Established in June 2020, Bennelong Foundation UK is a charitable incorporated organisation. 

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As a sister organisation to its Australian counterpart, Bennelong Foundation UK extends Bangarra Family Office’s philanthropic reach and our model of caring, creating real-world opportunities for our UK based subsidiaries to be able to provide philanthropic support across the communities in which we work.

The Bennelong Foundation UK will partner with UK-based subsidiaries of the Bangarra Family Office, BennBridge and Crown Golf's St Mellion Estate, a 400-acre resort just outside of Plymouth in Cornwall, to deliver programs that use the business’s assets to support local communities in London and Cornwall. 

The Bennelong Foundation UK does not currently have an open grant round.

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Public benefit grants will be made to charities where the objectives are clear, which can demonstrate best practice and sustainability, whose operations are transparent and whose commitment to the public benefit is demonstrable. 

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The trustees will review the broad focus of the Foundation on an ongoing basis to ensure that the Foundation achieves its objectives for the public benefit.

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Bennelong Foundation UK Trustees 

Carena Shankar

Jeff Chapman AM

Chairperson

Carena Shankar is Chairperson of the Bennelong Foundation and an Executive Director of Bangarra Family Office. She is also the Manager of the Bangarra Family Office Private Portfolio. Carena has a degree in economics and has worked in various areas including hospitality, finance, television production and property. Carena has previously held Non-Executive directorships with the Australian Opera Capital Fund, Asialink and Noosa Chances.

Greg Thomas

Greg is the Chief Executive Officer of Bangarra Family Office. Prior to joining Bangarra Family Office, Greg was a member of the executive team at its subsidiary entities Bennelong Funds Management in Australia and BennBridge in the UK.  Greg has been with the organisation since 2016 and prior to this Greg worked at a range of UK and US asset management companies and qualified as an accountant with Ernst & Young in 2002.

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Greg is driven by a desire to maximise the commercial success of Bangarra Family Office’s business interests in order to optimise the endowment of the Bennelong Foundation corpus.

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Greg has a Bachelor of Science in Economics from University of Wales, Cardiff.

Jeff is the co-founder and previous Chairman of the Bennelong Foundation. Jeff is the founder and Chairman of Bangarra Family Office, a privately owned Family Office with extensive operations in the wealth and funds management sectors. His early career was spent in Australian manufacturing, retailing and investment banking. Jeff has degrees in law, accounting and business. In 2019 Jeff was appointed as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) as part of the Australia Day honours 'for significant service to the community through philanthropic initiatives'.

Maurice Wren

Maurice worked extensively in the refugee protection and homelessness fields for many years, including senior leadership roles at Shelter, the Housing Associations Charitable Trust, Asylum Aid and the British Refugee Council, where he was Chief Executive from 2012 until his retirement in 2020. Maurice is presently a Trustee of the NGOs Migrant Voice and the European Network on Statelessness, having previously chaired the Governing Boards of Innisfree Housing Association and his local primary school in Hackney. He was made a Patron of the charity Action Foundation in 2016 and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Edinburgh in 2017 in recognition of his humanitarian work with refugees.