Over the past two weeks I’ve been approached by a handful of Community Managers and Sustainability Managers at large organisations asking for my advice on where they should donate their corporate philanthropic funds in response to the bushfire crisis. They, like many individuals and other businesses, were unsure where their money would be most impactful and what charitable organisations and causes most align with the values of their business and staff.
For example, several said their staff preferred that their funds go towards progressing the bigger picture of climate change mitigation and bush fire prevention, while team members from another organisation were particularly passionate about protection and conservation of wildlife populations. Equally, several individuals stated that they’d prefer to support more local, grass roots organisations over the larger more notable charities that may have already got their fair share of funding.
My first response was to look for guidance from ACNC and the other social sector peak bodies for a simple user-friendly guide. However, to my surprise, I could not find anything to ensure this outpouring of goodwill was distributed equally and addressed all various elements of this multifaceted issue.
So, in the absence of anything else, we have started to develop our own decision tree to help answer these questions for our clients and associates. It’s important to point out that this is only a quick draft that we whipped up in a few hours. It is certainly NOT an exhaustive list and only focusses on charities and not-for profits that are currently accepting cash donations.
This is where you come in…
If you have heard of a grass-roots charity or organisation doing great things on the ground that you think our clients and Edge should get behind, please reach out to me so I can add it to our list. My hope is that this will blossom into a diversified tree of giving!
Bushfire funding decision tree v4 (Click here for hi res version)
Max
