The Spinifex Foundation SA, which began as the First Nations Philanthropic Funding Working Group in 2021, has its sights set on a future where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander South Australians are prosperous in all aspects of life, living longer and stronger, while upholding cultural identity and community individuality for generations to come.
“Our philanthropy is led by the communities we seek to uplift,” explains Wirangu and Kokatha man, Warren Miller, the Foundation’s CEO. “Our foundation is about transformative power.”
Having spent more than a decade prior working in community health, Warren, who is also a Director on the Community Foundations Australia board, knows the inherent strengths that exist in community.
“We’re not a spur of the moment foundation, we’re an Indigenous-led philanthropic foundation that plans to be here for a long time. Aboriginal communities are tired of pilot programs. We want to stick around and be a philanthropic leader for positive change using the wisdom that we have in our communities and culture, and as a foundation we’ll continue to evolve and adapt to meet those needs.”
In this conversation, Warren shared his thoughts and goals for the year ahead along with ways philanthropy can “step outside its comfort zone” and do more to walk beside First Nations communities.
Can you tell us about Spinifex Foundation SA’s journey so far?
Spinifex has been going for almost five years now, originally just with Leeroy and myself steering the ship, but we’ve grown a lot lately and we've got an Operations Manager now, a Grants and Engagement Manager and we’ve just received funding from another partner to hire a Senior Admin person. So, we've come a long way from when we received $1 million back in the COVID days to help our communities when we were just three months old as a foundation. That was about addressing immediate need, immediate response and immediate impact.
Back then, we had to learn about the world of philanthropy fast. We’re still learning! But what we’ve been focused on is actually getting out into our communities. We've done four or five years of community consultation, we've had a lot of partnerships with government and philanthropic foundations, and we helped bring the 29 Indigenous-led funds across Australia together for a first-of-its-kind conference.
We’ve got our DGR1 status now too, we’ve got our board structure and our amazing directors who have so many diverse skills. Our governance is in place and all the granting frameworks are coming along, so we’ve got a lot of runs on the board, and we’ve been lucky to have really good support and true partnerships with our philanthropic partners from early on.
We're an all-Aboriginal Foundation. The board is all young Aboriginal people. One of our biggest achievements is keeping culture and community at the heart of what we do. It's not how much money we're bringing in, it's about what we're doing on the ground for our communities.
What would you like to see philanthropy do differently in 2026?
I'd like to see philanthropy step outside of what is called ‘normal’, what they think philanthropy looks like, or what the dictionary says about philanthropy. I’d like to see philanthropy step outside of that comfort zone and challenge themselves.
I'd like to see geographical and financial inclusion with Aboriginal people, learning and networking opportunities. More opportunities to travel to conferences around health, social, emotional, wellbeing and leadership events that bring the young people to the front, not at the back. I think their turn is ready that I think these young people are ready to have their turn.
I’d also like to see mainstream foundations utilise Spinifex Foundation SA and other Indigenous-led funders for advocacy and centring culture and processes and decision making, using the cultural expertise and knowledge that we possess. Doing things the proper way, according to community and cultural guidance. It's one thing to say, ‘Yes, we’re going to get this cultural guidance’. It’s another thing to implement it.
What’s one thing you’d like other funders to know about First Nations-led philanthropy?
It's very hard for us to keep asking for support, because when people say no to Indigenous people, we kind of back and go, ‘Oh, that's it. That's done.’ We're not going to go and ask anymore.
It's taken four or five years to develop relationships with people and foundations to get where we are now, and it's been great, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it’s just harder for us to ask for support, and it would be great if we had more foundations reaching out, like our earliest partners did, to say, ‘Look, we'd like to support you, how can we help?’
‘We say come sit with us. It's not about us sitting in front, not about us walking in front. It's about us walking together.’
We want to do things differently by bringing our culture forward and navigating through that. We want mainstream philanthropy to look and go, ‘Wow, there IS a different way of working’.
I always believe philanthropy comes from the heart. For us it’s about helping our communities and making sure they are well looked after in every aspect of life, but we can't do that without support from partners.
What are some of the far horizons and long-term goals Spinifex Foundation SA is working towards?
Long term, we’d love to be able to look beyond South Australia. We want to support Indigenous-led foundations around Australia but because of the state and territory borders, this is how Australia is divided. Our footprint actually goes outside of these boundaries. So how do we get back to following our footsteps that go in and out of those boundaries, because these borders are not our cultural boundaries.
I also want to see the Foundation become a stepping stone for young people who’d like to be involved in the programs, or like to be on the board, and become the CEO one day. We want to elevate more people to bigger positions and have a state full of young leaders because we have a lot of young people with great knowledge and initiatives that we've never thought about.
For us it’s very important to be going to community, not just having online meetings - it's face-to-face. I want our Board to be able to look at what we're granting into and see how it works. And if we find things that don’t work, we ask ‘How do we fix it?’
I want us to also keep building on our strengths and deepening our relationships with our partners. We wouldn’t be where we are today without the full backing and trust of our partners.
