Neil Pharaoh On Cultivating Relationships With Government To Catalyse Systems Change

Neil is a campaigning guru with a depth of experience across social purpose, government, public policy, and advocacy organisations.

Having led corporate affairs, business development and marketing teams, he has been the driving force behind leading social policy and advocacy campaigns, as well as philanthropic and development work.

Neil is a founding director of LGBTIQ+ philanthropic group, GiveOUT Australia; and was national co-convener for Australian Rainbow Labor, where he co-led the internal campaign that achieved over 200 legislative and regulatory reforms, including changing the Australian Labor Party’s position on marriage equality.

After many years working across the not-for-profit, private and government sectors, both in Australia and internationally, Neil co-founded Tanck, a government engagement consultancy firm.

Neil is proud of his culturally and linguistically diverse background, and of being a member of the LGBTIQ+ community. He brings these connections, strengths, and diversity to every engagement.

Neil discusses strategies for engaging government in sustainable long-term partnerships, what it means to develop meaningful connections, and his impact on policy reform for LGBTIQ+ people & communities.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led you to the work you're doing now?

[Neil Pharaoh] - I jokingly introduce myself these days as a failed lawyer, accountant and politician! These are probably the three things I have had attempts at doing but didn't necessarily progress into. My story is quite an interesting one, both of my parents were public servants, and I grew up in Canberra, so politics is in our blood. But this was not necessarily partisan politics. I started life in marketing, and I then worked in IT services before slowly moving into the not-for-profit and social purpose spaces (which I enjoyed). I worked in fundraising, marketing, and partnership roles, but people kept asking me (mainly I think because of my interest in politics) to give them advice around government engagement, relations and connecting the dots in that space.

This kickstarted my journey into focusing on not-for-profits, and how to make them better at government engagement through stories and outdoing lobbyists out of a job, to help expand public policy outcomes across Australia.

I originally grew up in Canberra, lived with my partner on a small farm with a couple of dogs, but it's an interest in politics and policy that got me into this life. As I said, I've ran for parliament on a couple of occasions, but I was unsuccessful very marginally on both those occasions. I started my life as a lawyer and accountant, and I think for me my big drive is helping not-for-profits and civil society make a difference around government engagement.

As the co-founder of Tanck, can you tell us about the broad portfolio of projects you're working on and the impact they're generating?

Tanck’s an interesting business my business partner and I founded several years ago. I suppose the three things that are unique about us is first we're a B Corp. We are proudly a business for purpose corporation. I think we're the one of few (if there are any) government engagement, relations, and strategic communications firms in Australia that has a business for purpose accreditation or B Corp certification. The second unique thing is we exclusively focus on civil society in the not-for-profit space, so we work with philanthropy, not-for-profits, and organisations that are trying to shift the dial on social policy issues. The third thing that’s unique about us is our approach is more around capability and capacity building.

Our own theory of change (and this what we went through our B Corp accreditation with) is if all civil society is more empowered and capable of shifting the dial on policy issues, we achieve strong macro-outcomes for everyone in Australia.

These are the three differences about Tanck, but we’re a small firm who has a few team members across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. We work exclusively in the not-for-profit space and help to build the capacity of civil society to engage with government more effectively in terms of legislation, policy, and funding. The impact we're generating (and we do keep a little bit of a ledger of the impacts we've had with clients) is dozens, if not hundreds of pieces of legislation, regulation and policy changes. We're clicking close to half a billion dollars of funding created for our clients over the years from state and federal government, and that's continuing to ramp up in that space. It's making a difference in the not for profit and civil society space around changing regulations, policy and securing government funding.

You have significantly impacted the LGBTIQ+ community through policy change and your work in the philanthropy and advocacy spaces. Can you share more about this?

One of the ways I ended up in the government engagement space is in 2007-2008 I became the national co-chair of a big group within the Labor Party called Rainbow Labor, which is the LGBTI advocacy group within the Labor Party. Over the next 6-7 years, we worked through around 250 pieces of legislation and delivered over $150-200 million worth of funding for projects across Australia. These projects were across several different governments, and while we started these during a Labor Government, almost all those pieces of legislation and regulation have remained under the previous conservative government.

It was about making those reforms stick, and while marriage equality was front and centre during those years, it's all the little things which made a big difference. Things like giving same sex couples access to things like parenting pay, superannuation benefits, taxation, and equalisation.

Making sure all the things everybody else in society had access to were also available to the LGBTI community was a priority. For us at Rainbow Labor (and that was a voluntary but very big role I had for several years), I was very heavily involved in the advocacy and campaigning as the national co-chair. I got to work across Australia on a lot of those reforms, and when I concluded my time in that role, I ran for parliament in Victoria and lost by (I think) about 30 votes, so a very narrow margin. After this, I headed off to the U.S. and spent a year working in New York, and I was fortunate enough in New York to continue some of that LGBTI work. I was involved in projects with the Hillary Clinton campaign in the U.S., and so I delivered some work and papers for them on some of their LGBTI policies. These insights from Australia reached the international stage and achieved some reforms. That's the LGBTI side of my work, but with the philanthropy and advocacy side of things, a few friends and I several years ago started what was then called The Channel, which is now GiveOUT Australia. GiveOUT Australia is the largest LGBTI funder now across Australia, and they’re raising money from the community profiling work. They run a national day of LGBTI giving, which is usually in October each year. In a shameless promotion, even though I have no connection to them now, I'd encourage everyone to visit giveout.org.au, so you can find out a little bit more about the interesting work that's happening in growing the LGBTI philanthropy space. Over the last few years, I spent a bit of time with organisations like the Australian Communities Foundation and Community Foundations Australia to talk about how civil society can be more active around advocacy, engagement and campaigning.

After working across a range of professional spaces, what have been some of your key learnings?

The most interesting thing I've learnt from working across those spaces is unfortunately, (or fortunately depending on your perspective), it doesn't matter if you've got a powerful story, measurable outcomes or you are making a big difference. Even if it’s cost effective, if you haven't got your campaigning advocacy communications, self-promotion hat on, unfortunately you won't necessarily get funded, scaled or grown by philanthropy or the government.

My first lesson from working in that space is it’s important to focus on sharing your story and being able to communicate effectively. Being able to work with government effectively across all those spaces has been one key learning.

The second big learning is Australians have always been very philanthropic. We have quite high personal donation rates, but our structured philanthropy hasn't been as big historically. The evolution of that's been quite interesting, philanthropic vehicles are established and people make a difference in other ways and means. That's been an interesting journey as well, and I am infinitely a pragmatist and a realist when working within and changing systems. As part of that, I've realised it takes extremists to make me look moderate, and we need to recognise that we all have a role to play around shifting government through advocacy and campaigning.

What does effectively engage with government look like and do you have any insights around this process?

The first insight is it takes longer than you think with government compared to philanthropy, corporate or high net worth donors. Everything takes longer than you would envisage, and I think the most important thing to recognise as part of that process is your timelines and horizons for government need to be much longer. For instance, the budget that will be handed down in May each year is setting the spending agenda for 18 months ahead. The budget in May 2024 will cover the next federal election, and if you're not engaging with the budget process, you effectively almost ‘miss out’ on the election campaign as well. Very long timelines are a unique aspect of government engagement. The second thing is lots of people believe government money is free, but you’ve actually got to put as much time, effort, talent and treasure into engaging with government as you would philanthropy, corporate partners or individual donors. There is a cost of that money in that time, whether that be for impact measurement, programs, campaigns, advocacy or other bits and pieces. My final reflection is strategically you need to make a call. Are you going to respond to grants that drop? Are you going to create an environment where you can create new categories of funding that might be available for you? That's one of the big strategic questions, and if it's the former, what are the things you're doing to maximise your outcomes? If it's the latter, you've got to add even more timelines into the equation and potentially roll things into if not months, then years to try and achieve those outcomes. They're some of my big reflections around government engagement, and I think the biggest mistake I see is people tell me, “I know such and such who can help.” I then ask them to pull up their phone and call that person, and they then say, “I don't know them that well.”

Having a network is great, but what are you asking for? How are you using it? What is the status of your relationship with these people? those factors are important to consider, and the over-confidence some people have in their network I think is one problem we see often.

We've done quite a bit of work in the education space, and we have worked with an industry not-for-profit that promotes community education and capacity building in the community education sphere. We worked with and succeeded in getting a new funding pot established. Now, this was probably about $70-80 million of funding available to their members and the organisations in their space, and that's an example of where a peak body or leading organisation has taken an insight and a lot of skills around government engagement work to collaboratively secure an umbrella package of funding. That then means everybody who's a member of theirs gets a benefit effectively. There are creative ways of doing this in lots of different sectors, both at the state and federal levels.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across creating a positive change?

Some of the most interesting projects coming out are where I've started to see philanthropy be a bit bolder when it comes to government engagement and wrap around support funding. This is specifically for advocacy when they fund philanthropic projects. We're seeing a couple of foundations in Australia who will give money to an organisation to achieve an aim, whether that's in health, education or whatever their focus may be.

At the same time as saying, “here's X amount of dollars for you to do this project,” they're also saying, "here's why we want you to work with a specialist government engagement firm. We want you to work with a strategy firm, we want you to work with a marketing and communication firm to amplify the work of the projects that we're giving you.”

One of the more exciting initiatives that is potentially coming out of the U.S. is where you get funders who fund projects, but then wrap around some of the funding to assist with amplifying their funding needs. I've got a couple of specific examples, but we’re normally not too vocal about who our clients are because we like to see them shine and hear or have their outcomes worked through. With that said, there is a couple of organisations we've been working with for several years that we’re on the record for helping, and they're doing important work. We worked for a few years for the Olivia Newton John Cancer Research Institute and the Cancer Wellness Centre, and her foundations work around raising money for cancer wellness. Some philanthropic organisations in Australia now and public foundations are starting to do interesting work in that regard. For several years, we've done training and assistance to people like the Myer Innovation Fellows who are funded by the Myer Foundation, helping them to improve their government engagement skills as part of a package of programs their innovation fellows are going through.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

There are three I have, and some of them are quite old, but they’re quite interesting. One that I think is most interesting for people to understand governments, how they work, and the concept of framing is a great book by George Lakoff, which I think is 20 years old now is called Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. It’s about how you shift the frame and dial around what people are thinking from a political and advocacy perspective. Another book in similar genre which I'd suggest is Rules for Radicals, which is said to be a pragmatic guide for realistic radicals. That was written in 1971, but it’s an interesting book around building movements for change and what that looks like. The final one that I'd suggest is a little bit closer to home, and it’s the origin of our business name Tanck. Lots of people ask where did that name come from? What does the name mean? Is it just a misspelling of something else? There is a bit of a story behind it. The first leader of any progressive government anywhere in the world was a guy called Chris Watson in Australia in 1904. Chris Watson was our Prime Minister for nine months; he was 37 when he became Prime Minister. That was the first time the Labor Party had elected a government anywhere in the world, and after Chris Watson was a Labor Prime Minister. He started life as a key founder of the Labor Party, and then he went on to assist in establishing the Country Party, now the National Party in Australia. He then left politics early and helped found both the NRMA and Ampol, two iconic Australian brands. The interesting side of it is everybody knows his name is Chris Watson. But there's a great book, which is my third recommendation called So Monstrous a Travesty, which is about Chris Watson and the world's first national Labor Government. What people don't realise is Chris Watson was born Johann Christian Tanck. He was born in Chile, so he was ineligible for parliament or to be Prime Minister; he didn't even have an Anglicised name when he was born. The origin of the term Tanck is a nod to not only an amazing Prime Minister (the first Labor Prime Minister anywhere in the world), but he then went out and founded another party and a whole heap of iconic names that are prevalent in Australia's life and history, Ampol and NRMA. The third book I would recommend is So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and the World's First National Labor Government by Ross McMillan.