Shane Warne

What was the driving force behind setting up The Shane Warne Foundation?

Throughout my career I have always been involved in helping out charities and causes, whether it be visiting hospitals or special events and after around 10 years or so I thought there has got to be something more I could actually do. It’s great that we go in and visit these hospitals and we drive miles to see these brave children – which is great – but I wanted to do more. It started from there and I thought ‘well how do I do this?’. I didn’t have any idea of how to actually start this. What do I call it? What do I want to achieve by doing it?

The children were the most important thing to me. I had just had two children myself and seeing how healthy and beautiful they were and how lucky I was to have these two great children – at that stage, the third one came along the next year – my thinking was ‘I am very lucky to have these beautiful healthy children and other people aren’t so lucky, so my foundation has to help children’. So that was how I decided the foundation has to help children.

From there it was working out how to do it myself, because I was still on the road for eight or nine months of the year. I needed staff and I needed a board, so I did some investigations and asked some people – my advisors I suppose – people like Lloyd Williams and the Packers and David Coe and these very smart business people I am lucky enough to know. They told me I needed to put a board together and all that sort of stuff. I thought that I didn’t want just cricket people, it had to be a cross section of different people. So I was thinking who I knew in the industry and sport and entertainment and PR. I went through a list working out all the names and then I just rang up telling them what I wanted to achieve – starting a charity with the aim to help children that could raise money through different events and then we could distribute the money to different charities.

Then I said ‘OK, well I am happy to put in some money’ so I put in myself and then looked for some ambassadors who would actually financially help me start. So five of us put in X amount of dollars, which was a significant amount, that gave us a base which was enough to rent an office and get someone to run it and put the board together.

Not one person I rang – which was Lloyd Williams, James Packer, David Coe, the late John Ilhan – not one of them said no, they all said they loved what I was trying to do and would be happy to help.

So then I put a board together – I rang them all because there were some of them I didn’t know too well along with the ones that I did – and they all said ‘mate what you are trying to do is fantastic and we would love to help’. My promise to them was ‘I promise it won’t take up a lot of time because you are all busy people – I’ll be chairperson and do  all the stuff on a day to day basis ringing people and organising events and all I ask you to do is come to a board meeting a few times a year and when we do an event to help generate some people’.

That’s basically how it started and that four years was how long it took to get it off the ground and get it all put together – to get through all the red tape from the ATO and all the government legislation to legally set it up. When [lawyer] Ian McCubbin moved to a company called Deacons to become a partner I asked him for help and they donated pro bono work for the charity. Anthony Jackson has been my accountant for a long time, so he gave us pro bono work for the tax side of things. To put all that together and find someone to run it took four years – plus there was a little bit of cricket to play as well plus all my sponsors and commitments and three kids under four.

It got hard juggling my time at the start but it was really important to me and I think that was why we made it work. Now we sit nine years down the track having raised nearly $4 million dollars – that is a significant amount of money that has made a significant amount of difference to people’s lives.

I could tell you that many stories. One that stands out was one of the beneficiaries was a company called Life Flight which needed $100,000 to keep a helicopter in the air. They take children to emergency departments or different hospitals where work needed to be done. We saved 55 children’s lives in the time that we were able to keep them in the air. That’s just one of 75 different charities we have given to.

We help with music therapy, horse riding – along with giving these kids machines and things that help save their lives – and things like putting on clowns at the children’s hospital. There are so many things we do that actually put a smile on the children’s face as well as life saving equipment that we give to the various charities.

Why did you come up with that model of charity where you generate the money to give to other charities?

The reason for that was that you would need a big staff of people to service and do it properly which also means that your running costs are going to be a lot higher too. You would like to run between 14%-18% to keep back your running costs but there are other charities that do more than that.

For us our charity had myself and my PA Helen and together we did it. After the initial couple of years we just took it over and did it the two of us, along with all my other stuff. Some of these established charities have so much infrastructure and so many volunteers. To run you through the process, any charity can submit to us for what they require for their charity. Some might need $5,000, some may need $100,000 or $500,000. When they submit to us, we as a board sit down and a company called Perpetual does due diligence on each of the charities that submit to us and what they require and work out whether it is the right fit for us. As a board we would love to give to every single charity, there are so many worthwhile charities out there it is physically impossible to give to every one. Rather than align ourselves to one or two specific causes we try to spread ourselves to as many charities as we possibly can that are hands on and are working with the kids.

I get around and see these people that we donate to, so we are still hands on in a way, but this way we see that we can make a significant difference to the charities that are up and running.

That’s why we did it that way. I think it is a smooth process and it is also a pretty emotional process for the board when we have to go through and read all this stuff about what [the charities] need – it is generally a two or three day process where we sit locked in a room and do it. That was the way we thought we could help these charities where we are sort of like a big brother where we can help out – “We’ll help you mate, we’ll look after you, tell us what you need and we can do that for you”.

It’s extremely important to all concerned that the funding we provide makes a tangible difference to the recipient.

In 2007 for example we gave $22,000 to Red Dust, a charity in the Northern Territory helping indigenous children get the best out of the life they’ve been born into. The project we funded made a direct difference to the every day lives of these children. The funding was used to construct a multi-purpose sport surface in a remote community to host basketball, volleyball, netball, indoor soccer and indoor cricket games.

How do you balance the operation of the Foundation with your other business commitments?

We have got two girls running it now. Helen Nolan is my PA and part of her relationship with me is that I allow her to donate her time for these events with me so that she can help out with the foundation.

Tina Tripp has been with the Foundation just under a year and there is another girl called Tiffany Jones who has been there just under four years as a junior working her way up – she’s now the events co-ordinator and Tina is the general manager running the day to day operations.

 There are two people who are full time at the foundation now and I would spend anywhere between 10 and 15 hours per week in the offices or on the phone ringing people trying to drum up sponsorship or asking people to events, or running ideas past people. There is probably around 10 to 15 hours of my time spent on that, with a lot of emails and calls to Tina about different things.

Then you throw in on the business side of things and the last few years are probably better than at any stage in my career. I have 19 people that I am associated with from an endorsement, sponsorship or ambassador type role, which is a hell of a lot. So you throw in those 19 people plus being captain-coach in the IPL (Indian Premier League) which does hiring and firing of players, strategy meetings, tactics and everything over seven weeks in Africa. Then there is commentary and a family of three children and throw in my new passion of poker and my contract with 888 where I play in a few tournaments around the world and it is pretty busy. There is not much time. I’m also trying to get my golf handicap down from 9.6 to a little bit lower.

How is that going for you?

Not great. The lowest I got down to was 6.7 but I want to get right down and then who knows? Maybe [I could play in] the senior tour down the track.

What would be your advice for others who are considering going down that philanthropic pathway?

With my name I have had my ups and downs throughout my whole life in cricket both on and off the field. Some people like you, some don’t – so be it, that’s just the way life is. But the one thing that I have always done throughout my career is be honest and upfront and taken responsibility for both the good and the bad.

I think my name and my brand I have developed over 20 years is the strongest it has ever been at the moment. It is the same with the foundation, I can’t just rely on my name. If people want to get involved with the foundation then we have got a lot of respect now in the community after five years of operation and I think the way people have seen what we do with our money and how we operate. I think that is why so many people want to be involved with us because they see what we do.

The most important thing if you want to do it yourself is that you have to be prepared to work. Nothing in life comes easy, it is as simple as that. If you want it to work you have got to put in the hours and you have to be prepared to make sacrifices.

You can’t just think of it and then go and do it – it isn’t that easy. I thought at the start that we could just do a couple of events and distribute the money to charity and it would be great but at the end of the day it took four years, even if I was playing cricket and working with sponsors during that time.

If you are going to do it you need to put a lot of time into it and you also have to be passionate. That is the big thing with me, I am very passionate about it. It is very close to my heart and very important to me and when you are passionate about something you will put in the time and make the sacrifices. You have to follow your heart and see it all the way through. Dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s  and try not to go too big at the start. That was some   of the best advice I had from  Lloyd and the Packers was not to go in too big. Start small and build yourself up, find out what works for you and what is best and then slowly make it bigger.

We have given away $800,000 this year and our poker event is one of the major calendar dates that people put aside and ring us to be a part of it. We raised nearly half a million dollars for the Shane Warne Joe Hachem Poker Night this year which was an amazing night. In this day and age when dollars are so hard to get, $500,000 in a night is pretty amazing.

Andy Lee would have to be the luckiest person alive playing poker wouldn’t he?

He is. He got so many one or two outers and he just kept hitting them and getting lucky. But he is a ripping bloke so he deserves to be lucky.

The hardest thing about running the foundation is making sure you don’t go back to the same people each time and asking your mates to buy a table or bid on an auction item. That’s one of the good things about the foundation is that with my connections in commercial business and the corporate world and the people on the foundation board. Someone like Annie Peacock is just brilliant on the board because she knows every charity and exactly what they do – she knows how much money they need and what they will spend it on, it is just brilliant. She has been the real heartbeat and soul of the Foundation and it has been a real help to me – I ring her all the time and ask her what she thinks about this or that and she is always spot on which is just brilliant.

So trying to spread the load and not going back to the same well all the time is hard, especially after the credit crunch. Over the past couple of years we have had to be a bit clever and say ‘OK we are only going to do a few events this year’. In 2010 there are probably four or five events that we are going to do. There will be a big golf day, there is our poker night, there is the Boxing Day breakfast for the cricket and there will be one or two other events as well. It’s great that so many people want to donate their time. Leo Sayer donated his time at the poker night to come and sing his songs which was absolutely fantastic. He is a footstamper you know, and he still has the world’s best perm. He starts playing and the foot starts stamping.

When you are balancing the demands of your business life with the Foundation’s needs how do you work out your priorities?

Some of the hardest things to work out, I suppose, is that there are so many people who just try things on. They will say “Shane, can you do a commercial for us and we will give money to the foundation?”. It is fine to do both, but it has to be clear that there is Shane Warne the brand and then there is The Shane Warne Foundation. If a company wants to get involved in the Foundation that is great and if they want to
be associated with me that is great and if we can do both then that is even better.

But you can’t try and get me to endorse products or do something and help the foundation. There is a business side to me and there is also my charitable side.

I am very lucky that some people want to do both. For example CUB and 888 want to be a part of it and they really support us. Someone like Advanced Hair Studios gave hair transplants to children with leukaemia, so there is some cross promotion with people I do endorsements with personally who also get on board and help the charity.

Over the years some people have tried it on and want you to do 20 days a year for them then they will give you $20,000 for the foundation and you have to say [no]. But for the corporate world there is Shane Warne the brand and then the Foundation and if you want to be involved with any part of it then we will look at it.

I think one of the strengths I have had is with my management – James Erskine is absolutely brilliant and he is regarded as one of the best sports managers in Australia and maybe the world, so I have been very lucky to have him beside me for the past five years. He has been brilliant and he really guides me on that side of things and controls all that side of it too.

Obviously you have developed a brand through cricket, but how easy was it to develop the brand for the foundation?

Establishing a brand for a charity is extremely difficult and the effort required to get people involved
is constant. It’s undoubtedly correct that having a brand personally paves the way to a certain extent for the foundation but by no means is it enough to keep the foundation in operation – that’s why we employ the management staff. 

My aim is to grow the foundation to a point where it does not have to rely heavily on my name, rather it becomes a well oiled machine – an organization that has enough support and credibility to run solely off the back of the good name it has earned.

What has been the biggest thing you have learnt from organizing the charity?

The biggest thing I have learned is that there is a lot more work than you actually think. When you look at the compliance from the ATO’s perspective or the legal side of things you have to make sure you set it up 100% right. If you don’t set it up 100% right then it can come back to bite you. You can have all the best intentions in the world like we have  – where we are not trying to do one thing dodgy or anything like that – and if you do one thing that is not quite right then suddenly the whole thing could be jeopardised. There is so much fine print with that you just have to get it right.

And unfortunately there are so many people out there who want to think you are doing the wrong thing and doing it for the wrong reasons and try and bring it down. Like anything when you are a player and all the good things you do you don’t hear about and it is the one thing you might make a slight mistake or get it 100% right and they are the things you hear about. You might do five million things unbelievably well, but these will be the things no one hears about.

When you have people like Russell Crowe as your patron and these worldwide people like the Packers and Lloyd Williams and a company of other people, everyone at the Foundation is representing them and not just me. That’s why we have never done anything that has not been fully above board and we do 100% due diligence on every decision we make.

That is one of things you don’t really realise how much time it takes to do that. It takes a hell of a lot of time.

What’s next for The Shane Warne Foundation?

We believe the Foundation will continue to grow so long as we keep doing what we are doing, running events that people want to be a part of and give generously to.

The Foundation’s reach is already widespread, but by continuing along the path we are on we will inevitably increase our ability to assist more charities and thus reach more children.

At the moment we don’t have a major sponsor, which is something we want in the short term and going forward in the long-term also.

Applications for 2010 funding are coming in as we speak, so once the application window closes in early February it’s up to the board to sit down and conduct the very difficult task of allocating funds to projects.

Running a successful charity is different to running a business on so many levels but the one thing it has in common is the need to cover operational costs. That is why we absolutely must secure a major sponsor in 2010.

And a final one, after watching you in the last charity match is there any chance we can talk you out of retirement?

I was a bit rusty for the first three or four balls and I went for a couple of fours, but after that I surprised myself – I was bowling pretty well. I was bowling to Cameron White and Michael Clarke and they are obviously in-form players. I haven’t bowled for 12 months and they are training every day so I was pretty happy with the way I played and I got to slog a few at the end which was a bonus.

It was a bit rough making you commentate on yourself while you were playing.

I had these wires and things in my ear and I was miked up under my shirt with all these things that were rattling around, so I was pretty happy with it in the end. But there is no chance of coming out of retirement, the boys are doing a good job.