Recently we held a special event to mark 10 years of The Tony Foundation. We brought together stakeholders that have been part of our foundations journey to celebrate an important milestone. This created an opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved collaboratively over the past 10 years.
The Tony Foundation was established in 2012 to be the philanthropic pillar of the Albert family business. In setting up the foundation the family wanted to recognise the work of previous generations of Alberts and their profound influence on the arts, music and culture. The foundation honours this legacy by supporting music initiatives to drive social change, its vision: to improve the life outcomes of young Australians through music. We focus on young people experiencing disadvantage, First Nations youth, and youth mental health and wellbeing. Since its inception, The Tony Foundation has supported 20 pioneering organisations. We provide multi-year, untied funding and believe in the importance of providing this type of stability to allow organisations to focus on their core work – driving positive change for their recipients.
Over this time, we have built strong and enduring relationships with the incredible pioneers leading these organisations, driven by a shared determination to make a difference. Below are highlights of achievements alongside our partner organisations over the past decade:
- The creation of a dedicated mental health & wellbeing helpline for music industry workers with Support Act.
- Big hART’s “Songs for Freedom” concert: song writing workshops culminating in a national concert tour to highlight the plight of Aboriginal children caught up in the justice system
- Carriageworks “Solid Ground” program providing education, training, and employment pathways in the arts for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth and the establishment of ongoing Aboriginal artist residency programs within schools in the Blacktown LGA, Redfern and Waterloo.
- Significant increase in accessibility of The Song Room’s flagship program Transformational Learning Through Creativity
- A specific donation to Kids Xpress to help those most affected by the 2020 bushfires. They provided expressive therapies for kids and trauma informed professional learning programs to the severely impacted Snowy Valley’s area. This work then paved the way for further government support to provide a team based in the region to deliver expressive therapy and trauma informed education.
- A Sound Life – supporting the measurement of their impact, expansion of their program reach and the creation of their innovative ‘Dome’ housing music, yoga and meditation workshops
- One Vision Productions and their multi-platform mental health toolkit and online educational resource engaging first nations youth through music
- Australian Music Children Foundations continuous expansion of music programs into disadvantaged schools throughout Australia
- Musica Viva’s three-year residency program in NSW – a program to bring music back into the schools and classrooms by supporting the development of a musical culture within a school
- Support for the impact campaign for the Don’t Stop the Music television series which aired on the ABC, raising the issue, funds and instruments for music in schools – and paving the way for our Music Education: Right from the Start initiative.
We also recognise that beyond our granting, the money we invest has an impact on this world.
Since 2019 we began to transition our investments in the foundations corpus towards impact, ensuring we have no investments in the portfolio that we consider would “harm” people or planet.
This ensures our investments are also having a more positive contribution on this world, not just our donations.
We are filled with gratitude for all those who have been part of the Tony Foundations journey so far.
The foundation has no purpose without the organisations its supports and it’s their leadership, endless dedication and passion that that fuels this positive change for our society.
