A giving guide · Australia
Give while you live
There's a quiet default in philanthropy: build a foundation, preserve the capital forever, and give away only the interest. It sounds prudent. But for a lot of donors, giving generously now — while you're here to see it and shape it — does far more good.
Why give now
You see the impact
Give now and you witness what your money does — you meet the people, learn what works, and course-correct. Give it after you're gone and someone else guesses at your intent.
The money actually gets deployed
Perpetual foundations are built to preserve the corpus, so most of the capital sits invested while a small slice trickles out each year. Giving while you live puts capital to work now, when it's needed.
It doesn't have to be all-or-nothing
"Give while you live" doesn't mean write one big cheque and it's gone. Structured as recoverable grants, capital can come back as projects succeed and be given again — so you give generously now and keep giving.
The perpetuity trap
A foundation designed to last forever has to protect its capital above all else — so preserving the fund quietly becomes the mission, and the actual cause gets whatever is left over. Independent research calls this the perpetuity trap. At a typical payout rate, a dollar can sit in a foundation for decades before it does much of anything.
None of this means endowments are wrong — some causes genuinely need patient, ongoing funding. It's a question of balance. The point is that “set it up to last forever” shouldn't be the unthinking default, and for many donors the greater good is done by giving sooner.
How to do it in Australia
Giving while you live is a posture, not a single product. In practice it looks like:
Give directly, now. The simplest, most efficient path — 100% reaches the cause, tax-deductible to DGR charities, nothing to set up. Find a charity.
Use a giving fund with a real payout. A sub-fund or your own Private Giving Fund is fine — just treat the minimum distribution as a floor, not a target. Which vehicle fits.
Recycle it. Recoverable grants let you give generously now while the capital comes back and gives again — the best of both. How recoverable grants work.
Where do you sit?
Give it now, or set it aside to give over decades?
Want to go deeper?
The clearest Australian voice on this is Peter Winneke, author of Give While You Live, who has spent a career helping families give more, sooner, and better. We're not advisers and we don't take a cut — if you want hands-on help, he's a great place to start.
Run a family office or work in one? The instrument question for professionalised giving.
General information only, written for Australia — not financial or tax advice.