Engaging in Education
Client background
Mike and Sue did not have their own Foundation, but were always interested in education. It started with their own four children who attended three different private schools in Brisbane. Over a 14 year period, Mike and Sue had donated over $1m to those schools. Some of those donations were quite lumpy, as a response to school building appeals, but other more recent donations supported scholarships for financially and socially disadvantaged children.
On the same team but with different ideas
Mike had made his money in technology. He continued to work as an Executive Director for a privately owned software company that had recently begun investing in educational software opportunities. Though he was not political, education interested Mike in the broadest sense, and he saw enormous opportunities for ed-tech to change the way schools and teachers operated. If Mike was reluctant to get too highbrow about education policy, Sue wasn’t. She had strong views based on what had worked and not worked for their children, on everything from class sizes to teacher pay, to teacher training and what to do about poor teachers.
When their youngest child left school four years ago, they realised they had an opportunity to do their philanthropy differently. They did not want to go through the trouble of setting up a Foundation or a PAF. Their financial adviser had confirmed this approach did not disadvantage them. They had set their sights on increasing the sophistication of their donations, and at the same time increasing their annual giving to around $300,000 a year. It was obvious in the first six months that they had such different ideas about where money was well spent, that they decided to work with Keith from PSI Managers to help them make their grant selections.
They had such different ideas about where money was well spent that they decided to work with PSI Managers to help them make their grant selections.
Trialing help with their philanthropy
They trialed the arrangement with Keith for three months and liked the fact that Keith was lean but productive with his time. They wanted as much as possible of their funding to go to the causes they supported, and they realised Keith was capable of accessing many more workable ideas for funding than they could do on their own. He was also able to follow up with the work needed to implement those ideas and give them confidence that their money was well spent. After three months they agreed that Keith would work two days a month for them on an indefinite basis.
They realised Keith was capable of accessing many more workable ideas for funding than they could do on their own.
Trial passed; diving into strategy
After some months of debate and discussion with Keith they decided on three themes for their donations. The first theme was funding the use of education software, primarily to do with maths and literacy in disadvantaged primary schools. Keith helped Mike manage the separation between his business and his philanthropic interests in this area. Rather than giving away the software sold by his commercial firm, Keith encouraged Mike to make the financial donations to the schools. Mike and Sue thereby encouraged the schools to be clear about what would work for their students.
Theme 1: Technology
Mike’s business experience told him how much money was wasted through poor technology decisions that resulted from poor user commitment – he had always been critical of hand outs of computers or laptops to school kids; he believed it was the teaching applications that would really engender change. He also found this managed the separation of his business interests in an ethically satisfying way, and built better ownership from the schools about what they really wanted.
Theme 2: Teacher training
The second theme they settled on was teacher training. This was Sue’s passion. After some robust debates with Keith, Sue recognised that the real challenge was not only about collecting performance data that might help weed out poor teachers; she liked the idea of focusing their funds on attracting and keeping good young teachers. They decided to fund a program that coached and supported young teachers in their first three years on the job. Sue recognized that the nature of the teaching role was likely to change with the advances in ed-tech. She thought it was critical that the tech savvy young teachers were in the best position to take advantage of the new opportunities emerging for their profession.
Theme 3: Focusing efforts in a geographic area
The third theme was introduced by Keith and supported by Mike and Sue. It was about working with a community wide education program in a disadvantaged suburb of Melbourne. They had come to realise that no single input or program had the capacity to dramatically change education outcomes in this or any community. But working with a variety of service providers, from the police to welfare and allied health workers, to religious leaders, plus the local primary and high schools and kindergartens in one area was the key to the best use of funds. It gave them the best opportunity to have an impact and to know they were having an impact. After 12 months Mike and Sue found this the most fascinating part of their funding mix.
Mike and Sue continued to work with Keith over the next two years supporting the initiatives within these themes. There were a lot of personal learnings, much fun and a sense of immense satisfaction. After a discussion with their children and their accountants they decided to create a PAF and aimed to be granting around $500,000 a year to education issues across the country.
There were a lot of personal learnings, much fun and a sense of immense satisfaction.
Further opportunities for exploration
New issues had emerged in the last two years that now struck their interest. They asked Keith to follow up. Mike became very interested in how data sharing between government and community agencies in the Melbourne community program created a number of privacy challenges, and he found himself for the first time interested in that ‘policy’ issue.
Sue became interested in a challenging aspect of their education software funding. The agency delivering the program had struck problems with the number of young children in disadvantaged communities with ADD and ADHD. These children had great difficulty staying focused and controlling their impulses in any classroom. Sue was interested in finding out what initiatives elsewhere had been created to address this. She was exploring this with Keith, including reviewing a program in Ireland.