We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Custodians of the lands and waterways on which we work and live across Australia and to Elders of the past, present, and into the future.
We acknowledge their care over these lands for millennia and commit to remembering that the ground beneath our feet is infused with wisdom, stories, and songs that reach beyond our knowing.
We are committed to collaboration that furthers self-determination. As we go forward, we will continue to listen, learn, and be allies for a healing future.
About Fay Fuller Foundation
The Fay Fuller Foundation is a private philanthropic organisation in South Australia. The focus of our
giving is to drive change around impactful, purposeful, and people centred philanthropic funding. We believe that communities are the experts in their own lives and centre community in everything we do.
Our philanthropic practice is underpinned by our principles
We are a principles based Foundation, meaning our principles underpin everything we do and guide our work. Our principles are active and embedded in the structure of our organisation. We use our principles to measure and evaluate our impact, to inform when, where and how we grant and most importantly, to influence how we show up as partners. Learn more about our principles.
While metrics aren’t able to fully tell the story of our impact and the impact of our partners’ work, they do provide a snapshot of some important numbers for this year.
$3,357,420.25 Granted
Community work doesn’t happen according to a financial or calendar year and our granting cycles reflect this. We have partners starting and finishing work at different times, many of whom we partner with for multiple years.
53 Grant Partners
The above data represents two partial financial years and only accounts for grants that have been paid, excluding funds committed but not yet invoiced for. Grants have been allocated according to a primary focus area, however many of our grants are intersectional e.g. some of our Mental Health grants also supported Aboriginal Community Controlled organisations.
Fay Fuller Foundations Year in Grantmaking
Holding Community at the heart of everything we do, our priority is to support conditions where communities are empowered to make decisions based on their needs and assume ownership in driving future focused change.
Our grantmaking is unique in several ways
The Foundation’s grantmaking encompasses a range of funding types, with the shared intention of supporting the conditions for community-determined approaches to support wellbeing across South Australia. These include long-term initiatives, shorter-term explorative opportunities, as well as responsive and collaborative funding.
We prioritise the change our partners are working towards, creating the conditions for our partners to be flexible and evolve their work with the community as they go.
We work alongside our partners to understand the ripples of change that occur along the way and support them in pursuing advocacy and influencing opportunities connecting them across our networks where possible.
Internally and with our partners, we listen and learn with community and use reflective practices to inform future strategies that start paving the path towards long term change.
Read more about our trust based granting practice here.
What this looked like in 2023
In 2023, our grantmaking continued to be invested in understanding and building pathways for person-centred approaches to preventative mental health and the conditions for wellbeing through six new Spark Partners and ongoing funding to four Discovery Partners.
Strategic Partnerships across our focus areas were in a space of transitioning within their work and in partnership with the Foundation; reflecting on the experience, their achievements and learnings, and considering how it might look to take these forward after funding.
Investment into regional place-based mental health initiative Our Town continued. Now in year three of its journey we are learning more about how to support the conditions for community-led and owned approaches to thrive and capturing the direct outcomes and ripples of change that come from this way of working.
We continued to support the First Nations Philanthropic Funding Working Group to establish a First Nations-led model of funding. Early in 2023 this meant engaging with communities to understand priorities, needs, and aspirations for future wellbeing and by late 2023 had transitioned to designing ways in which community can be centred in and become involved in this model.
In addition, we supported the development of the first grant round determined by the First Nations Philanthropic Funding Working Group. Story of Place grants across 15 different community groups and regions aim to create space for connection and collective wellbeing through bringing community together to create their own strengths-based narratives.
Through active participation in our sector and the ecosystems and networks of our focus areas, we had the privilege of funding shorter-term and leveraged opportunities that looked to strengthen knowledge, capability, connection, and evidence for working differently.
Partner feature
Seeds of Affinity & UniSA - Pathways for Women
Seeds of Affinity is a volunteer run community based organisation developed in response to the absence of non-punishing interventions for women when they leave prison.
Established by and for women with lived prison experience, Seeds of Affinity provides social support for women exiting the prison system as well as support to women within prison, ranging from court support and advocacy, to toiletries packages for new prisoners.
Their on-the-ground work builds power, solidarity, self worth, and a sense of belonging during the difficult transition between prison and the community.
Currently, through a Discovery Grant and in partnership with the University of South Australia, Seeds of Affinity are developing their own chatbot through which women are sharing their lived and living experience to support others in navigating key steps post-release.
We sat down with Seeds of Affinity Board Chair and UniSA researcher, Dr Michele Jarldorn, for a conversation about Seeds of Affinity, their Discovery work, and their vision to take hold of tech and use it for good.
We hope you’ll spend time getting to know the story of Seeds and their work, in Michele’s own words.
Our approach to evaluation mirrors our trust-based approach to granting and looks to understand how we are showing up as a partner, how our partners are going about their work, and our collective contributions to shared goals.
Informed by data collected through internal and partner impact logs, interviews with grant partners, informal check-ins, and stories shared with us, our end of year data roll-up and reflection identified hotspots on our theory of change where there was strong evidence of impact. The overarching finding was that, in most areas, we had progressed along our theory of change, while highlighting that some outcomes may have longer change journeys than others.
Read more about our SIML framework development here.
Hearing this narrative and feeling valued
Seeing a path to get involved
Investing in community creates impact
Sharing learnings and evidence
New parts of the community hearing this narrative* and feeling valued for their experience
Through the expansion of this narrative via our partnerships and networks we’ve seen a growth and shift in the types of organisations and community groups engaging with the Foundation and applying for grants.
By supporting organisations to work with their communities in a strength-based way that values community experience and expertise our partners are observing greater recognition within their communities of the importance and value their perspectives bring.
*In our TOC ‘narrative’ refers to a strength-based and LEx informed narrative for MH and wellbeing that puts community in the driver's seat.
New parts of the community hearing this narrative* and feeling valued for their experience
Through the expansion of this narrative via our partnerships and networks we’ve seen a growth and shift in the types of organisations and community groups engaging with the Foundation and applying for grants.
By supporting organisations to work with their communities in a strength-based way that values community experience and expertise our partners are observing greater recognition within their communities of the importance and value their perspectives bring.
*In our TOC ‘narrative’ refers to a strength-based and LEx informed narrative for MH and wellbeing that puts community in the driver's seat.
New parts of community seeing a path to get involved in developing new responses
This outcome is the next step along the same path as the above. As new parts of the community feel valued for their perspective and see their lived experience in a new light many of them recognise a role for themselves in shaping contextual, relevant, and accessible pathways that support the conditions for wellbeing and mental health.
Evidence of this includes the deep involvement of community members across our partners projects who are not consulting or advising but are shaping, supporting, and at times leading the work.
Read more about one partner’s experience with radical co-design.
Evidence that investing in community capability to lead initiatives creates greater impact
By supporting our partners to centre community in their work and strengthen capability of community members to be leading we are seeing ripples of impact that are far greater than the intended outcomes of a piece of work.
Some community members go on to take what they have learned back into their communities, into other organisations/ workplaces, and community groups, creating ripples of capability as they go.
Another result of community leadership within projects are the opportunities that are uncovered that wouldn’t be recognised or valued enough to pursue if an outside person or organisation was leading the work.
The MCCSA Men’s Mental Health Connectors Program works with four culturally distinct men's groups to explore cultural contexts around mental health and wellbeing.
Their Discovery journey has built networks with local councils to source meeting places, addressed the challenge of maintaining confidentiality when using translators at services, built capability through MHFA training, and contributed new insights to their cultural IQ training program. None of these are core intended outcomes under their Discovery work, but instead, ripples of impact they have created through their work.
Funders hearing about the work directly from us and engaging with our learnings and evidence
Working and sharing openly is one of our principles in practice. Part of this includes meeting directly with other funders: philanthropic, government, corporate and others, to share what we are hearing from community, what we are learning with our partners, the evidence that is being generated, and our own experiences of practising trust-based partnership.
Our hope is that by working and sharing in this way we can encourage broader shifts in how funders show up in partnership with community, and how we think about prevention in mental health and wellbeing.
Despite incomplete reach metrics, the data indicates that in 2023, across the Foundation team, we openly shared our learnings and evidence with other funders through 20+ one-on-one meetings. In 2024 we’ll be looping back to understand what funding/ practice shifts this may have influenced.
Moving Toward Reconciliation
Over the past several years we have been on an internal change journey. This has seen us listening to learn, growing, in terms of our giving, our team, and our impact, defining our purpose, and most importantly, building relationships to collaborate in creating change. We see reconciliation as fundamental to this journey and the future wellbeing of our communities. In 2023, with the support of Nik&Co consultancy we took the next step on this journey in developing the Foundation’s inaugural Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan.
Our Reconciliation Action Plan is just one step on an ongoing path to reconciliation being part of who the Foundation is, and not just what it does.
Key Learnings and
what they mean for
us in 2024
Key learning No1
The parameters we set - that are informed by community - are in contrast with those of other funders and systems our partners are interacting with.
This can feel jarring for partners navigating between us and other systems with more traditional contracting/ reporting etc.
What we’re doing about it
We are working openly and actively sharing with other funders about how we partner and the conditions in place around our grants in attempts to influence shifts in the practice of other funders.
We offer to show up with our partners and support them to negotiate for more enabling conditions with other funders.
Key learning No2
The way we practise philanthropy is relational; showing up and spending time in place is important.
The purpose of this time isn’t to achieve an outcome, like delivering a workshop or facilitating a session, but about meeting people where they’re at, leading to a deeper understanding of context and closer connections.
What we’re doing about it
We prioritise time in our diaries throughout the year to go out and spend time in and with community.
We are active in networks and conversations to further help us to understand context, opportunities, and challenges and we spend time developing relationships with First Nations networks where there haven’t previously been philanthropic connections.
Key learning No3
There’s a difference between the components of the work and the principles and practice that underlie them; both need to be in place for good work to happen.
Other funders often ask us for insights into programs or initiatives we run and are wondering what the important components (e.g. long term funding or embedded evaluation) are that they should try to replicate - but philanthropic practice is more than the sum of its components. Instead, good practice is predicated on a deep commitment to working in a principled way.
What we’re doing about it
In these conversations, and more broadly, we are encouraging the sector and other funders to think deeply about the intention that underpins the work - their why - and not just the what or how.
By committing to holding true to the ‘why’ and carrying this through every aspect of philanthropic practice we have the best chance of creating conditions that enable good work to thrive and for the most impact to be achieved.