Message from Shemara Wikramanayake – Chair, Macquarie Group Foundation

In the 12 months ending 31 March 2018, the Macquarie Group Foundation and Macquarie staff globally contributed $A28.3 million to 1,500 non-profit organisations, as well as giving approximately 60,000 hours of their time through voluntary community service, including pro bono work and community board positions.

Our focus on the communities where Macquarie staff live and work helps to maximise our social impact by leveraging our staff time, expertise and networks as well as providing funding together with our staff. Since our inception in 1985, together with our staff, we have contributed $A330 million to community organisations around the world.

Supporting our staff

This year we continued to demonstrate Macquarie's support for employee community engagement. We matched over $A10 million of our staff’s fundraising efforts, one-off donations and regular payroll giving, supporting the causes they feel passionately about. We celebrated outstanding staff contributions to the community through our annual Macquarie Staff in the Community Awards. Individual winners and team awardees received $A10,000 to donate to the non-profit organisations they support while the office winner received $A20,000. Highly Commended awards of $A2,000 were also given.

Our fourth annual Foundation Week was held in October - a period where non-profits receive 'double-matching' of amounts raised up to $A5,000 by Macquarie teams as well as $A500 grants if volunteering takes place. More than $A2.3 million was distributed to multiple organisations around the world following a range of events held during the 2017 Foundation Week.

We also recognise the pro bono and leadership role staff play when serving on non-profit boards and are pleased that more than 200 employees gave back to the community sector in this way. We made $A10,000 donations to non-profit organisations where a staff member sits on the board.

Strategic goals

In 2017 the Foundation undertook a review of its strategic goals and set focus areas for 2017-2019. I’m pleased to report that we have made significant progress on each of these goals.

1. Following a review of our strategic grantmaking model, we launched our new grant focus area to increase alignment with Macquarie staff and to drive greater community impact. Going forward our grants will concentrate on supporting social and economic opportunities for young people in the communities where we live and operate. This is a step change in the way our Foundation supports the community and I’m pleased that we can be part of this. You can read more about this later in our Annual Review.
2. We continue to build staff engagement through participation in community activities with our non-profit grant partners. We have begun to integrate these initiatives into Macquarie’s learning and development framework to develop the skills of our staff. This also leads to the development of the non-profit sector as staff work on capacity building projects with these organisations.
3. After extensive research and analysis into how to improve quantitative and qualitative data collection with respect to staff engagement, skilled volunteering and grantmaking, the Foundation will implement a new staff platform later this year. The platform will significantly improve our ability to engage our people and effectively measure and report on activities globally.

We anticipate the successful execution of these goals will deepen the impact of Macquarie's philanthropic work amongst its community partners and more generally.