"At the age of 10 I had to create a wall chart for pocket money spending, including a 'give to charity'/tithing section.”
Polly's story as featured on The Funding Network, which she co-founded in 2002:
"I was born in South Africa in 1974; my father was a rich businessman, and my mother an activist working for nuclear disarmament. Between the ages of 7 and 14 I spent alternate months with each of them, living very different lifestyles: at mum’s at the age of 10 I had to create a wall chart for pocket money spending, including a ‘give to charity’/tithing section, did my own washing etc. At dad’s we had a housekeeper, swimming pool and exotic holidays. I was very close to both of them. Dad died was I was 14, leaving a very complicated estate, which was only sorted out and distributed when I was 19.
During those teenage years, mum continued to be concerned that I learnt how to be generous and sensible with the money I was going to come into, and introduced me to several philanthropists, including Frederick Mulder! During university I did a training course that I wanted my friends to experience, but it cost £235 and they were all students and broke, so I paid for some of them – this was my first real experience of giving money.
Just after university, a friend (Felicia) wrote me a very inspirational letter asking me to fund her postgraduate studies. I did. After that lots of friends approached me for funding, and I was upset – not because they asked but because in most cases I wasn’t inspired enough by what they were proposing to do to want to give, but I didn’t know how to say no without ruining the friendship. Felicia expressed a desire to reciprocate the support I had given her by helping me learn how to say no; together we set up The Build Trust (UK), a grant-making charity with a specific focus on my main area of concern at the time: personal and social education for underprivileged children.
After university I went to South Africa, where I was born, for 6 months and worked as a creche assistant in a township project for women with malnourished children; this opened my eyes to some of the issues around social change work in developing countries. I came back and completed a MA in Effective Learning (dissertation on meditation in English primary schools). Around this time I met up with the philanthropists mum had introduced me to and did some co-funding with them. We wanted to spread the paradigm further and took steps that led to the establishment of The Funding Network. My favourite part of TFN is exposure to such inspiring projects.
So far through sponsoring and other forms of fundraising I have helped social change organisations raise approximately £100,000. I have also personally given around £300,000. I also work as a French to English translator and translated two novels for publication."