we support changemakers

Our world is full of beauty. The interactions of kind people, the sensation of indulging good food, the wonder of a wild stream, a perfectly designed library, can solicit deep and involuntary emotion.

And it is also true that something is not quite right, even though we struggle to name what it is. We are in a cocktail of crises. Inequity, climate, democracy. Identity, pandemics, global instability and mistrust. Our institutions are failing. Media is partisan. We hide behind screens and the image we want to project. Contemporary life is making us less and less healthy. We’ve lost touch with what good food is. Our mental health is vulnerable. More and more of us are asking serious questions about the trajectory of our lives and societies.

donkey wheel is a charitable foundation. Our work is to prospect for, and support, warriors for a better world. People who have laid everything on the line to plant seeds of hope and love. We are particularly interested in initiatives that are designed with a systems view, and have the capacity for scale and/or replication. But we are mainly interested in a particular kind of person. Unreasonable in their commitment. Vulnerable and kind in their relationships. Smart and savvy in their action.

We support them by:

  • Connecting them with others who can be helpful

  • Coaching and mentoring as we are able

  • Investing in their businesses

  • Granting to their projects

  • Doing whatever it takes within our capacity to support their work

APPROACH

  • We are more focussed on the environmental conditions that facilitate success, rather than on the success stories of single projects or organisations. We therefore work to understand the different parts of the system; the elements that are working well, the bits that are broken and the gaps. We then focus our efforts on helping to build a healthy ecosystem in which change makers can operate.

    An implication of this is that our support is often directed to intermediary organisations: agencies whose purpose is to support frontline social change organisations. These have included The Difference Incubator, Ethical Property Australia, The Australian Centre for Social Innovation, Foundation for Young Australians and Australia Progress.

  • We apply our expertise and resources to influence others rather than acting directly ourselves. We work behind the scenes and are ambivalent about recognition.

    We work with people who are trying new ways to make the world better. To be effective these people are single minded in pursuit of their goals. It is our job to support them by creating the environment that increases the possibility of their success.

  • We are not interested in building consensus, but are committed to making a difference. We are under no illusions that everything we try will work, or that all our efforts will be judged to be well spent in hindsight. Rather than selecting lower level projects, we are focussed on the slow, hard work of helping to build an ecosystem.

    Our energy is spent:

    • Seeking to understand the field of social innovation and inner development work; what lessons are being learned around the world; who else is thinking about the problem and what are they doing about it?

    • Recruiting and marshalling the efforts of stakeholders.

    • Designing a roadmap for change, and getting on with implementing it.

PEOPLE

TEAM


Paul has been donkey wheel’s CEO since 2010 and is passionate about, and experienced in, making a different difference that leads to systemic change. Chats with Paul mean people walk away knowing that there are innovative ways to change their world.

Paul can usually be found problem solving at donkey wheel’s new Venus Bay retreat, planning getaways and riding his bike. 

Col is a skilled facilitator who revels in conversations that connect people, ideas and resources that encourage change.

In the pre-dawn hours, you can find Col plunging into the refreshing waters off the Bellarine Peninsula.

Jane has been the Operations Manager at donkey wheel since 2021, but this title doesn’t quite encompass all she does. Aside from her organisational skills, Jane excels in creating meals that make people feel at home.

Most weekends, Jane heads out west and enjoys the Grampians or supporting her beloved Tiges. 

Craig has been the Storyteller at donkey wheel since 2019, where he puts his writing and editing talent to work crafting and telling the stories of donkey wheel’s highs, lows and learnings.

Although living in the eastern suburbs his whole life, Craig enjoys getting mistaken for a Collingwood local.

Since 2020, Ashlee has worked as donkey wheel’s Engagement Manager, where she skilfully coordinates communications, events and makes sure things work as they should. She is also skilled at filling any role at the last minute.

Ashlee is studying law, and also knows the best op-shops around.

BOARD


Dave has been on the donkey wheel Board since 2009, including a term as Board Chair.

He works at Cognitive Health and is passionate about the health sector and delivering innovation in the sector.

Jessie is a barrister at the Victorian Bar and has been on the donkey wheel Board since 2018. 

She is the co-creator of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a documentary that examined the stories of those seeking asylum in Australia.

Col has served two stints as donkey wheel’s Chair: his current term started in 2015. He curiously enjoys governance and facilitating boards to to add value to organisations.

For the last 15 years Col has been committed to living and working from his caravan in order to declutter life and spend more time near interstate family.

Donkey Wheel Book - Difference

The donkey wheel Foundation was founded by the passionate and creative Brunner family.

Read more about the Brunner family here.

Much of donkey wheel’s current effort is in cultivating Make it Better: an initiative to bring change makers together to work at the intersection of inner and outer work.

Perhaps we need radically new ways of relating and knowing. Perhaps these new ways might emerge by experimenting with different ways of being together.

At donkey wheel we suspect that ubiquitous social fragmentation, our delusion that we can live as if we are disconnected from each other and the environment, is fundamentally what is wrong with the world we have created for ourselves. Could it be that the pathway to integration, to wholeness, would be enriched by learning from the oldest living cultures on earth, cultures whose understandings of community and country are provocative and healing for us. We think so. Our First Peoples have lived here sustainably for tens of thousands of years. The rest of us arrived recently and have taken over with our so-called civilised society. But our culture and its institutions are breaking if not already broken. And we can’t seem to find a way to connect across differences, to agree on pathways out of this predicament of multiple crises defining our time on earth.

At donkey wheel we are not even sure our efforts to make the world better will be successful, in fact, we are sober in our expectations. But we are fiercely committed to being and doing what we understand to be the ways of love and wisdom as we support people who have given their lives to work for positive social change. And because none of this work happens anywhere other than on aboriginal land, we honour and thank the Elders of our First Peoples for their example and acknowledge their courage, resilience and grace.