When I founded Pink Elephants in 2016, I was fuelled by a deeply painful heartbreak. Like so many women, I had been left to navigate the devastating reality of early pregnancy loss entirely alone, without a safety net, an empathetic voice, or a clear pathway to support. We started Pink Elephants to challenge that. We chose our name because when a mother elephant loses her baby, the herd uses their trunks to form a physical “Circle of Support” around her.
For the last 10 years, we have shown up consistently, every single day, to build that very circle for every Australian experiencing early pregnancy loss.
Today, a decade into our journey, I am incredibly proud to say that miscarriage is finally having its moment. It is emerging from the shadows of shame and silence, rightfully recognised not just as a clinical incident, but as a profound women’s health and bereavement issue. Miscarriage is common—affecting one in four pregnancies—and it impacts families from all walks of life, across every background.
But this recognition did not happen by accident, and Pink Elephants is not an overnight success. For a decade, we have been using our voice on platforms like Women’s Agenda to call out misperceptions of miscarriage and demand that society stops dangerously disenfranchising our grief. This moment is the hard-fought result of 10 years of relentless advocacy, expanding our digital footprint, and listening deeply to the needs of our community. It is the culmination of building groundbreaking workplace programs, fighting for systemic policy changes like “Leave for Loss,” and launching national awareness campaigns to shatter the silence.
We have earned our place as a deeply trusted support and advocacy organisation because we have done the work, showing up consistently every day. We have proven that we aren’t just reacting to the crisis—we are setting the agenda. Now, standing on the precipice of our next major transformation, that decade of consistency has landed us here.
Building a model that could potentially transform access to support and information, as well as the infrastructure of charities, is true to Pink Elephants’ digital-first roots and inherently innovative nature. It is with immense joy and gratitude that I announce a historic $1 million cornerstone philanthropic gift over three years from the Fussell Family.
This investment represents one of the largest private philanthropic gifts given to early pregnancy loss globally. It marks a major shift in Australian philanthropy, moving away from short-term project funding toward deep technical infrastructure and capacity building. This gift will allow Pink Elephants to increase access to support through digital referral pathways, personalise support through AI, and enhance the data collected in this sector to directly fuel our ongoing awareness and advocacy campaigns.
In celebrating this milestone, the Fussell Family shared a message that deeply moves our entire team:
“The Fussell Family add their congratulations to everyone connected with Pink Elephants on 10 years of putting women at the centre of a care model that listens to, learns from and walks alongside women when they are at their most vulnerable. The Fussell Family are now excited to be supporting The Pink Elephants Support Network’s vision to build the world’s first Intelligence Ecosystem to leverage the latest AI systems to turbocharge the Circle of Support. We feel privileged to be joining you for your next chapter.”
Supercharging empathy with technology
This investment is a total game-changer, directly addressing a massive healthcare system blind spot affecting 150,000 Australians annually. Every five minutes, someone in Australia experiences a miscarriage. Yet, our health system remains fragmented. Women are too often discharged from clinical settings within hours of their loss with no coordinated handoff or safety net. In fact, due to these systemic failures, 47 per cent of people who experience early pregnancy loss currently find themselves completely outside standard care and support pathways.
Furthermore, no centralised national data collection infrastructure currently exists to track the true scale and lived reality of early pregnancy loss. This lack of visibility is a core component of the broader global women’s health gap. As the landmark McKinsey Health Institute report on closing the women’s health gap highlights, a lack of centralised data and lower relative investment severely limits innovation in women-specific conditions.
Crucially, the McKinsey report underscores the massive societal and economic return of prioritizing women’s health: every $1 invested in women’s health unlocks $3 in economic growth.
By investing $1 million into our technical infrastructure, the Fussell Family aren’t just funding a charity; they are proving this exact economic and social calculus. They are demonstrating that funding the core structural capacity of female-led organisations yields exponential outcomes.
We have spent nearly a decade proving that the right support, delivered with evidence and empathy, saves lives. But up until now, we have been bound by the limits of a fragmented health system that places unrealistic burdens on individual clinicians to hand off care. This cornerstone investment changes the entire game. It allows us to view technology not as an overhead, but as vital infrastructure.
To be absolutely clear: AI does not replace the hand that holds. Instead, it enables us to ensure that every hand that needs holding is reached, and that the support we offer is intimately personalised and ready 24/7. This funding will support dedicated data and tech AI specialists, alongside building advanced technical infrastructure.
By financing a dedicated data capability, the Fussell Family are providing the critical “proof of concept” required to catalyse a broader $5 million transformation strategy.
A decade ago, early pregnancy loss was a silent crisis. Today, backed by a community that has raised millions, a federal government that recognises miscarriage as bereavement, and visionary philanthropists, we are ensuring that no one has to walk this path alone. We are positioning Australia as a global pioneer in solving an issue that has been overlooked by medicine and philanthropy for generations.
As we mark this 10-year milestone, our growth reflects a society that is finally ready to validate this grief. We have built a diversified funding portfolio that proves our community, our corporate partners, and our government are ready to invest in systemic change. Over the past decade, Pink Elephants has driven $3 million in community fundraising and corporate partnerships, alongside securing a landmark $4.5 million in Federal Government funding to expand early intervention care.
We are here because we have shown up every day for 10 years. We have done the hard yards, built the trust, and laid the groundwork. And with this historic investment, we will keep showing up—more connected and with a deeper listening ability than ever before.