The Moby Dick manoeuvre: How charity organisers harpoon Sydney’s wealthy ‘whales’
Long before Sydney’s silvertails slip into their couture gowns, glittering jewels and designer tuxedos to rubberneck one another at this year’s Gold Dinner fundraiser on May 1, a high-stakes hunt worthy of Captain Ahab has been quietly under way for months. The prize? A different kind of “whale”: Australia’s ever-growing pool of cashed-up billionaires.
Last year’s big catch was Australia’s richest human, Gina Rinehart, estimated to be worth $37.6 billion in the AFR 2024 Rich List. At the eleventh hour Rinehart was unable to attend the gala herself, sending along her daughter Ginia. Amid much fanfare she dropped a $5 million donation – the single largest in the event’s 26-year history – for the deserving coffers of the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation.
Joshua and Linda Penn at their family home in Point Piper.Credit: Louise Kennerley
While rapturous applause filled Sydney Town Hall when the donation was revealed, it was far from a spur-of-the-moment exercise in charitable largesse.
Such arrangements can take many months of delicate negotiations, admits Gold Dinner Committee co-chair and Lowes menswear heir and CEO Linda Penn, who, after three years helming the committee with fellow co-chair and son Joshua, chooses her words carefully about donors lest she “scare any of them off”.
Prize catch: Billionaire Gina Rinehart donated $5 million at last year’s Gold Dinner.Credit: Michael Quelch
“The Gold Dinner has a life of its own and that makes it a vehicle for some people to donate in a public way, while others want to do it anonymously. My policy is simple … just say yes to everything! We are not shy people, we try to find out what cause resonates with people and try and align with that. We are not asking for ourselves, we are asking for the children’s hospitals.”
Joshua adds: “I tend to focus on the younger donors and Mum deals with their parents, so we complement each other really well … and we seem to find the big donors every year.”
Securing such hefty donations requires high-level negotiation skills and political alacrity, simultaneously juggling egos, privacy, expectations and balance sheets.
Apart from presiding over this city’s pre-eminent social barometer, the Penns, with their well-thumbed “little black books”, are at the coalface of prising donations from Australia’s super rich, many of whom are their neighbours.
“I thought I could bring a new approach to fundraising, focusing on things like what the return on investment is, and building a relationship with donors, stewarding them, keeping them interested and giving to the charity,” says Penn from the kitchen of her Point Piper home, a Tuscan-style pile called Villa Veneto overlooking Sydney Harbour.
“I hope people see us as an inspiration. There are people we know who can afford to give but who don’t – they should be able to do that without any judgment. They might give next year or the year after.”
Penn says her late parents, Holocaust survivors turned Australian rags-to-riches menswear retailers and avowed philanthropists Hans and Gertie Mueller, instilled in her the value of giving back.
The past three years have been a successful tenure for the Penns – last year’s Gold Dinner tally was a record $19.2 million.
This year the Penns are confident their committee – which they “strategically” select to reach a broader range of communities “than just the eastern suburbs” – is on track to shake more than $20 million out of the room of 500 people, the money going towards a $75 million target to help fund the construction of new hospital facilities at Randwick and Westmead.
Acrobats entertain guests at the Gold Dinner 2022.Credit: Jake Scavola
Over three decades the Gold Dinner has also provided intriguing social theatre. In 1998 it was held at socialite Judy Joye’s historic Bellevue Hill mansion, Barford. The late disgraced stockbroker Rene Rivkin and his wife Gayle attended, as did James Packer, then Sydney’s most eligible bachelor, along with corporate high-flyers Jodee Rich and Rodney Adler, whose wife Lyndi came up with the idea of a grand soiree to raise money with co-founders and social blue bloods Skye Leckie and Lucy Turnbull.
The Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park enclosed in the Gold Dinner marquee in 2004.Credit: Ben Rushton
In subsequent years, it has been held in a circus tent in Rose Bay, at the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park, on a pontoon floating on Kippax Lake in Moore Park, and in “Aussie” John Symond’s expansive ballroom, where the millionaire spent much of the night collecting empty glasses.
In the hours before 2001’s Gold Dinner, the Adlers were fending off a media pack in the Federal Court as ASIC pursued its civil case against Adler and HIH Insurance founder Ray Williams. Their arrival that night was arguably one of the more awkward in the event’s history.
Graham Richardson and Skye Leckie at the 2013 Gold Dinner.Credit: Belinda Rolland
That was also a bad year for billionaire James Packer. One.Tel crashed two days before the Gold Dinner. Having lost half a billion dollars, a bruised Packer and his then-fiancee (and soon to be wife) Jodhi Meares – who was on the committee – pulled out of the event rather than face the Sydney social fishbowl.
Jodie Meares and James Packer at the 1999 Gold Dinner.Credit: Fairfax Media
Long before his public fall from grace, former television personality Andrew O’Keefe had the job of running the night’s auctions, while in 2002 Symond’s date was former gossip pages magnet Lizzie Buttrose. The fledgling romance soon ended.
With more than 26,000 registered charities endorsed by the ATO for tax deductibility, Linda Penn agrees philanthropy is intensely competitive.
Sarah Murdoch and Hugh Jackman at the 2008 Gold Dinner.Credit: Robert Rosen
Australians give around $13.1 billion a year, however top-tier philanthropy consultant Lawrence Jackson notes: “Often 90 per cent or more of your donations are coming from the top 10 per cent of your donors … it makes sense for charities like the Gold Dinner to focus on the big end of town.”
According to last year’s AFR Philanthropy 50 list, the nation’s biggest donors coughed up $1.1 billion, up from $942 million the previous year and more than double what it was in 2017.
“If you look at the statistics, Australia’s ultra-high net worth individuals could do a lot better. That could be down to cultural reasons … often Australians don’t like asking for money, but also more practical things like tax policy,” says Antonia Ruffell, CEO of StartGiving, an organisation which advises successful tech founders with their philanthropy.
According to Philanthropy Australia, only 53 per cent of Australians with incomes above $1 million give to charity and receive a tax deduction, compared to 90 per cent in the United States.
If Australia’s 200 wealthiest citizens listed in the AFR Rich List – whose collective fortunes increased almost 200 per cent from 2015 to 2023 – committed to donating 1 per cent of their wealth to charity it would generate an extra $5.63 billion for the sector.
While Australia has not had an inheritance tax since 1979, most OECD countries do, making charitable donations a means for wealthy people to reduce their tax obligations in estate planning.
According to the Centre of Social Impact’s calculations, a 5 per cent inheritance tax for someone with a $10 million net wealth threshold (excluding owner-occupied housing equity) would raise between $2.3 and $3 billion annually for charity.
“Inheritance tax is a politically unpopular idea, but the numbers speak for themselves when it comes to the impact it could make for transforming wider society,” Ruffell said.
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