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AM Fdn’s new chair David Feetham

Australian Museum Foundation chair David Feetham. Ben Symons.

Samantha Hutchinson, This banker expects philanthropy will survive cost of living crisis, Australian Financial Review, 12 February 2023

The success of Sydney Modern at the Art Gallery of NSW could spark the appetite of other deep-pocketed donors to invest in similar, culturally significant projects, according to investment banker David Feetham who has taken the top fundraising job at Sydney’s Australian Museum.

A week after being appointed to chair the Australian Museum Foundation, the Gresham deputy chair is upbeat about the prospect for philanthropy in a year in which consumer spending is expected to contract and not-for-profit bosses are expecting donors to tighten their belts.

“There’s a huge amount of competition for the dollar, but I do think that every cause has its points of difference, and some people choose to give to causes while others will preference institutions and sometimes those two things can mix,” Mr Feetham said.

Founded in 1827, the Australian Museum is the country’s oldest museum and the fifth-oldest natural science museum in the world. It has net assets of $1.2 billion and a collection of over 22 million specimens and objects spanning natural history, earth and culture in Australia and the Pacific, including a renowned dinosaur bone collection and acclaimed dioramas.

The timing is momentous. Under chief executive Kim McKay, the museum is prepping for its first full year of operation without the spectre of COVID-19, social distancing restrictions and a clamp on international travel tamping down visitor numbers. The foundation is also preparing for the museum’s bicentenary in three years and more immediately, to begin the next phase of fundraising drive for a $285 million redevelopment.

Annual philanthropic contributions are at about $3 million a year to the foundation, which was most recently chaired by former Westpac chief executive Brian Hartzer, who has ascended to role of president of the museum’s highest decision-making body, the Australian Museum Trust.

It’s a figure that is going to have to grow as foundation members, who include outgoing Mirvac chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, former Macquarie equities boss Warwick Evans and CHAMP Ventures founder Su-Ming Wong, ratchet up the outreach efforts ahead of the bicentenary.

And there’s work to be done. A study done by Infrastructure NSW for the state government’s cultural infrastructure strategy in 2016 found the museum was “constrained in its ability to be competitive … arising from disconnected exhibition space, the lack of a large and modern exhibition hall and the piece-meal development of the site since the 1840s”.

The report also found that the space meant it could only show less than 1 per cent of its “world’s best Pacific and Islander collections” and “internationally significant Indigenous collection” at any one time.

The museum netted more than $7 million in donations and more than $50.5 million from the NSW Government in 2018 for the first of the redevelopment which was completed in 2020. That project increased the size of the museum’s touring exhibition halls to more than 1500sq m and turbocharged annual foot traffic to more than 1 million guests a year.

The next phase is intended to double the museum’s public floor space with what Mr Feetham calls a “major” new wing on the building’s eastern side, including a new exhibition space and centre for STEM research.

He knows the plan will involve “a lot of outreach, getting in touch with people, showing how we’re continuing to demonstrate relevance” but is convinced that ambition is what’s needed to get the job done.

Amid a rate-rising cycle and what economists predict to be a tough year for consumer spending, the foundation chair is optimistic about the tin-rattling task ahead.

Asset values are elevated, and the stock market is trading close to historic highs. Despite the gloomy outlook, high net worth individuals have accumulated wealth since the last fundraising drive.

The completion of the nearby $350 million Sydney Modern project at the Art Gallery of NSW, which took in more than $100 million in private philanthropic donations, is an example of the depth of appetite in the city to get behind truly defining, blockbuster projects, he said.

And contrary to the suggestion that the mammoth fundraising drive that went on ahead of the project might have tired out – or drained the accounts of – Sydney’s philanthropic, Mr Feetham reckons it’s had the opposite effect.

“I think that success breeds success and appetite,” he said. “If they see something spectacular and well patronised emerging then the message is that it’s worthwhile, and so it helps other projects to follow in those footsteps.

“It’s never an easy environment to find philanthropic support but many of these projects started with hope, confronted reality and then finished successfully because the drive itself is a great opportunity to spread the message and in doing that, you’re publicising and giving them a message they wouldn’t otherwise hear.”