Our orgin story

In the early 2000s visiting American Gary Tabor, then a staffer working for the Wilburforce Foundation, found himself unable to locate any Australian environmental philanthropists. He produced a booklet titled Australia’s Conservation Paradox: A Report for the International Conservation Community outlining opportunities for US funders to consider giving to conservation issues in Australia. This booklet was noticed by Martin Copley, an Englishman-turned-West Australian and a major funder of nature conservation in Australia as founder and chair of Australian Wildlife Conservancy, who contacted Gary to let him know that environmental funders did exist in Australia.  

Gary urged Martin to attend the next US Environmental Grantmakers Association annual retreat and in 2003 Martin went along, accompanied by a trustee from each of the Poola and Ian Potter Foundations, the CEO of The Myer Foundation and a staff member from the Pratt Foundation. Enormously impressed by the collaborative spirit and energy of funders in the EGA, this group of five resolved to explore setting up a similar organisation in Australia.  

2004 saw Martin back at the US Environment Grantmakers Association retreat, this time in Hawaii and this time accompanied by the Poola Foundation staffer Amanda Martin and Myer Foundation adviser Dr Barry (BJ) Traill. Again they all came back excited by the possibility they could see for a similar coming together of environmental philanthropists in Australia. 

The travellers identified several aspects to what made the US Environment Grantmakers Association gatherings so inclusive, vibrant and inspiring:  

• It was a funders-only event: there was no hassling from NGOs or businesses and no pitching of projects, creating a safe space for open discussion and dialogue. 
• The discussions were informed by presentations from the top experts in the field, generating strategic insights into both environmental problems and solutions. 
• There was a long history of cooperation among foundations with shared objectives and approaches, and a spirit of sharing and collaboration. 

Convinced of the potential value of an Australian version, Poola trustees Eve Kantor and Mark Wootton asked Amanda Martin to convene a gathering of Australian environmental funders and hold a field trip with funders to Cape York. 

Meanwhile, back in Melbourne, two other foundations had already joined forces to bring funders together to fund some big environmental problems that could not be solved by any of them alone. The Reichstein Foundation and the Mullum Trust had formed an informal environmental donors circle, whose biggest success was funding a campaign that stopped the catastrophic land clearing then happening in Queensland back in 2004, with major contributions coming from the Poola and The Myer Foundations and, from Sydney, the Purves Environmental Fund. 

In July 2006 Amanda coordinated a symposium at the beautiful Myer family home, Cranlana. It was attended by all the foundations already mentioned plus a whole range of other funders interested in environmental giving – a total of 80 people. They heard from Bruce Lourie from the Canadian Environmental Grantmakers Network, Professors Tim Flannery and Ian Lowe, then President of the Australian Conservation Foundation. They workshopped how an Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network could function, and by the end of the day the AEGN was born, founded on similar principles to its North American colleagues: A safe space for funders, access to expert information, and opportunities to collaborate. These principles, along with the collegial relationship with overseas ‘siblings’, have remained fundamental to our mission and practice.  

Two years later the legal and administrative arrangements for the organisation were in place, and in 2018 we celebrated 10 years of operation. As of March 2019 there have been 12 conferences and symposia, 10 field trips and too many brilliant speakers to count talking about the critical environmental issues of our time. Membership has grown from 0 to 165 (in 2020), and research suggests that $120 million of additional funding to the environment has been generated, between June 2017 and October 2020. A considerable portion of those funds have combine from collaborations between members or inspired by the AEGN network.

Sadly, though, the environmental challenges have continued to grow, with climate change, habitat loss and species extinction all increasing at a frightening rate. Our work is far from done, as it ramps up its work with its members to turn these trajectories around. 

Our timeline

This timeline is in reverse chronological order.