CIPAM Donation- Sydney Community Foundation

February 2021

Big businesses like Challenger have an important role to play in society. There’s a moral imperative to work for the good of society.

The recently released Modern Slavery Statement from Challenger was an example.

But contributing to society can be done on a micro level within the business as well, as demonstrated by some of the Funds Management employees.

“As a team we wanted to do something charitable,” says Linda Mead, Senior Institutional Business Development Manager for CIP Asset Management. “It had to reflect areas that mattered to us.”

Picking a charity isn’t easy. There are 56,000 registered charities in Australia, according to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.

“We wanted to help a charity that was thinking about the future and thinking about diversity. One of the big challenges is that there aren’t enough qualified females for senior roles in financial services,” Mead says. “Fixing that starts with education.”

In the end the team at CIP Asset Management landed on the Sydney Community Foundation, which is a project run by the Sydney Woman’s Fund. It administers scholarships to young women to help them access education opportunities.

“It will help at the ground level, and hopefully we might see a recipient of the scholarship at some point in the future enter and succeed in the financial services industry,” Mead says. “It’s a way we can give back.”