair’s Report for Impact100 WA for 2020-2021.

We were very proud to celebrate our 10^th anniversary dinner this year. I look back and am somewhat amazed about what has arisen from a simple idea between friends to annually make a large combined donation to charity. As discussions continued, they heard from another friend who had been on a study tour in the US about giving circles. Why gather 10 people when you could gather 100!! And so Impact100 WA began.

Over the years, we’ve seen some amazing outcomes: pilot projects being fully funded and expanded through government, corporate or philanthropic support. A wider recognition of small but mighty organisations that spread their services far and wide. Although we wish there wasn’t the need, it is heartening to know that we have helped children attend school clothed and shod, street present people are looked after medically, outback employment & fresh food are provided, a start-up sensory theatre arts company now connects with children with special needs not just in WA, but Sydney and New York, indigenous Uni students complete degrees and set themselves up for life, young people at risk turn their lives around and become upskilled and employed. Impact100 WA does make a real difference and funds pilot projects that may not otherwise receive funding.

There are so many great stories we wanted to gather and acknowledge the 10 years of winners. So we have produced a booklet that gives an update on all past major grant winners since inception. Thanks very much to our long-time supporters Scotts, who kindly sponsored the printing of all our booklets.

In 2021 we saw Donor numbers increase to 235, compared to 192 in 2020. There were 61 new donors and $299,350 was raised ($232,827 for 2020). We were very pleased to have even more interaction than ever before and hope this remains once people start travelling again.

It is wonderful to see a continuation of multiple grant awards. From 2015 onwards, we have awarded more than one Primary Grant each year. This year, for the very first time, we were excited to announce that we could make 3 major grants of $100,000! $300,000!!

Since launching in May 2012, Impact100 WA on behalf of its donors have directly gifted $2,065,000 to West Australian Not for Profits. Excitingly at least $1.1m in additional funds has been donated by our donors to organisations they have been introduced to by Impact100 WA. We were extremely impressed by what the 2020 cohort winners managed to achieve over the course of the year.

In 2021 (after a change in 2020 as a covid response), we reverted to our standard application criteria. Once again our focus areas were:

Arts & Culture, Education, Environment, Family & Community and Health & Wellness.

We were able to hold all assessment meetings and events in person, but had the added option for some focus group meetings of zoom as well.

Successfully taking home one of our $100,000 Primary Grants in 2021 were:

ArtsLaw – Artists in the Black – Addressing Wills and Intestacy

ArtsLaw provide free or low cost specialised legal advice, education and resources to the arts sector nationally. Artists in the Black delivers targeted services to ATSI artists, communities and organisations.

They plan to provide, in situ, free services including will drafting and legal rights to indigenous artists and their communities in WA, in order to help them preserve their legacies and ensure they are in control of where their assets go when they die.

This will involve the co-ordination of sending pro-bono lawyers on 7 trips to 18 communities across remote WA, assisting 520 people.

Cycling Without Age – More Rides, More People, More Places

Cycling Without Age engage volunteers to provide free, accessible, inclusive, recreational trishaw rides to older adults and people with disabilities who cannot ride for themselves – to improve their physical, social and emotional well-being.

They plan to expand the Perth operation with the purchase of a vehicle and the employment of a part time co-ordinator. They were onto the vehicle purchase straight away and have “Joy” their van which can carry 2 trishaws snugly inside.

This will enable 2,160 more passengers to ride, more volunteers to take part and it will raise the profile of CWA.

FINWA – Peer-led Self-Advocacy Workshops

FIN WA provide support and advocacy for birth families of children subject to, or at risk of, interventions in the child protection system.

Their plan is to train and employ peers to become Family Partners who will then co-design and lead workshops for families involved with child protection. They will provide information, support, resources to build confidence and helpful strategies for moving forward.

This will assist 100 families over 2 yrs.

And the Runners-Up (with a $10,000 grant each) were:

Trillion Trees – Healing Australia’s Wheatbelt, One tree at a time

Trillion Trees bring people together to grow, plant, establish and maintain trees to achieve a healthy and biodiverse environment and a more engaged community.

Special Olympics – Inclusive Sport in Schools and Communities WA program

Special Olympics WA provide inclusive training and competition in a variety of sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities.

Summary of Events

Impact100 WA is about more than just making a donation. Donors can be involved as much as they like and truly get to know the wonderful charity scene in WA and meet many marvellous enthusiastic people undertaking great work. You can also meet like-minded people and share your knowledge amongst friends.

After missing out on holding our Kickstart event in 2020, we were pleased to be able to hold it in 2021. We appreciate FORM enabling us to hold our event there and allow us to view interesting exhibitions at the same time. Before we knew it we had received our applications and were into the focus group meetings. We were able to convene in person for the most part, but some donors were very grateful to be able to join from the security of their own homes via Zoom. As we moved onto the assessment nights, donors showed how keen they are to learn about organisations they can support and both were very well attended. This led us to trial a new electronic voting system, rather than our traditional show of hands. Definitely an improvement. And so to our site visits. They were as powerful as ever and each one inspired us with their dedication, ingenuity and ability to create positive change. With our finalists chosen and the borders firmly closed, we were ready for our Grant Awards Dinner.

At our first dinner we were excited to have 100 people in the room. This year, we had to close our bookings 2 weeks early, with 290 people eager to be part of the celebrations. The sense of community, the warmth in the room, the level of expectation – none of these can be replicated online. With the additional people, there was even more of a buzz in our venue at Frasers Kings Park than normal.

There was such a positive atmosphere in the room. It inspired one to donor agree to match fund up to $10,000 (10 new donors) on the night. When we in fact had 13 new people sign up on the night, they agreed to extend the matched funding to all the new people. This was extended further when they paid out a total pledge of $15k.

In addition, another generous donor decided to make an additional donation to both runners up for $10,000 each, giving the runners up $20k on the night.

Generous Australians

As part of Impact100 WA’s mission to inspire greater philanthropy, we once again hosted our Generous Australian event. Dr Bruce Robinson chatted with Paul Chamberlain at The Grove Library.

Bruce shared that the motivation for starting The Fathering Project came as a result of spending so much time with dying men who were wishing they had had a better relationship with their kids. He has come to recognise that fathers are the most powerful untapped source to impact positively on a child’s life and that kids need a strong and appropriate father figure in their life.

Bruce had some helpful tips to share for dads who are grappling with the challenges brought up by social media or working FIFO.

His biggest piece of advice was to make your kids feel that they are special to you and a way to achieve that is through a Dad Date (but no discussing their grades or the time they spend on video games!). He was very much also aligned with promoting impact “you are the match that lights the fire”.

It is extremely exciting to see the increase in the engagement of our donors in all areas of Impact100 WA from visiting charities, coordinating sub-committees, as well as just providing time and mentoring to a broad range of charities in Western Australia.

Young Impact

Under the supervision of Gavin Cooke, Young Impact100 was an important success this year with school aged children getting further involved and having many great ideas to raise the donation themselves. This year they donated $2,600 to Special Olympics and Eat Up. This now takes the total raised by this enterprising and considerate group to over $23,800.

Financials

Please see attached a copy of our Financials for the year. Please note that we have generated a set of Financial Statements, even though no money goes directly to Impact100 WA’s accounts. The reason for this is that Australian Communities Foundation provide the back-office services of accepting the donations, issuing the tax-deductible receipts and then distributing money to the charities under our guidance.

All money that is donated to Impact100 from members is distributed out to charities. Members are asked when they sign up if they would like to give an additional $100 which does help for some small administrative expenses. We appreciate that a substantial number of donors now select this option and allows us to help meet our minimal expenses.

Our financial year runs from 1 December to 30 November annually to align with our grant cycle.

ArtsImpact

As a spin off from what we are doing, a new giving circle was launched in October 2021 called ArtsImpact. Impact100 WA will still also have an arts focus area, but the new ArtsImpact will additionally be able to support individual artists. Some of our past founding committee members are now involved in this start up and quite a few people are donors to both giving circles. Best of luck to ArtsImpact

Committee

I would like to acknowledge our hard-working committee in overseeing Impact100 WA. The entire committee puts a lot of effort into running the organisation, but I would especially like to thank Sophie Chamberlain and Emma Bedbrook who have put in significant amounts of work managing Impact100 WA this year.

Our other continuing committee members are Bruce Byrnes who is our treasurer and financial man, Cecile Crochu is a huge asset in our grants team with her brilliant insight into the financials and management of organisations. Come grant review time, Cecile takes on a huge workload and we see her true skill set come to the fore. Wendy Scott-Hamilton has much experience in corporate not-for-profits. Karen Cheng is our social media and website whiz, Michelle Morgan has much experience in the financial services sector and is a great project co-ordinator and Matthew Gent is a director at Hale Legal who answers all our legal queries. Lucy Westcott is stepping down in 2022 from the main committee, but happily will stay involved in the grants sub-committee. We thank her for her always considered useful input into grants, legal and administration.

A big shout out and thank you to our wonderful focus area co-chairs, financial review committee and all those who have helped with, organising Young Impact and other events. A special thank you to Jo Kirker for all her help on the grants sub-committee in 2021 in helping re-write our grant application documentation and Gavin Cooke for organising Young Impact. Did you know since inception we have had 23 focus area co-chairs? A few have been back to volunteer year after year and their expertise is invaluable, especially helping new people in the role. If anyone new would like to become a focus co-chair, we would love to hear from you. Without them and prepared donor attendees at the focus groups, site visits and assessment night, we would not be where we are tonight. Once again, it’s impressive to see the involvement and commitment of so many donors who learn and enjoy the assessment process. It was pleasing to have around 50 attendees at both our assessment nights. It really was a community effort and democratic process to get to our 5 wonderful finalists.

Summary

I look forward to a successful 2022 year, where we build on our last 10 years and look forward to another great decade. I would urge you to encourage family and friends to become involved in the wonderful group that is Impact100 WA. The more donors we have, the more we can support the WA community.

Yours sincerely,

On behalf of Impact100 WA

Simone Eley

Chair