What we do

Engaged Philanthropy Initiatives

Our model challenges the traditional role of philanthropy in creating systems change

Photo courtesy: Eidos Institute

Photo courtesy: OneHealth International

To achieve the English Family Foundation vision we work towards an Australia where social enterprises are supported to thrive and reach scale to maximise their social impact and investment readiness, where learnings are shared and meaningful indicators of social impact are measured.

We believe in a model of philanthropy which flips the traditionally accepted role of the foundation within Australia, and to achieve this we have developed our “engaged philanthropy” model.

This approach recognises that philanthropy sits in a very privileged position and as such we believe we can use our years of experience, Our networks and our time to add value to the social enterprise sector over and above our grants and impact investments.

Our engaged philanthropy approach has three key components:

Right capital at the right time

Traditional grants to DGR1 organisations or impact investments.

Time for Impact Program

Pro bono Project Management, Advice Skills, Mentoring and Support.

Impact Broker

Curated networking, Collaboration and Aggregation.

Changemakers

Engaged Philanthropy

Examples of our Engaged Philanthropy projects

Mentoring social entrepreneurs: Allan English and AbilityMade

Mentoring social entrepreneurs: Allan English and AbilityMade

Since 2019 when the founders of AbilityMade, Johan du Plessis and Mel Fuller, have the toughest, hairiest problems that they really can’t solve they go to Allan English.
Social Enterprise World Forum 2022

Social Enterprise World Forum 2022

In 2017 when the bid to bring the Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) to Australia began the social enterprise sector in Australia was at a crucial point within its evolution.
Social Enterprise National Strategy (SENS)

Social Enterprise National Strategy (SENS)

Whilst the concept of a national strategy has been much discussed over the past two decades it was at the Social Enterprise Virtual Unconference in April 2020 that discussions became serious about how we might strengthen the sector over the long term.

What we do

Ignitor Fund

Building the ecosystem for imapct within the Australian social enterprise sector.