BUSINESS BACKGROUNDDavid and Barbara Thomas built their mail-order wine club, Cellarmaster Wines Pty Ltd, from start-up to its sale for $160 million in just 14 years. Living in London, they bought wine from the Sunday Times Wine Club and saw the opportunity for a similar business in Australia. Cellarmasters, the first of 13 wine clubs in Australia and New Zealand was launched in 1982. In 1996 they sold Cellarmasters to Fosters for $160 million, and soon after established The Thomas Foundation. The Foundation initially supported conservation, education and the arts, with grants of about $11.3 million in its first decade. Grants to conservation exceeded $8 million, with accelerating emphasis on conservation since 2003. Working with other like-minded Australian conservationists, The Thomas Foundation provided financial incentives that led to the establishment here of the US-based The Nature Conservancy (TNC) - the world's richest conservation organisation with assets of more than $5.4 billion and annual expenditure of more than $1.3 billion. It employs 700 scientists and we believe it is the best and most influential such organisation in the world.
|
||||||||
