Grace Tame Foundation directorMichael Salterhas been making it known around town that Tame will soon cease in the position and recruitment efforts will begin to identify a successor.
Margin Call understands a job listing will be published soon.
Tame’s inexperience was evident to anyone who dealt with the foundation, its dysfunction well-known in philanthropic circles. Largely a side project between a book deal and speaking gigs, it overflowed with donor funding but largely duplicated the work of established peers.
Within two years it had seemingly run out of goals to pursue. Piles of money sat on its books and it had already achieved modest goals in reforming sexual assault legislation around the country. But the board, flush with cash and under pressure to spend it in meaningful ways, took an ill-advised turn and began funding counselling services and legal fees for sexual abuse survivors, cannibalising existing services and drastically diverging from the foundation’s original purpose.
Donors were never told their money would be used in this way – on lawyers and counselling – and we know some benefactors were left furious about the lack of transparency.
More than half of the donated funds for FY23 – about $170,000 – were used to pay for counselling and legal costs, creating manifold problems in the process.
This columnwould go on to reveal that every dollar spent on legal services($107,000) had been channelled into Marque Lawyers, whose managing director,Michael Bradley, sits on the Grace Tame Foundation board.
A perceived conflict of interest, this ought to have ended Bradley’s role as a director or seen his firm removed from the panel of legal providers.
We checked, however, and he’s still on the board, and our attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.
The foundation didn’t respond when asked about these developments with Tame.
What never seemed to occur to Tame, or the foundation ’s leadership, is that funding survivors on a discretionary basis, in secret, would advantage a tiny group of people fortunate enough to be aware of the money.
Never mind the absolute lack of transparency around the decision-making – those who truly needed it wouldn’t even know it’s available.
All of which makes for a mess of an organisation which lost its way and is in desperate need of a reboot.
It’s a shame, really. With so much money at her disposal, far more than most volunteer organisations would typically receive, Grace Tame could have achieved something genuinely worthwhile in the survivor space.
Instead, her foundation wasted time, money, potentially the goodwill of donors, and it has probably diverted resources from organisations with clearer purposes.
Something for Tame’s successor to consider closely. Whoever takes over has the benefit of starting from an extremely low bar.
