Welcome to the For Love and Money podcast, the show where business and social purpose meet to inspire a movement for positive change. Here's your host, Carolyn Butler-Madden. In this episode of the For Love and Money podcast, my guests are Jeff Wilson, AO, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Wilson Asset Management and Founder of Future Generation, and Caroline Gurney, CEO of Future Generation.
Now, Jeff has over 42 years direct experience in investment markets, having held a variety of senior investment roles in Australia, the UK and the US. He founded Wilson Asset Management in 1997 and created Australia's first listed philanthropic wealth creation vehicles, Future Generation Investment Company Limited and Future Generation Global Investment Company Limited.
Caroline is Chief Executive Officer of Future Generation and she has more than 25 years experience in the financial services sector focused on marketing corporate affairs and corporate social responsibility. Caroline has held senior roles at UBS and Citibank and has worked in London, across Asia Pacific and Australia during her career.
She's a member of Asham School Council and the Centennial Park and Moor Park Foundation, an ambassador for the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation, a director of Our Watch, an organisation focused on preventing violence against women and children, and she set up and was a director of the UBS Australia Foundation. Caroline has also previously served as a director of Future Generation Australia and as a council member of Chief executive women and is currently an active member.
In today's episode, Jeff and Caroline share the story of Future Generation, how the model works, what it has achieved, and the scale of the impact is quite extraordinary, and they share their ambitions for the future. It is a great example of business leveraging its stakeholders to create significant impact. Enjoy. Jeff and Carolyn, welcome to the For Love and Money podcast. Thank you so much for making the time to be here.
Thank you so much, Carolyn. So let's kick off with the first question I ask all my guests, and that is, is there a role for love in business? Who would like to take that one first? I'm going to let Jeff go for that one, considering. Hey, I'm happy to, 100%. I mean, the strange thing is the area I work in is fund management, funds management, and the focus in funds management or what makes you good at a fund manager is your ability to turn down your emotions.
So when you're investing, you don't get caught up with the fear or greed. And obviously, love is another emotion. And the real challenge for a lot of people in funds management is when they get home from work and they're in a relationship, they've got to turn up their emotions. So, yeah, my view is love is just another very powerful emotion that there's an enormous amount of room for it.
And probably if people were focused on that a little bit more, then maybe the business community would be a little bit better. So, so maybe, so what you're saying, it's almost like maybe they need to turn that dial of emotion, that particular dial of emotion up a little bit? Oh, 100%. I mean, the tough thing is in our game. Is you've got to turn it down to do your job. And so, like, yeah, but in a lot of industries, yeah, you don't have to.
So to me, yeah, ours is just a small part of a business community. Interesting. I think there could be a lot. There's room for a lot more love in business, I agree. Wonderful. Thank you, Jeff. Caroline? I think, I mean, I think you really have to love what you do and the more you enjoy what you do and the more passion you have something, I think the more you try and hopefully the more you achieve. So for me, I'm not investing the money per se, like Jeff is, but I'm talking about what we do.
And I think, you know, love and passion, you know, that's what makes you authentic. I think it's very hard to talk about something if you don't really believe in it. And every time I I talk to one of our not-for-profit partners, I get quite emotional because what they're doing is amazing and they have a love for what they do and they have a love for helping people.
And fund managers, you know, I think it's really intense to do that work day in, day out and to look at markets and look at, you know, so many variables and how it's going to impact your portfolio. I think you have to love it. You know, I mean, they think about it, I reckon, well, the majority of them, like 24 hours a day, they sort of live it. So yeah, I think, you know, passion, love, all of those emotions are really important.
Thank you. Isn't it so interesting that, like you said, you get quite emotional when you talk to your impact partners. And every time I see somebody. In business or leader or whatever it is, getting emotional about something. And usually they're trying to tone it down and reel it back in and, you know, not be emotional. But that's what people connect to. You know, you can't hide that and you can't fake that, really.
And people know it when they see it. And it just is something that builds connection. It builds trust. Thank you for that. So, Jeff, it would be great if you could share with our listeners how you came up with the idea behind Future Generation. Yeah. Well, I was lucky enough to be in the UK and picked up the Financial Times.
I was reading through the Financial Times and I noticed that there was this gentleman called Tom Henderson setting up a company where he'd organised a whole lot of fund managers to manage the money for free and then his main focus was to support cancer research in the UK and then his sort of secondary focus was to help, I think, another 12 or 13-odd charities.
So I just thought what a great concept to get the finance industry to do what they do and do it pro bono and then to help other people and then came back to Australia. That was about 12 years ago and said to myself, you know, they were doing it in a structure that's listed on the stock market in the UK. You know, the money we manage, we manage $5 billion for about 130,000 shareholders. And that's in structures, Wilson Asset Management structures.
We've got eight of them listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. And then, you know, I know we're talking about the future gen structures, FGX and FGG, which are listed on the stock market too. But I already had that experience. I set up my business about 25 years ago, 26 years ago.
So I knew that part of the equation. And then I thought, wouldn't it be great if I'd come back to Australia, go around and see the fund managers, get them to manage the best guys, the smartest guys, to manage the money for free, and that allows 1% of the money to go to charities. Talking to my wife and daughter, one area that they were very passionate about was children at risk. So the first one, FGX, we created was that.
And when we went to raise the money for that entity through an initial public offering like any company when it lists on the stock market does, we're going around sending potential investors. We thought we'd raise very little. We were hoping that we'd raise – we had to raise more than $15 million to get it started. Wow. Yeah, and we were thinking, oh, let's hope we raise 20 or 30.
And we thought the maximum we could raise, and we said this in the document, which is called a prospectus that we sent out, go to people, the maximum we raise is 200. And we ended up being oversubscribed. We actually could have raised probably 300 or 400 million. That's amazing. It is. And now the two entities, about 1.1 billion in the two future generation entities. So they give, and then we went from children at risk to youth mental health when we did the global, 1FGG.
And, you know, so that's $11 million a year that goes to support our children at risk and youth mental health in Australia. And, I mean, we've seen with what's been happening in Sydney over the last couple of days is, and that's an area, mental health that is significantly underinvested, by the government, which is unfortunate. And significantly more money needs to go in there. But we'll probably touch that a little later.
Yeah, thank you, Jeff. And you're referring to the Bondi shopping centre knifing incident and also the other terrorist incident we've had, which it just seems to all be unfolding at the same time.
I'm curious before we go deeper into this, you said you saw Tom Henderson's, what he was doing and you thought it was a great idea lots of people look at things and see you know things and go wow that's a great idea but not many people actually act on it and and do something about it and I'm curious on two points one you know apart from it being a great idea what made you what made you go for it and I think another question that I think is probably aligned is you know the the positive
response that you got from these fund managers where's that coming from because they're busy people right yeah and the fund managers on one side and any investors on the other side yeah and the investors probably okay the first part of the question is so when i read it the he was he was listing he was raising the money and listing on the stock market market. And in the UK, they call them closed-end funds. In Australia, we call them listed investment companies, LICs.
And that is the majority of our business. So when I saw it, I thought, what a great concept. We could do that in Australia. And I got back to Australia and it did take a couple of years before we raised the money. So I talked to a lot of people and you're sounding it out and you're trying to work out the best way to go forward. And sometimes, you know, you can try to hit roadblocks, but, you know, you work through it. And maybe it comes back to how you're brought up or something.
Like I was one of six kids and I think Dad sort of gave us the idea that you could pretty much, if you put your mind to it, you could do it. So the question was with these entities, we were going to create them. The question is how long it took us to create them. So to me, that was the future gen entities. So that's that part. And then the second part of the question is, well, first of all, you had to get the fund managers to manage the money for free.
And I mean, the great thing from my perspective is that all the fund managers, actually all the fund managers we asked except one, and that one had a conflict because they were managing some money for a charity and they thought it was a bit of a conflict. And this was the early days, No one knew what we were doing in any detail. It didn't have the credibility we have significantly now. But all of the fund managers said, yes, we would. We'd manage money.
Instead of charging our normal 1% management fee and performance fees, we'll manage it and we'll give you back that 1% or we won't charge you any fee at all. So to me, that was incredibly heartening and positive. And I suppose it's like most people. We all want to help. and it was just providing the outlet for those fund managers to help. And then on the other side, when we went to raise the money.
When we thought the investors, the people that are putting their capital at risk, we went around and I think we started in Western Australia and we did an Australian roadshow. And they just thought it was a fantastic concept and a way of getting exposure to the best fund managers in Australia and instead of that management fee going to the fund manager, it was actually going to the charities and effectively not paying a performance fee because it's actually a win-win-win.
It's a win for the investor because they actually get a really good deal. Since we set the two entities up, what the investor would have paid about $130 million to have this money managed. And that's because the fund managers have performed well. So there's a lot of performance fee in that figure. And they've only paid a little over $75 million, $75.8 million.
So that nearly $60 million is a benefit to the investor. and the $75.8 million is the money that's gone to the charities, to the youth and mental health and the children at risk. So it's definitely a win for the investor. They're getting a great deal. It's a win for the fund manager because it really gives them an opportunity to give back. And as we were saying earlier, like people, they want to help.
And you were talking about the weekend at Bondi, the amount of people that stood up there, Like, you know, it really encourages you. And it was shocking what happened. But, yeah, it was shocking.
Yeah, so to me it was – and, you know, that's the fund manager, the investor, and in theory it's a win for the not-for-profits, for the youth mental health charities and the children at risk charities because they're getting this untied funding which allows them to –. Receive money on a consistent basis over a consistent period of time. So it's probably the lowest cost funding they ever get. You know, they don't have to employ a development officer for that and there's some consistency.
And also, you know, the money's going to their corpus so they can spend it as they want, which gives them enormous flexibility. You just slipped in there that $75.8 million figure. So I want to invite you, Caroline, to come in and actually talk about that because that's extraordinary, right? It is absolutely extraordinary. If you think about it, that's over a period of nine years that we've given that amount of money. And I think the not-for-profits we support, we now have 24 not-for-profits.
So we have 14 in the prevention and well-being of mental health space. And the money that we have just started giving to them, we've just given our second payment to them. We're working with them now. I mean, it's changing the way they actually help young people. And one of the other things we're really proud of is we've just started measuring the actual impact that they do.
So we actually get like a measurement of their impact and they also have a way of measuring their individual impact and we just actually won which i'm incredibly excited about a philanthropy australia award for collaboration so that that's really a testament to to the team and also the not-for-profits in terms of the work they've put into it and we won that with um seer data and also so with social outcomes.
So it was really collaborating with how to actually put a measurement in place and then how to track it with the platform. So that's extremely valuable for the not-for-profits and for us and also for our investors so they actually see what impact they're having. And then. Also, we support youth at risk through Future Generation Australia.
We have 10 not-for-profits there, you know, and that basically covers, you know, music lessons, 250,000 free music lessons across Australia, you know, that's helping, you know, young people in need in terms of helping with their self-esteem, inclusion.
And then we've got, you know, another not-for-profit that helps, you know, young people that are homeless, you know, finding them homes, finding them sort of shelter and actually giving them support throughout that really what can be a terrible time. And then you've also got the mentoring program. So I think the work that we do and when you talk to the not-for-profits, it's incredibly valuable.
One of them is Maribel in Melbourne and they help people, young people that have been disadvantaged by not having a parent through drug or alcohol abuse.
And the work they do is absolutely incredible and they are they are the best at what they do and the fact that we can fund these amazing organizations with untied funding as jeff said can make a real difference to them because they just like i would never tell you what to say you know we would never tell a not-for-profit what to do with with you know the money that we give them and that's really invaluable for them because it can be for their it platform or it could be for another care work,
you know, whatever it might be, they allocate that funds to that particular place, which is incredible. It is, that untied funding. I know how important that is to non-profits because obviously they've got a lot of partnerships where, you know, they want their donations to go into a certain area and that can be quite onerous for them. So you mentioned three things there. You talked about the actual funding, the untied funding itself.
Yourself you talked about measurements so you've actually been helping them measure their impact. Yes and then you've talked about mentoring and I want to come back to that but I guess what really starts to stand out to me when when you talk about the measuring their impact is it goes to your skill set doesn't it because you're talking about investment and returns on investment and so So it's just a different way of looking at investment rather than financial returns, it's social returns.
I think that's exactly right, Carolyn. I mean, what we're trying to do is to... Get a sense for the not-for-profits and for our sort of investors and for ourselves exactly what impact they're having on these young people's lives. So we've been doing it with Future Generation Global because that's a newer cohort of not-for-profits we're supporting. And in a way, what we've formed is we've formed a group of not-for-profits that can actually, you know, help each other as well.
So for example, one of our not-for-profits, Backtrack, which does amazing work with young boys and girls who are homeless. They're at the police station, they're about to be arrested, but Backtrack basically will help a child forever until there is no need for it. And they're using a program that one of our other not-for-profits, which is basically acting out and role-playing what they're feeling, they're using that in their work now.
So we're actually getting a lot of sort of collaboration between the not-for-profits, which will make a huge difference. And what we also do is we also give capacity funding as well. It's just a very small amount, but it really does help the not-for-profits get to where they need to be and also help them to collaborate with others because we want to help them in something that's tangible for them and can improve their performance as well.
So, for example, the tracking that they're doing, it it's it's pretty incredible because they've actually put in what they want to track against it's not our you know it's not us saying right i want this number this number we're only using data that we can use for them as well which i think is incredibly important so we're not collecting data for the sake of just getting in some numbers yeah and i think when they have that they're going to be able to tell a much better story about
the work they're doing and then we can use that to hopefully lobby for more funding in that prevention and mental health space. That's amazing. That's amazing. And you mentioned the mentoring program. So where does that come into it? Well, that's actually, I mean, I give, I'll give you one example, which is, which is Raise, which is a, a not-for-profit, which basically goes into schools and runs these amazing mentoring programs. And they have mentors from all over Australia.
They, you know, they're across Australia, and they're working with young people in schools, helping them make better choices, getting them to understand what's going on around them, and also to give them that inclusion and sometimes, you know, the way to help them, the tools to make sure that they are building their resilience, they're making and communicating well to people around them.
All of those things that, you know, we really need in today's society because, you know, With all the pressures on young people who I think we really believe are incredibly strong, we just want to give them the skills to make them stronger and to be more resilient for the future. Amazing. And I read on your website that you have a big goal for 2030. Oh my gosh, yes. Well, I think actually Jeff might have changed it. I mean, obviously we're very, very much in line with the government.
I mean, they want to double philanthropy by 2030. And we want to have given, you know, 100 million by 2030. But we've already given, as you said, you know, 75.8 million. And so Jeff the other day was saying, I think, 130 million is what we should be aiming for. Yeah, brilliant. It's a big, hairy, audacious goal. But at the same time, we really believe it's very attainable.
And I think with everything that's happening around us, homelessness, inflation, all of those things, I think we all want everybody to do well. But we also want the future young people to do better. So I think that people are very determined to make a difference. And so I really think these vehicles and others like it, I mean, Jeff always talks about the fact that they are very scalable, can really make a difference for the future.
Absolutely. And Jeff, I'd love to bring you back in and ask you, you know, when you started with this idea that, you know, you brought over, did you imagine you could build it to the level you have so far? Probably not. I think if we're sitting here now, if you'd asked me at the start and said, look, we've got 200 million of assets, that's giving $2 million a year to the not-for-profits, we'd probably think, oh, look, that would be a good goal if we could get there.
So we would have probably given probably $18 million to that collectively if we'd done that. And after we did the – so we did it – there's two different investment products you can invest in. Now, one that gives you exposure to Australian shares and the other one that gives you exposure to global shares. Yep. And FGX is the first one we did which gives you exposure to Australian shares and that supports children at risk.
And FGG is the one that gives you exposure to global shares and that supports children and youth mental health. And to me, initially when we did the first one, a lot of people said, look, this is just a great product. Why don't you do it with a group of global fund managers, get some really good Australian ones and get some others from overseas? And I said, no. I said, it's been too much. It was like I did the roadshow with our CEO, Kate Thorley, going and seeing
everyone. It's quite an intense period. Like it takes about three months. once, you know, it's quite intense. And so the plan was no. And then I remember actually being in London again, seeing Rania who helped us in the very early days with our show engagement and comms, she was over there and we caught up and she said, what about the global one? And this is nearly about, oh, maybe it was three quarters of a year after we'd done the first one.
And so all the stress had washed away and had a bit of freedom. Why not? Yeah, exactly. Why not? Why not? And then when we went to raise money for that, of course, we didn't restrict ourselves like the first one and we raised close to $400 million. And, you know, so they got to start, you know, $200 and $400 and $600, but now we've grown them to $1.1. That's a combination of performance, but also we've raised that money.
Yeah, if it makes sense to raise money, then we've raised money as we go along. Enjoying the podcast if you're looking for more inspiration head to our website, thecauseeffects.com.au for more resources on how you can start using your business as a force for good or buy the for love and money book every copy sold allows us to protect one square meter of rainforest help us save 10 000 square meters by 2025. So I'd say you've got 15,000 shareholders in the two companies.
Are you able to share any insights about those shareholders, you know, how you might communicate to them, how you've attracted them? And, yeah, I'm just interested to learn a little bit more about them. To me, the first thing is, and Carolyn, she's dealing with them all the time, so I'll pass to Carolyn.
But the first thing is the shareholders are investing in these listed investment companies because they think they're a good investment because they like the underlying fund managers, they want exposure to Australian shares or global shares. And the incredible thing is at the moment they trade on the stock market and in theory they're trading below what they're worth.
So, I mean, at times they've traded above what they're worth, what the assets are worth, but at the moment, because it's been a bit more volatility, it's been a bit of a tougher time, they're trading below what they're worth. So if anyone is interested in becoming a shareholder, now's the time you want to do it. You want to try to buy cheaply. You look at the asset value of the companies, and if you can buy them below the asset value, then that's a good deal. And that is where they are.
But Carolyn, why don't I pass to you? You can give a bit more fuller answer. So one thing in terms of, you know, it's actually quite easy to buy them. And we're also delighted that ComSec, they actually, if you buy through ComSec, you actually get the brokerage fee when you buy rebated back to you. So in a way, they sort of endorse the model and they, you know, they've been helping us in terms of getting out to a wider audience because I think it's really important for all of us.
You know, we want to make money. We want to be comfortable. We want to be, you know, we don't want to have to worry, but we also want to give as well. And in terms of communication, you know, we are incredibly active with our shareholders. We have just finished a roadshow where we sort of for two weeks went to what, seven capital cities. it is. And we are continually, you know, as I would say, sort of, you know, walking around, you know, definitely going through the shoe lever.
But more importantly, we're very accessible. Like we want to talk to our shareholders. We get lots of calls in and we make lots of calls out because, you know, they own the company and we just want to communicate with them, say what we're doing and, you know, what the impact is from future generation with these not-for-profits. And I love our roadshows because you can come along even if you're not a shareholder and you get to listen to these brilliant fund managers.
So we always have a fund manager with us and we always have one of our not-for-profits talking about the work they do. So, you know, the fund managers, you know, they're the big names in Australia and globally. They're sort of those hall of famers, but also these not-for-profits. Like, I think people are really interested to hear, you know, what people are doing for others. And I think it's very much, you know, for Australians, they love the fact that they can do something for others.
And talking to a lot of our shareholders, we just did an event with Rotary, actually, you know and that's very much service before self and that's what future generation is in a way for many of them so i think for us it's about getting the message out you know about how to invest in future generation and how you can become involved because so many of our not-for-profits want help as well so raise which i mentioned that they really want mentors to come and help them across
australia so if anybody has any free time you know they would love to hear from you.
But also just talking about investments talking about markets i love the fact that our fund manager was we'll talk about you know inflation what does this mean for your house price what does this mean you know that they're very good at explaining and i think i think one of our roles is to explain you know through future generation what the markets are doing and also to give them some financial education if they need it. I think everybody needs that.
No matter how accomplished you are, it's always good to find out more. Absolutely. And you mentioned people need to make a return profit. And this is called the For Love and Money podcast, right?
Exactly. There's a reason for that. It is, you know, I want to, and I talk about this a lot to dispel the notion that doing good is something that you should just do without, you know, without trying to get profitability or return on it or whatever, because I just don't think that people who think that way are thinking big enough.
You know if you if you want to create sustainable impact you know impact that you can continue to create and do it at scale then it has to be profitable and it's the same you know the most purpose-driven companies in the world like Patagonia for example they rely on having a quality product first and foremost you know before they even talk about their environmental credentials even though that is their purpose. So absolutely. So I love the win-win-win model. I think it's incredibly powerful.
What I'd love to know is what bumps have you had on the road to get to this point? Like have you had any learnings or challenges that you've had to overcome or has it been smooth sailing? Absolutely.
Nothing is smooth sailing absolutely not i mean jeff should probably start on that because he he set it up but i mean i'm looking at your faces and it's like scanning yeah which bump in the road yeah but even when you know even when jeff set it up like like he said it took him a few years to do it yeah no it's it's not it's not something that you can do immediately you have to to bring a lot of people with you to love the investment idea and also to love the not-for-profits.
I mean, when we went out with the expressions of interest in terms of not-for-profits for Future Generation Global, we had 176 amazing applications. And it was incredibly hard to get it down to 14. But what it showed us was the amazing work that so many not-for-profits are actually doing in Australia, you know, that's not necessarily a bump, but it was a really hard decision for, you know, the board for us to make, to choose which ones to fund.
How did you choose? What criteria did, like, yeah, how did you get to the 14 you've got today? Well, we had a number of criteria that we needed to, we needed to be geographically spread. We wanted one in every state and territory. We wanted them to have under a certain amount in terms of their revenue. We wanted to have low government funding, but we also really wanted them to be able to work together so we could sort of build that jigsaw puzzle.
And they really needed to have that runway to growth. Just as like fund managers, they pick those companies with all of that potential. We wanted to do the same for our not-for-profits. And I think the team and the board have picked some great not-for-profits and I'm just really excited to be on that journey to to see where we end up, especially with that measurement.
But the investment side, you know, I mean, that's what we have two pro bono committees, investment experts from JANA, Morningstar. And some fund managers, and they decide, you know, who manages the funds, how much, and what kind of fund manager. So, I mean, that I would say for the IC, I mean, obviously, Jeff, you're on there, that's a lot of work as well to get that mix right, and that's something they're continually working on.
Well, yeah, and in terms of probably answering the original question, the bump in the road or what bumps in the road, to me, I sort of don't see it as bumps in the road, or is it just challenges? And with life, we know there's challenges every day, aren't there? And I'm more a glass half full person, so... Yeah, along the journey, well, initially it was to get the fund managers to manage the money pro bono, and we had a short period of time to do that.
I tend to be quite a good sleeper, and the only time I wake up in the middle of the night, and for those people that do wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, I've just got a little bit of empathy. Well, I can understand a little bit what it's like now. You just lie there thinking, I'm never going to get these guys to manage the money. We'd set a timeline, like the prospectus was due to be lodged. So they all had to be, we had to get them within a month.
Otherwise, it wouldn't go ahead. And, you know, there was some challenges there. But then once you start then growing a business, like at the moment, one of our challenges is to get the share price to reflect the true value of the assets. Right. I mean, at the moment, FGX is probably trading about 14% below what it's worth. An FGG is about 18% below what it's worth.
So for these entities to survive, A, for anyone wanting to get exposure to these two investment opportunities, you're buying a dollar of assets for 82 or 86 cents. It's a great deal. Now, I don't go shopping much, but I do like buying things cheaply if I do go shopping. And so that's what these are. But what we need to do is we need to get them to reflect the assets properly and we're working on that. Carolyn's done an incredible job in terms of working on the brand.
She's only – like you've only been in – your CEO's about two years, is it? Yeah. And like it's a big job. Come on, we had a previous CEO. We had a gap of six months, so there was a bit of a hiatus there. Carolyn's come on and, you know, new energy, had to build out the team, team had to, did a lot of work and talking here as part of it is on the brand. And now we've got some fantastic leaders now as chairing both entities, Jennifer Westacott.
On FGG as chair there and Phil Lowe on FGX as chair there. So to me, there's a lot of work that has to go on, and these are just pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together to get really strong organisations that will continue to grow and prosper. And one of that piece of the puzzle, Carol's been working on the brand and the awareness, and there's a lot more awareness of FutureGen than there was, you know, go back three or four years ago. But then also you've got to get the buy. buying.
And everyone who owns it, you've got to make sure they're all happy. So you've got to make sure 15,000 shareholders are happy. And then once you've got 15,000 shareholders happy, you've got to get other shareholders that want to buy. So then it trades at NTA. And eventually, it's very simple. It'll get to equilibrium, but there's a lot of effort and a lot of time to do it.
Yeah, I can imagine. And those 15,000 shareholders, I mean, I would imagine because of your value proposition, that it would be the kind of thing that a shareholder talks to friends and family about. I think so. And we try to do that. So like Carolyn outlined the charities that both entities support. And then what we do is each year, like this is the democracy, is each year we send a sort of a voting form to you if you're a shareholder.
And a lot of people buy these shares for their children and grandchildren, and it helps them learn about investing and it also helps them learn about giving back. Because once a year you're asked to say, look, you're 1% that goes to the charities. How would you like that split to these charities? and in what proportion, you know, and there's a little bit about those charities. So it's a great educational tool as well. Fantastic. Yeah, I love it. I absolutely love it. So what's next for future
generation? What does the future look like? Well, I mean, obviously to grow both the future generation entities, but we're fortunate, and Carolyn alluded to it earlier on, since these have been set up in Australia, other people have seen what we've done and there's been other. Groups set up. So there's about $3 billion invested in these type of products. Wow. And we put a submission, FutureGen put a submission into the government, the Productivity Commission.
We think that the Productivity Commission, if they can create some logical incentive for investors to invest in these from a tax perspective, perspective then you you could have a hundred billion dollars in this sector amazing and and you could and then a billion dollars goes to charity on an annual basis now to me that that is possible because you think about it yeah the fund manager the fact that like we manage five billion dollars the fact that
we you know might manage a hundred million dollars for free we still get paid for our five billion so it's very scalable like like a teacher or an accountant or a lawyer or anyone who works and gets paid by the hour. Their time isn't scalable or what they do isn't scalable where funds management is. And there's something like $4.5 trillion managed in Australia and that's paid. Now, I'm sure there could be a billion or two.
There could be a lot of that could be managed pro bono. Sorry, a percentage of that, a very small percentage of that could be managed pro bono. And then $100 billion is really a small percentage of $4.5 trillion. Brilliant. Caroline, what an opportunity. Oh, huge. It's massive. And I just love the scale of what you're talking about. And by going to the Productivity Commission, what is made possible?
Absolutely. I mean, I think that if the government is incredibly serious about doubling philanthropy and if this can be part of it, it will make a huge difference to Australia, without a doubt. So I'd love to hear from each of you on, you know, over the course of this journey and your respective journeys, what are you most proud of so far? I'm happy to start off. And the actual, oh, it's because I was there at the start, so I've got a little bit, I've got a head start on you, Carolyn.
And Carolyn came on as a board member. Now, we identified Carolyn as someone that could help significantly to what we were trying to achieve. So before she became CEO, she was actually a board member and then the CEO left and the opportunity presented itself. But from my perspective, it was actually just creating the two vehicles. Now, I can't remember. What's that U2 song where I haven't found what I'm looking for? Yes, that's right. I can't remember. I can't remember what it was.
I'm not going to hum it, let me tell you. Well, that was my next question. I can clap it. I remember for our 20th or 21st anniversary celebration, and this is for Wilson Asset Management, in my speech, I was thinking about it, and I used to, like I'm a big U2 fan, And, you know, I used to love listening to that. And I used to listen to it all the time.
And I actually think when future gen things, you know, entities turned up and started doing what they're doing and, you know, seeing them grow, I think sort of that, I stopped playing that song. It's weird. Oh, wow. I love that. Maybe I had found, you know. That's beautiful. I mean, it's very special. We're coming up to 10 years now.
I suppose I I feel really privileged and you know to be able to lead it but we're surrounded by so many amazing people that that were you know pro bono like you know so many fund managers but not just the fund managers but also you know our supporters whether or not it's you know working with our lawyers our accountants you know boardroom you know there's so many other service providers that are giving, you know, giving their expertise and time for free.
And then, you know, working with the board and working with the investment committee, like it's really amazing to be surrounded by people who are quite brilliant and, you know, and leaning on them. And they're all so happy to help. And I think that makes a real difference because everybody wants it to succeed.
And then talking to shareholders, like, you know, it's really good to get feedback from them and you know sometimes it's good sometimes it's not but it's you need to know so you can sort of drive forward and to make changes but I love the fact that you know you kind of you do well and you do good like it sort of really is a model for that.
And the fact that I get to meet these amazing leaders in these not-for-profits who are incredibly special and you know so you know do some amazing work like you know it's it's continually it's for me it's like sometimes a roller coaster of emotions because it's it's it's a very it's a wonderful position to be in with without a doubt yeah and it always comes down to the people doesn't it and always the way you put it was you know you get to work with these brilliant people,
but they're directing their brilliance and their energy towards something that can have such an incredible impact for people who need it the most. And that's amazing, doing well by doing good. So thank you so much, both of you, for taking the time to chat to me on this podcast. I like to end by asking my guests to think about their dreams. If you were to look Look five years ahead, each of you individually, and if your biggest, most ambitious, boldest dreams could come true.
What might they look like? Geoff, I'll start with you. I'm sort of more on that. I'm on that sector. I'm on the fact that instead of currently you've got $3 billion in this sector, which means $30 million plus a year goes to charities. I'd love that to be, I mean, five years. It would take a while to grow, but if the government could come in with some incentives to encourage investment in this space, then you could easily see hundreds of millions of dollars going to that area.
So to me it would be, you know, that and then that's permanent. That's permanent long-term structural benefits for not-for-profits. So that and also particularly I think we say FGX is children at risk and FGG is youth mental health, they're pretty much, they're both youth mental health. The children at risk is sort of, that's part of the puzzle, the health puzzle.
And if we could do anything, and that's, I think, always been our driver, do anything to make a difference in that area, which particularly, as Carolyn said, on the prevention side. And I think I've said in the very early days, like, Like if through all this, if we just say one life, there's, Yeah, then we've achieved what we started out to. Beautiful. Thank you, Jeff. Caroline?
Oh, look, I'm on the same journey, without a doubt. You know, I think it's really important that we help, you know, future generations. I think all of us want to do something and the fact that we can make a difference in a very simple manner and, you know, if the government, you know, really is serious and, you know, more than doubles philanthropy. And if we can get these vehicles off the ground in a bigger manner, I mean, that's incredibly powerful.
I mean, think about what we can do. You know, it's a game changer, complete game changer, because the government cannot fund everything. There are so many demands and so many need, you know, for their money and for their support. So if we can do do something like this that sort of you know coexists and you know we have a lot of people managing that and working out where the best place is to spend this money I think you know that would be an amazing dream but one I think is a reality.
Wonderful that I mean that is game-changing and I absolutely love that you're both thinking you know as big as the sector So beyond just your own organisations, it's about, you know, what the sector itself can achieve in collaboration with the government. And that's ambitious, that's bold, and that's beautiful. And I want to thank you both for joining me and invite you to share any last words as we close out the episode. I just thank you. Thank you, Carolyn. Thank you very much, Carolyn.
Let's, you know, let's do well and do good. Music. Thanks for listening to this episode of the For Love and Money podcast. If you'd like to take a deeper dive into the purpose movement, visit us at thecauseeffect.com.au. And remember, doing good is good for business. So if you're not doing good, then what are you doing?