RMIT Foundation

The Foundation is the custodian and good steward of the funds that are donated, endowed or bequested to the University. It began at the time of the merger of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the Philip Institute of Technology when the two formed RMIT University in 1992.

RMIT staff and students of the current generation are privileged in many ways. They are the inheritors and successors of people and institutions that have shown great commitment to education and acted on their belief in the social and personal benefits of learning and discovery.

For a decade RMIT’s Bundoora West campus was the home of Phillip Institute, from which more than 14,000 students graduated in the 10 years after it formed in 1982 under the directorship of Professor Leo Foster.

Professor Foster recalls that Phillip’s close relations with Kodak Australia, then a major northern suburbs employer, led to Kodak donating $50,000 to establish a Foundation for the Institute in the mid-1980s. Professor Foster joined Kodak Chief Executive Ed Woods as a trustee of the foundation under the chairmanship of Dr Phillip Law AC, CBE, a renowned Antarctic scientist. Roy Nichols was deputy chair.

“We raised some additional money,” says Professor Foster, “and soon were able to offer some scholarships – the Women in Technology Scholarships – to encourage women in science.”

Following the Phillip–RMIT merger a new trust deed (PDF 540kb 11p) was drawn up, with the Phillip trustees joined by four RMIT trustees. The fund remained relatively small, standing at a little more than $180,000 in December 1994.

“From that small beginning it has grown to over $13 million today,” says Professor Foster.

Professor Foster continues to be a trustee. He, like fellow trustee RMIT Chancellor Professor Dennis Gibson AO, has a distinguished background in science education and contributes to the Foundation a perspective that comes from a lifetime of teaching and research in Australia and overseas.

He takes a particularly active interest in and is currently the chairman of the John Storey Scholarship Committee, which provides financial assistance to RMIT students for overseas study.

Professor Foster is especially proud that, in addition to its oversight of funds intended by donors for specific purposes, the RMIT Foundation has instigated a highly successful International Visiting Fellowship Program.

“This is an initiative taken by the Foundation from discretionary funds,” he says. “Each year we fund six or seven distinguished visiting fellows – some years we’ve had 10. The fellows come from all over the world and they help the University enhance its global research connections.”

The Foundation reports to the RMIT Council and is audited annually by the Auditor-General of Victoria. Trustees are people who are, or have been, prominent in their working careers. They are invited to sit on the Board for their professional experience and the knowledge they bring to the business of the Foundation. Some members are experts in the legal and financial arena. There are also members with extensive experience of higher education sector management.

The Chair of the Foundation, Yolanda Klempfner AO, stresses that the Foundation has a custodial, not a fundraising, role.

“The trustees of the Foundation are there to provide stewardship of moneys entrusted to the University,” she says. “We see ourselves as discharging the very responsible function of seeing that in the use of these funds the wishes of donors are respected and that moneys are applied to the benefit of the RMIT community.”

Ms Klempfner, who graduated from the University of Melbourne in law, was an advisor to the Premier, Sir Rupert Hamer, on women’s affairs. She joined the Foundation in 1994 after a long period of distinguished service on the RMIT Council, as a member, Vice-President and later President.

She saw serving as a trustee as a chance to continue her connection with an institution that had, by then, long had a place in heart.

“I have always had an interest in education, business and money management,” she says. “When I was asked to join the Foundation I thought it was a good opportunity to continue to work in the area of education.”

“The trustees are people who have made their mark and who have a sense of community service,” Ms Klempfner says. She is proud of the diversity of trustees and especially that women are better represented than they were when she first joined the Council.

“It was a pretty male-orientated sort of place then,” she says. “Apart from Dame Grace Cuming – an amazing woman and a real quiet achiever – there were not many women.

“Now on the Foundation we have people like Swee Loh, who has the distinction of being a young graduate, female and Asian. And we are not all octogenarians. There are younger people of great capacity on the Foundation.”

In 2007 RMIT honoured four former trustees – Dame Grace, Mr Woods, Dr Law and Dr John Connell – for their distinguished service to the Foundation.