‘No guiding strategy’: Former Judith Neilson Institute executive unloads

One of the Judith Neilson Institute’s (JNI) most senior founding executives has accused the organisation’s leadership of lacking transparency in awarding grants, and endorsed plans by its benefactor to refocus on funding grassroots and investigative journalism.

Prue Clarke, who moved her family from the US to Australia in 2019, said she quit the Institute after 18 months because she disagreed with the direction its leadership was taking. “JNI was the first donor organisation I’ve worked for that had no guiding strategy,” Clarke said. “I had concerns about the lack of transparency and process around how grants were made.”

Judith Neilson, who has established a institute for journalism and ideas, armed with $100 million.Credit: James Brickwood

Over the course of this week, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age has uncovered turmoil at the Judith Neilson Institute, the nation’s largest philanthropic journalism fund. The institute’s four independent board directors, including former NSW chief justice and ABC chairman James Spigelman, abruptly resigned over concerns about its plans for funding allocation. And the institute’s executive director, Mark Ryan, has engaged lawyers in a dispute over his ongoing employment.

Billionaire philanthropist Judith Neilson committed $100 million to creating the institute in 2018, with the funds to be allocated over multiple years in the form of grants, education programs for journalists and events. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have both received funding from the Institute, including to hire indigenous journalists and for reporting trips to Ukraine.

According to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), the institute awarded $2.3 million on grants for journalism in 2021. The institute uses a grants management platform to monitor how money is spent.

Sources familiar with the institute’s inner workings said executives such as Ryan and chief operating officer Anthony Bubalo based grant decisions on what they considered quality journalism. Once an idea was well-developed, it went before a finance committee, which included Ryan.

The institute’s website says it has funded over 100 projects to date. These include Guardian Australia’s Pacific bureau, a South-East Asia bureau for The Australian Financial Review, and a podcast from The Australian.

Clarke, who had spent two decades working in journalism philanthropy in the US, UK and Africa, said she was initially excited to use what she had learned and apply it to Australia at the JNI.

“Philanthropy has played a major role in fuelling a golden age of journalism that has driven real change in areas such as climate change, criminal justice reform, big tech and immigration in the US and other parts of the world,” Clarke said. “At a first of its kind organisation like this in Australia it was crucial that the leadership have extensive global journalism and philanthropy expertise. I was to be deputy to an executive director with more experience than I had. Indeed, the organisation’s founding document called for the executive team to have that experience.”

Clarke claims when she was hired she was told she would be reporting to an executive with more experience in journalism and philanthropy than her. But when she arrived in Australia, she was told Ryan, who was an adviser to former prime minister Paul Keating and the Lowy family, would be executive director and Bubalo, the former deputy director of the Lowy Institute, would be his second-in-command.

“I would not have agreed to the role under those circumstances,” Clarke said. “I made my concerns known to two members of the board and the leadership of the family office before I left.”

Clarke now runs the US-based philanthropic newsroom New Narratives, which brings $1 million a year in donor funding to support investigative journalism in low-income countries. She was not the only person to leave the institute after less than two years. Former ABC journalist and editor Lisa Main, director of grants, was in her role for just over a year when she resigned in April.

Sources familiar with the institute’s plans said a board meeting will take place later this week, where it is expected to appoint new directors. They said one of Neilson’s daughters, Beau, is expected to be put forward for a seat.

Jonathan Teperson - former chief financial officer for the Lowy family and Westfield Group director - left his position as chairman of the Neilson family office and as board director at the JNI in April.

Teperson is one of several board members at the Institute to have ties with the Lowy family. Ryan and Spigelman both remain board directors at the Lowy Institute, with the former spending more than 20 years working for Westfield.

Leaked emails show that Ryan, who is currently fighting the terms of his ongoing employment, recently urged members of an international advisory council to sign and endorse a letter to Neilson expressing serious concerns about the organisation’s future. In the email, he said recent events at the organisation had “spiralled out of control”.

The Institute still has three directors: secretary Simon Freeman (who is the chief executive officer of Neilson’s family office), private banker Edward Jewell-Tait and Ryan.

Freeman told staff on Monday that changes at the organisation were “desirable”. He said the institute would shift focus to funding the development of journalism in youth, regional areas and migrant populations, and on investigative journalism, photojournalism and grassroots media.

Sources familiar with the conversations between Neilson and the independent directors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Neilson was unhappy with certain decisions being made with her money since launch in 2018.

Others claimed one point of tension was Neilson’s rejection of a proposal to form an international award, which was described as an Australian version of the Nobel Peace Prize. Ryan’s ongoing position at the JNI was another source of tensions, sources claimed. People within the organisation - and those advising it - remain divided on whether to support him.

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