A team effort

Owen Finegan, CEO of The Kids’ Cancer Project, reveals how his sporting success with the Wallabies rugby team influenced the path he set for the charity.

It seems a long way from the middle of the rugby field to the head of the corporate boardroom table, but for Owen, it’s all been part of his journey over the past two decades.

The 49-year-old played with Australia’s national Rugby Union team the Wallabies from 1996 to 2003 and was named 2001’s Player of the Year. Since 2015, he has been CEO of The Kids’ Cancer Project, a charity that has invested more than $50 million into childhood cancer research.

Playing to win

While the realms of professional sport and a charitable organisation seem worlds apart, Owen says the lessons learned about team work to achieve goals on the playing field proved the ideal training for leading the national not-for-profit.

“In a team sport, everyone has to be aligned, playing to win and all have the same goals, and you soon realise it’s not that different in a work environment,” he says.

“In the workplace, it’s a matter of establishing an alignment of what your mission and vision are, your values as an employee, and how you work together to achieve the goals.”

Sustainable business modelling

The Kids’ Cancer Project was started in 1993 by Col Reynolds. When Owen joined as CEO six years ago, the organisation had a model that was highly dependent on raffle ticket telemarketing fundraising model and was funding 12 medical research projects.

This year, The Kids’ Cancer Project aims to commit almost $4 million through a range of partnerships and fundraising campaigns to fund 35 research projects across 21 research institutions around the country. There is also greater involvement in collaborations with other charities.

Team player

Rod McQueen, legendary Wallabies coach, worked closely with Owen during his playing years. He says the application of business analogies to coaching the rugby team were lessons that always resonated with Owen.

“When it came to group tasks, by including team members in the decision-making process and giving them ownership, we found it more likely to get a decision that worked,” Rod says.

“Owen often played an important part of this culture, and he’s since maintained these same principles throughout his successful business career.”

The COVID-19 pivot

The charity is wholly independent and doesn’t receive government funding as Owen explains. 

“We rely on community and corporate fundraising partners for support to make all this happen,” he says. 

So the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 saw another shift in The Kids’ Cancer Project model, as many regular fundraising events were forced to go online. What initially seemed disastrous, however, proved a successful move both for the organisation and its most important partners.

“We worked harder as we went into the online space and had to be innovative as we adjusted campaigns,” he says. “It was a tumultuous period, but what was really interesting was people were more generous with gifts and our donations actually went up. Thanks to them, we are now ahead on budget for new projects, and are looking to grow our digital footprint in a really strong way.”