Gardiner Foundation 25 year impact report released

Starting with an initial capital base of $62 million, the Gardiner Foundation occupies a unique space in Australian agriculture. Guided by its constitution and its vision to support “thriving, vibrant Victorian dairy communities where people want to live, work and invest”, Gardiner seeks to create positive impact at the farm, factory, community and industry levels.

For 25 years, the dairy industry and its communities have benefited from the Gardiner Foundation’s independent funding – supporting initiatives that make a difference to those living and working in dairying communities and partnering strategically to maximise industry-wide outcomes for profitability, growth and sustainability. Over this time, Gardiner has made enduring contributions to research and development, industry collaboration and leadership, people capability and community development.

Understanding the dairy sector

With regular engagement and deep experiences with regional communities and agricultural industries, RMCG was well-placed to conduct an objective review of Gardiner’s impact on the dairy sector, including changes across the supply chain, industry level and with regional communities. We were engaged to assess Gardiner’s contribution to innovation, people development, leadership and education within the sector.

A strong working partnership with the Gardiner Foundation enabled us to tell their 25-year journey, both at a quantitative and qualitative level. The impact assessment included a comprehensive analysis of annual reports, past program reports and evaluations and scholarship data. RMCG also conducted surveys of alumni and program participants, a workshop with current and past Gardiner CEOs, board chairs and founding members, and more than 25 in-depth interviews with industry stakeholders, partners and research collaborators. Together, these provided a rich understanding of Gardiner’s stewardship and its effects at an individual, community and industry level.

The findings

Gardiner’s core purpose is to “manage the investment of funds to maximise the benefits to all sectors of the Victorian Dairy Industry and to Victorian Dairy Communities” by maintaining the corpus funds in real-terms, which it has achieved. It has occupied a nuanced position, taking on an enabling role and making significant contribution to the prosperity and resilience of the Victorian dairy industry and its communities, while also having flow-on effects to the national industry. Its success is grounded in its strong governance frameworks underpinned by member representation across farmers and manufacturers of the dairy value chain.

The Gardiner Foundation is widely recognised as a unique not-for-profit across the dairy industry, Primary Industries Research, Development and Extension system, and community philanthropic organisations. It combines philanthropy with industry collaboration to make a meaningful difference to the dairy industry and communities, including but not limited to:

• Collaborative partnerships and influence to bring sectors across the dairy value chain together
• Agility to quickly ‘step in’ to support industry and community response and recovery to emergency or other crises
• Independence to identify and support key initiatives or novel approaches to important industry challenges, such as workforce development and community resilience.

Furthermore, Gardiner is recognised for its ability and willingness to take strategic risks where other organisations are unable to. By providing seed funding to projects at a smaller scale, many of their initiatives often expanded, offering greater impact across the dairy industry, e.g. the National Centre for Farmer Health, and Young Dairy Network Australia.

The impact from Gardiner’s investment in research and innovation with its partners, such as Dairy Australia and Agriculture Victoria, has been significant, with all sectors of the Australian dairy industry experiencing direct benefits, including:

• Technology innovations, genomic and digital tools for animal breeding (e.g. integrating DNA testing into routine herd improvement)
• On-farm productivity improvements
• Modernising farm management (e.g. development of sensor technology and decisions support tools to help farmers with more data driven and efficient farm management practices)
• Better animal health and welfare
• Enhanced milk quality and safety, increasing milk protein concentration and reducing microbial risks, providing higher quality dairy products with fewer defects and recalls
• Value added product development, with potential to produce high value nutritional ingredients from low-value streams (e.g. buttermilk)
• Dairy processing efficiency and environmental improvements, such as innovations to enable higher throughput solutions for dairy waste and loss.

RMCG Senior Consultant and Project Manager Emily Tee said:

“It was initially a daunting and deeply responsible task to accurately assess Gardiner’s past 25 years of initiatives, and its contribution to a thriving Victorian dairy industry. Yet the RMCG team thoroughly enjoyed working collaboratively with the Gardiner team to produce a report that brings to light the contributions and successes of a true ‘quiet achiever’.”

“Our deep understanding of agricultural R,D&E investment, strong connections to the dairy sector and its communities, and our ability to listen carefully and draw out meaningful insights from people across different industry sectors – all contributed to the strength of the final product.”

More information

The Gardiner Foundation’s 25 Year Impact Report can be read here.

RMCG is ready to work with not-for-profits and other organisations who are delivering valuable initiatives and services to agricultural industries and their communities. RMCG has expertise in monitoring and evaluation, industry and community engagement and facilitation, program management, delivery of communication and extension activities. We can also help you tackle agriculture’s most challenging issues, including workforce development, leadership capacity, biosecurity, waste management, and triple bottom line reporting.