What We Do - Reichstein Foundation

Thematic Focus Areas

Our work is focused on four spheres of justice essential to creating an equal and just society on healthy country. We believe that we cannot address these issues in silos, which is why we aim for our work to also recognise and respond at their intersections.

Environmental Justice

Responding to the climate crisis and ensuring that all people have access to a safe, healthy and sustainable environment.

Economic Justice

Creating a fair economy that works for people and planet.

Gender Justice

Ensuring all people, regardless of their gender identity or sexuality, are treated equally and with dignity.

First Peoples’ Justice

Backing First Peoples as they advocate for equality and self-determination.

Grant-making

We specialise in assisting emerging organisations whose work is driven by the communities they serve. We also support established organisations that play a critical role as leaders in Australia’s social and environmental justice movements. And finally, we support organisations in need of rapid assistance to respond to an imminent social justice issue.

Our grants include a mix of one-year and multi-year commitments. We understand that the path to creating transformational change is not linear, which is why our funding is flexible and allows groups to change tack as needed.

Funding requests are reviewed and approved on a quarterly basis by our Trustees, with the exception of rapid response grants, which can be approved out of session. We currently do not run open calls for proposals, and instead solicit funding requests through our networks in philanthropy and civil society.

Advocacy

A fundamental part of our work involves strengthening the advocacy efforts of our grant partners through amplifying their messages to our community, lending our names to their campaigns, and helping to grow their base of support through facilitating connections to other donors.

We also actively participate in advocacy campaigns alongside our partners in the social justice and philanthropy communities, helping to further initiatives linked to our thematic focus areas as well as protect and promote civic space and democratic values in Australia.

Convening

We know that the problems we seek to solve are too big to tackle alone, which is why collaboration and partnership are central to the Reichstein Foundation’s philosophy.

A core element of our work is focused on bringing philanthropists and civil society groups together to foster connections, share learning and build collective power.

We also focus our convening work on growing, shaping and sustaining Australia’s philanthropic community. This has included providing the early-stage funding and strategic assistance needed to establish what is now Philanthropy Australia, the leading body representing the philanthropic sector in Australia. We are also proud to be a founding partner of Australians Investing in Women, the Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network, Pride and Mannifera, and early supporters of GiveOUT, and Woor-Dungin.

Learn more about joining a network

Investing

Until recently we’ve maintained a fairly traditional investment profile, but we are now working towards ensuring that our endowment is invested responsibly and in ways that support our vision and values.

Moving forward we will be learning from, and working with, partners across philanthropy, civil society and the responsible investment community to help us rethink our investment approach.

As part of this work, we’re delighted to be partnering with ten other funders on the Endowments for Impact Challenge, a groundbreaking initiative designed to push the boundaries of how trusts and foundations in Australia invest their assets.

Our Investment Committee includes Jill Reichstein, Simon Lewis, Susheela Peres da Costa and Stuart Barry. We are also a member of Philanthropy Australia’s Foundation’s Group for Impact Investing.

Learn more about our Investment Approach