Annual Letter
2024

Looking forward,
looking back.

A message from our Chairs & Foundation Lead

Welcome to our first annual letter. We’re celebrating 60 years of supporting the Victorian community this year and we wanted to let you know about some changes at the William Buckland Foundation. These changes are designed to focus on Australia’s most valuable resource – young people.

Our 2025-30 strategic plan puts children and their families at the forefront, with a clear purpose to improve the wellbeing and futures of Victorian children and young people in greatest need.

In our communications with you we’ve replaced the traditional annual report with features throughout the year highlighting the invaluable work of our community partners. 2024 stories included Sacred Heart Mission, the Beautiful Bunch and the Investing in Rural Communities Futures collaboration. Our annual letter will also give you a helicopter view of the past year of granting, investment and impact investing.

Looking forward

Our strategy 2025-2030

William Buckland, an entrepreneur with great drive, energy and generosity wanted his Foundation to support ‘a wonderful country and a wonderful people’.

Over time the Foundation has adjusted priorities in pursuit of sustainable social benefit – moving from ‘bricks and mortar’, aid & relief, programmatic interventions and increasingly to breaking the cycle of disadvantage. Our new strategy reflects the values of William Buckland and is based on an analysis of the past 60 years of our grant-making. It centres learning and sharing knowledge, collaboration within a rich ecosystem and aligns with trust based and effective philanthropy. This means longer and stronger partnerships, untied funding (where possible), bigger grants, a commitment to support impactful organisations and to create space to listen, reflect and adapt.

Community driven philanthropy continues to be a priority for the Foundation. Communities tell us what success looks like and we do what we can to support their aspirations, with the voices of those most impacted forming part of any solution. Here support wraps around key tenets of a strong community: health, education, employment and connection.

How we will grant

From 1 July 2025 we will have two funding streams:

1. Thriving Places – supporting community-led change, putting children and families first

2. Sustainable Futures – connecting young people to the jobs and skills of the future and connecting education with future industries.

Our strategic priorities support:

  • demonstrating that transformational change is possible
  • equity of access for children in Victoria’s areas of greatest need
  • foresight and innovation in climate and agriculture
  • First Nations’ led responses for their children.

Looking back on 2024

Investments and impact

An Investment Manager review was undertaken this year. The requirement for long term capital growth along with high yield to deliver on granting commitments remains paramount. Trustees also carefully considered the need for diversification and complementarity of investment managers to manage risk, whilst taking advantage of opportunities in international stocks.

The Foundation Trustees are now advised by: Equity Trustees Limited, Evans & Partners, Eight Bays International Fund and Australian Impact Investments.

The management expense ratio 0.91% is appropriate to the size and complexity of the Foundation with the Corpus being valued at $166.6m at 30 June 2024.

Detail, including our Special purpose financial report for year ended 30 June 2024 can be found on the ACNC website.

The team at Australian Impact Investments (Aii) have supported us to deploy, manage and measure our impact investments. Aii’s pipeline of private market opportunities has supported the William Buckland Foundation to expand and accelerate our allocation, finding high-quality deals that align with our mission.

The Foundations’ focus is on ensuring the impact investments are delivering both financial and impact returns at a consolidated level. Currently we have $4.1m deployed across 7 investments with a further $3.4m planned over the next 12–18 months.

We’re now measuring the alignment of our impact investments as well as grant making to our mission. Viewing this more holistically will be valuable as we continue deepening the impact of the Foundation.

Grants

Over the past year we distributed $5.5m to 57 grantees, with close to $147m being distributed since the Foundation was established in 1965.

We believe the strategy to forge deeper partnerships with fewer partners will create more impact in the longer term.

We are committed to working with our current grant partners to support them as we transition to our new strategy.

Team

Delivering on William Buckland’s aspirations relies on a dedicated team. He wanted his trustees to be “people of vision and Australia minded”.

Dr Jane Gilmour OAM and David Williamson have both retired as trustees after 17 and six years of dedicated service respectively. We thank them for their outstanding contributions. Current trustees Jodi Kennedy, Miriam Silva AM and Stephen Carpenter are all providing valuable insights and energy for the Foundation as we evolve our investment, impact investment and granting.

Thanks go to the Foundation team at Equity Trustees Alex White, Amanda Sartor and Emily Fraresso for their invaluable contributions. Patrick Hooton also shared his Artificial Intelligence expertise in 2024 as WBF participant in the Observership program.

As we implement our 2025-30 strategy from 1 July, we look forward to exploring a sharper focus and to learning from, and sharing with highly valued colleagues and communities.

Jenny McGregor AM
Foundation Chair

Ross Barker
IC & A&R Committee Chair

Ferdi Hepworth
Foundation Lead

The Trustees and William Buckland Foundation team acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands we live and work on across Victoria. William Buckland was born on the lands of the Taungurung People, the Traditional Custodians of Mansfield and we pay respect to Elders past and present. Equity Trustees LTD is a co-trustee of the William Buckland Foundation ABN 231 960 05019