APAC Insider- Australian CEO Excellence Awards 2025 | 9 are well within their reach; and empower them to achieve these advantages. For Anthony, his goal is to be the best leader and CEO that he can be to Ganbina – to lead and encourage his team, to guide them and help them with their careers, and to appropriately train them. As Ganbina grows and scales over the years, Anthony recognises that he cannot truly know everything and so, to achieve his ambitious goals, he surrounds himself with experts in various fields. He understands that it is important to know when you need help, and okay to seek out that help when it is needed most. This philosophy has aided him significantly, particularly within his early years at Ganbina. Within 12 months of starting his role of CEO, Anthony discovered that some of the company’s longer-term funders were ending their relationship with Ganbina. This would create a significant black hole; these funders provided 40% of Ganbina’s budget and, without replacing that money, the team would have had to shut their doors. Anthony decided to source new funding and partnerships but, instead of having one or two large funders providing half of the annual budget, he sourced more funders to support the company in much smaller amounts. “This created a lower risk profile, but the admin and management of all these new funders went through the roof,” Anthony explained. “I calculated that I was spending 60-70% of my day on admin, when what I really needed to spend the bulk of my time doing was sourcing funding for our programme. I knew I needed support, so I hired my first executive position with an executive assistant role created in 2014. Since then, I have been able to create more financial stability for our organisation by having more hours to dedicate to fundraising and partnerships and can now focus on the overarching strategic plan and vision for Ganbina.” For Ganbina, the future vision is bright. 2023 and 2024 saw immense success for Ganbina – not only in relation to the organisation’s achievements, but also the achievements of the children and young people on its programme. In 2025, Ganbina aims to build and leverage more partnerships, more corporate relationships, and more visibility throughout its work to empower and enhance even more lives. One of the organisation’s most recent ongoing projects has been its Expansion Project. Through this expansion, the Ganbina team seeks to share its successful school-to-work transition model with other Indigenous communities – not only in Australia, but around the world. This project is directly linked to Ganbina’s mission statement: to share the success of its operational model with the world, so that countless Indigenous communities can benefit from the success. Looking to the future, Anthony shared with us: “For the next five years – well, we are embarking and continuing down this path of enormous growth. Our expansion goals will take the best part of the next 15-20 years. So, over the next five years, we will likely remain focused on our strategic goals, while continuing to pursue our aspiration of becoming a national programme.” Contact: Anthony Cavanagh Company: Ganbina Web Address: www.ganbina.com.au
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTUyMDQwMA==