MCF held its 2008 AGM on Tuesday 18 November 2008 at KPMG. 

The year's activities were briefly outlined, highlighting the year’s funds under management, investment performance and $2.2m in grants distributed to charitable organisations and projects.

2007-08 presented MCF with many challenges. At the start of the 2007/08 financial year, MCF’s funds under management totaled $33.5m. Funds under management peaked in October 2007 with $35.6m and the year ended with $31.8m.

Ian McHutchison, the Chair of the MCF Finance Committee, outlined the role and responsibility of the Board, the Finance Committee and MCF’s investment managers, Carnbrea and Co. in the management of MCF investments. 

While the performance of the funds this year is broadly in line with the market deterioration for the second half of the financial year, MCF’s primary investment objective (CPI + 3% over rolling three years) was achieved. As at 30^th June 2008, the rolling three year performance was 25.24% compared to the benchmark of 19.92%.

Capital return on investments was -18.21%, with income return 5.4%.  Overall, a -12.81% return on investments was achieved.

Over the past 12 months 274 grants were made totalling $2.19m, a significant increase from the 2006/07 financial year when 169 grants totalling 1.45m were made. 62 funds are actively involved in grantmaking to community and not for profit organisations.

17 new sub-funds were established during 2007/08, bringing the total of MCF funds to 130. Donors contributed a total of $5.6m to funds during the year.

The AGM was also the venue for the launch of MCF’s latest product, Gumnut Accounts.

Scott Pape, a former investment advisor with one of Melbourne’s leading finance firms EL & C Baillieu and currently a media commentator, author and host his own radio show titled ‘The Barefoot Investor’ on 90.7 Syn FM launched the Gumnut Accounts, which provide the opportunity to establish a charitable endowment fund by making regular contributions and to build this into a named sub-fund.

Chris Arnold, MCF board member and inaugural Gumnut Account holder, with his partner, Margo Costanzo, described how the establishment of their Gumnut Account will be a family affair, with their children actively involved in contributing to the fund. For Chris and Margo, and their children, a Gumnut Account enables the establishment of a charitable fund, with a small investment, and provides the opportunity for family giving.

• More on Gumnut Accounts  

Annual Report / Financials

• Annual Report Document 2008 (4mb PDF)
  
• Audited Financial Reports 2007 2008 (PDF)
   

Melbourne Community Foundation (MCF) has recently established the National Community Foundation under its umbrella structure. The two new funds are the National Community Foundation Fund, a tax deductible fund and the National Community Foundation Extension Fund and non-tax deductible fund.

A number of companies have established or are planning to establish a sub-fund under our community foundation structure.

In Australia like other parts of the world, staff are becoming more engaged with their company's giving programs and CSR activities. Employees now look at prospective employer's CSR programs as one of the criteria to be considered before working for a company.  They often feel more motivated to work for a company they believe is concerned about its impact on society and the environment.

National corporate donors who want to work with MCF as well as engage staff at a national level have indicated it would be much easier with a fund which is seen to have a national reach than a Melbourne reach.  Through a sub-fund with NCF they have a vehicle for a workplace giving program and they can support organisations and charities both in Australia and overseas through registered Australian Charities.

In addition to MCF's grantmaking expertise philanthropic consultants in Sydney and Brisbane have been employed to work with donors to research and identify projects to support.

MCF has also launched a new site  www.nationalcf.org.au

The National Community Foundation website is designed to assist Victorian based organisations who want to partner with their staff, stakeholders and communities wherever they are within Australia, and build an endowment fund to support an on-going charitable giving program.

•  Click here to view our Community Foundation structure in PDF Format

Women's Health Victoria, a non government organisation which operates as a state-wide women's health promotion, information and advocacy service.  WHV have an endowment sub-fund with MCF.  On 24 July they launched 'The Index' website.  'The Index' is a new initiative of WHV and highlights sources of gendered data to assist policy development, planning, research and service provision. Facilitating the use of gendered data will result in a more detailed picture of the lives of Victorian women, achieving better health outcomes for women and men. The Index is an online gateway to evidence-based health and wellbeing data on Victorian women and girls across a wide variety of indicators relevant to a social model of health.  

Link:   www.theindex.org.au

The new MacroMelbourne Liveable City report document was released today.

The document outlines MarcoMelbourne's vision for our city as one for all its people and provides information about the program and how to get involved. A link to the report in PDF format is provided below.

Media Contact Details:

Trudy Wyse 0419 581 678

Karen Mahlab 0417 538 001

• MacroMelbourne Liveable City - Sept 2007 (3mb PDF)
  

On June 6th MCF held a donor get-together at the home of board member Annie Duncan. This function provided an opportunity for our fast growing band of donors to meet each other and catch up on latest developments at MCF.

A highlight of the function was hearing about the development of the where there's hope DVD -  a collaboration between  Orygen Youth Health and 3 of MCF's sub-funds -Sally Oatley Memorial Fund, Morawetz Social Justice Fund and Alf and Meg Steele Fund.

One of the donors spoke about the background to his family's interest in supporting mental health initiatives for young people and their families. Simon Dodd from Orygen provided some background to the DVD and showed some excerpts - following the stories of 3 families and their journey after their child has first been diagnosed with a mental illness.

The DVD is moving and powerful and will be a key resource for schools, health and support organisations, as well as the broader community.

Go to www.orygen.org.au for further information about the DVD to order a copy of it.

International expert agrees to join MCF's Board.

Peter Hero, international philanthropy expert and senior adviser to the USA's Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF), has agreed to join the Board of Melbourne Community Foundation (MCF) after taking part in week-long activities to mark the foundation's 10th anniversary.

As part of his visit to Australia, Peter Hero was a guest speaker at a number of functions and workshops aimed at highlighting the benefits of community foundations to Australian professional advisors, corporates, community groups and donors. He also participated in the Board's two day annual retreat.

Mr Hero is credited with growing SVCF's assets from US$7 million to over US$1.6 billion, making it the fourth largest community foundation in the US, one which now distributes up to US$3 million a week in grants.

The highlight of MCF's 10th Anniversary was a dinner dance held at historic Abbotsford Convent.

During the evening, founding MCF Board member, Adjunct Professor Hayden Raysmith, led an engaging, amusing and often confronting conversation between Peter Hero and Peter Singer, Professor of Bio-ethics at Princeton University.

Responding to the topic 'The values that underpin philanthropic giving', both related their experiences of 'modern' philanthropists, especially in the US, who have made their fortune at a young age through the dot.com boom.

Peter Hero, with his greater experience of local place-based giving at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, stressed the difference that strategic philanthropic giving can make in local communities in the US, while Peter Singer focused more on the extraordinary impact that similar amounts of funding can have on alleviating problems of world health, such as TB and malaria.

Mr Hero also took part in a workshop hosted jointly by MCF and Changemakers Australia at the Australian Catholic University's Melbourne city campus. The workshop focused on how community foundations can play a leadership role in identifying and responding to community issues, in partnership with the community organisations they are supporting.

His message revolved around the role of community foundations in convening and collaborating to make social change. He reinforced the point that community foundations It turned out that every one of the groups had major fundraising projects for the next three years, projects that would see enormous competition between groups whose executives had never met each other.

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation proposed working collaboratively to raise a shared endowment which could contribute to sustainable funding for all the groups.

The collaboration raised an initial US$12million and under the agreed formula various arts groups were able to pay off their operating deficit, have a working cash reserve and a permanent endowment for the future.

Many of the donors were more willing to contribute to the endowment on the basis that it would be held and managed by the community foundation.

In this instance the community foundation was able to work with the arts community to attract funds that they could not raise individually and have an impact beyond the community foundation's own grantmaking capacity.

Hero's message to the business community explored new directions in corporate giving. He told a business breakfast hosted for MCF by the Committee for Economic Development (CEDA) and DLA Phillips Fox that there is a new style of corporate giving in the USA and that community foundations are at the forefront of engaging corporate giving.

He said that increasingly in American business corporate social responsibility - or CSR as it commonly described- is established as a corporate value which is included in a company's annual report. CSR is now part of business investment plans.

It figures in how business measures success and focuses on a whole range of opportunities such as volunteering, employee-advisor committees and loaned executives to the not-for-profit sector.

For corporates, CSR is an investment in community.

Melbourne Community Foundation's growth over ten years has seen the development and provision of many services and opportunities for donors and potential donors.

As a result we have produced a series of special brochures to highlight what the foundation does.

The brochures tell, in clear and simple language, the history of MCF, how it works and how to become involved. Each brochure targets a different aspect of MCF giving - from setting up a sub-fund, making a bequest, funding an education scholarship, corporate funds and work place giving, right through to information for professional advisors.

The brochures also highlight the advantages of establishing a community foundation sub-fund over other forms of philanthropic giving, including tax deductibility, low fund entry rate, small administrative costs and a 'one-stop' advice and research service into funding the charitable sector's "best practice" projects.

You can request copies of the brochures by calling MCF's office on (03) 9412 0412.