Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria Annual Report 2018-19

Eyre Peninsula Blue Gum (Eucalyptus petiolariss)
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS FOUNDATION BOARD
The Royal Botanic Gardens Foundation
Victoria was established in May 2001.
Its goal is to provide the Royal Botanic
Gardens Victoria with a secure source
of future income from the investment of
bequests, seat sponsorships, Director’s
Circle donations and general donations.
The Royal Botanic Gardens Foundation
Victoria has Deductible Gift Recipient
(Item 2) status and is endorsed as an
Income Tax Exempt Fund.
During 2018–19, the Royal Botanic
Gardens Foundation Victoria continued to
manage its capital base by growing the
investment of its corpus with Perpetual
Trustees, thus strengthening stewardship
of donor funds to enhance its capacity
to provide long-term financial support to
Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.
The Royal Botanic Gardens Foundation
Victoria also generously contributed three
grants to Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria
from its annual corpus distributions. The
grants were provided to the following
projects:
Revealing the secrets of the Global
Collection (Year 3 of 3)
VicFlora – digitising Victoria’s plant
identification guide (Year 3 of 3)
New programming initiatives and market
research (Year 1 of 1)
Fund distributions were also made from
two in-perpetuity sub-funds for the Jim
Willis Studentship and the Pauline Ladiges
Plant Systematics Fellowship with The
University of Melbourne.
Donations to the Foundation from
individual donors made possible the
provision of grants toward multiple
ongoing fellowships, landscape and
programming projects at both sites.
The Foundation has also demonstrated
leadership in the area of ‘friend-raising’
and donor engagement through new
events in 2018–19, which included a
spring visit to Elizabeth Dax’s garden
in the Dandenongs in November 2018,
and an autumn visit to our Chairman’s
property near Geelong and to the
Geelong Botanic Gardens.
The generous effort, support and time of
Foundation members is essential to the
Gardens’ success. This year we welcomed
three new Foundation Board Directors
including David Lawson, Alice Sidhu, and
Michelle Varcoe.
These three new Directors complete
the skill set of the Foundation Board
required to further assist the development
team with their professional expertise
in the areas of: law, government, digital
experience and Major Gift Fundraising. In
October, we farewelled Ms Elaine Canty
AM and extend our sincerest thanks to her
for her many years of service both to the
Royal Botanic Gardens Board Victoria and
the Foundation Board. We also farewelled
Ms Misha Prusa and thanked her for
her three years of Board duties and her
assistance with the Foundation’s Beyond
the Garden Gate events.
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS BOARD VICTORIA — ANNUAL REPORT 2018–19 69