The Tony Robbins Foundation
The beginning of what became more than a decade of support: youth leadership programmes, prison education, and the International Basket Brigade delivering food baskets at Christmas.
John Margerison
John Margerison is a philanthropist. He funds work across healthcare, children and young people, education and disaster relief. He does it personally, without a foundation, and for the most part without publicity.
Early life and career
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How the giving began
The giving started before there was any structure to it, and for a long time there was no structure at all. There was a person who could help, a situation that needed help, and a decision made quickly.
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[The turning point belongs here: the single moment, person, trip or event that changed the scale or seriousness of the giving. It is the paragraph a reader will remember, and it cannot be written for him.]
Approach
There is no committee and no application window, which means there is also no queue and no form to fill in. Requests arrive the way most things arrive: through someone who knows someone, or because a person is already visibly doing the work and needs it paid for.
What gets funded tends to share three qualities. The organisation is already operating, rather than proposing. The money changes the scale of something real, rather than covering a shortfall in overhead. And the people doing the work keep control of how it is done.
Not everything runs through an organisation. When 41 people needed to get out of Ukraine in 2022, there was no charity in between: the fares were simply paid. That remains the preferred shape when it is possible.
Where money does go through a charity, it goes because the charity can do it better. A dollar reaches further through an organisation with bulk purchasing, logistics and donated food behind it than it ever would directly.
What is not recorded
Most of it. The commitments documented here involve organisations that can be named, checked and held to account, which is why they can be written down. They are not representative of the whole.
The rest is individual: a person, a situation, an amount that solves it. No organisation in the middle, no paperwork, and no record kept here. A reader who assumed this list was complete would have the wrong idea of how any of it works.
The four strands
Selected commitments
Meals, at scale, across several organisations
Large hunger-relief campaigns alongside smaller programmes feeding people directly. Roughly a decade of it, and about 1.5 million meals at the rates the organisations use.
Anti-trafficking work begins
First through Operation Underground Railroad, now Our Rescue, and later through Marici: intelligence, prosecution and the aftercare that follows a child being freed.
Flights out of Ukraine
Ukrainian airspace closed to civil aviation on 24 February 2022. Forty-one people crossed overland into Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary or Slovakia, and the fares onward were paid directly. Most settled in Australia.
Vanuatu's largest health outreach
Delivered by the Esesson Foundation with Vanuatu's Ministry of Health from 12 to 20 September, and expected to reach more than two thousand people.
A letter, 2024
To John Margerison
Dear John,
I just wanted to share something with you — a separate note from everything else.
You and a friend have truly changed lives. The Ukrainians you helped bring to Australia can't thank you enough. My partner and her son are settled now, and it's all because of the opportunity and support you gave them.
Because of that, her son is growing up as a happy boy who has never had to hear a single gunshot or bomb. That alone says everything.
He's like a little friend to me — we often go fishing and spend time together.
Their lives have completely transformed, and they are forever grateful for what you've done. It's something they will carry with them for life.
Thank you again — what you've done truly matters.
— Anastasia
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