How Alberts Evolved from Music Empire to Impact Investing and Philanthropy

By Daniel Simons

 

 

If you were doing the crossword over your morning coffee and the clue was, “What connects Boomerang mouth organs, AC/DC’s Back in Black, and seaweed bioplastics?” you’d be forgiven for drawing a blank.

The answer that you would have been looking for ‘spans seven letters and five generations’: Alberts.

For 140 years, the Albert family has been tuned to the frequency of what’s next. They spot the shifts before they land, back the people brave enough to build, and play the long game.

In 1884 Jacques Albert immigrated from Switzerland to Australia with an instinct for opportunity. He opened a watch repair shop that soon expanded into a thriving sheet music and instrument business.

When his son Frank joined him, they founded J. Albert & Son. Together, they became a dominant force in Australia’s music scene, selling popular sheet music and the iconic Boomerang mouth organs.

Jacques also famously sailed overseas to court major publishers, returning with the rights to Tin Pan Alley’s biggest hits and introducing the sound to Australia.

Under Frank Albert’s leadership, the company continued to break new ground, establishing a national media empire that cemented their impact on Australia’s cultural fabric.

Frank was a co-founding director of the Australian Broadcasting Company, ensuring music was accessible to the masses by radio.

He also co-founded APRA in 1926 to protect the rights of songwriters. Using the proceeds from the sale of the ABC to the government, Alberts purchased their first of seven radio stations, 2UW (now KIIS 106.5), and became a shareholder in television station ATN-7.

Later, the third-generation pioneer, Ted Albert, came into the business with a bold vision to take the Australian sound to the world. In 1964 he founded Albert Productions, Australia’s first major independent record label, which became a global force.

His ‘golden ears’ unearthed rock gods AC/DC whose Back in Black became one of the highest-selling rock albums of all time.

Ted also backed a then-unknown film director called Baz Luhrmann to transform a small stage play into the now-iconic Strictly Ballroom, and he and David Albert played a key role in supporting artists who helped define modern Australian music, including The Easybeats, John Paul Young, and Gotye.

At one point, Alberts accounted for over 20% of all Australian chart hits.

Now, the latest generation is remixing that track record of success and pointing it towards impact.

In 2016, recognising that success creates responsibility, the fifth generation sold the operational side of the music business and charted a new course.

With the humble conviction that business “can and must be a force for good,” they now use their resources and talents to support and nurture projects across the pillars of equality, vibrant culture, healthy minds, and sustainable environment.

Today, under CEO and fifth generation member David Albert, the family business runs Alberts Impact Ventures, which backs ambitious and disruptive startups tackling society’s greatest challenges, and The Tony Foundation, which is focused on improving life outcomes for young people through music. They’re also vocal advocates for collaboration and systems change.

At a time of escalating crises and mounting threats, Alberts is stepping into the arena and serving as both a case study and a champion for the world that could and should be.

By investing boldly in regenerative solutions, proving that profits and purpose can go hand in hand, and sharing their journey transparently, this carbon-neutral B Corp is opening up new horizons for impact, and showing how successful families can be massive levers for transformation.

Through it all, they’re shining a spotlight on how money can move markets, and culture is the currency of change.

We sat down with Ingrid Albert, Executive Director and head of The Tony Foundation, to talk about carrying forward a legacy of backing pioneers into an era when the world needs them most.

One of Alberts’ core philosophies is “backing pioneers.” I believe you even have a Pioneering Manifesto. What does it mean to back a pioneer and why is it so important to you?

Backing pioneers has been a continuous thread throughout our history. We have evolved over the generations, but what is interesting is that many of our core values have held through time. We focus on backing people, investing early, and fostering long-term partnerships. AC/DC would be a key example of that.

When I think about what we consider to be a pioneer within the context of our current focus, it is someone who is driven to leave the world a better and fairer place than how they found it. We especially look for people who are disrupting systems or breaking down barriers, ideally with the power to create transformative change.

We mostly back these pioneers through Alberts Impact Ventures, where we invest in early-stage businesses solving deep societal and environmental issues.

The fund was created to support founders with that pioneering spirit, but we also look for what you might call a “pioneering business model” where impact isn’t separate from how they make money. It is embedded. Every dollar they generate needs to be inherently linked to a social or environmental outcome. So far we have invested in 22 startups within Australia.

You’ve backed an inspiring range of ventures, including Electric, Baymatob, and Sendle. Could you share a couple of your favourite examples of companies that really embody that pioneering spirit?

Sure. Uluu is a great example. They’ve developed an alternative to plastics by using regeneratively farmed seaweed. We loved what they were doing because they have the aim to reduce plastics and also reduce carbon emissions at the same time.

They have recently raised 16 million dollars at a 100 million dollar valuation to help them build a demonstration plant and scale their business. It is a long-term play, but we really believe that it has the potential to solve so many of the key challenges around climate, and the founding team is also brilliant. They are really driven to make a positive impact.

Another great project we supported is Tixel. That’s an online marketplace for buying and selling tickets, mainly for festivals and concerts. This obviously aligns well with Alberts’ history and legacy. It basically allows fans to resell tickets ethically and securely.

It also caps the price so that you can’t sell more than 20% above the original, which is great in terms of accessibility.

For us, that investment was really important because our belief is that you need a vibrant culture to have a flourishing people and planet. They have just launched in the US, which is fantastic.

 

Prior to the venture arm, Alberts established The Tony Foundation to drive philanthropic outcomes. What is the mission of the foundation and can you tell us about some of the projects it supports?

The Tony Foundation‘s mission is to improve life outcomes for young people through music. We focus on youth experiencing disadvantage, First Nations youth, and youth with mental health issues. We give long-term, untied funding to our partners because we believe they are best placed to decide how resources need to be allocated.

One of the key projects to come out of the Tony Foundation is Music Education: Right from the Start, which is led by my cousin Emily. It’s a collaborative national initiative advocating for universal access to quality, sequential and ongoing music education for all Australian primary school children. The aim is to drive systemic change by bringing stakeholders together across the entire sector.

It has already made significant progress within the government. For example, it helped multiple stakeholders come together to define what quality music education is. It also helped to pinpoint key challenges, like the fact that many generalist teachers don’t have adequate academic qualifications or training to deliver music education.

You’ve mentioned that The Tony Foundation’s main focus is on music as a tool for social change, but you were also one of the first organisations to join Groundswell Giving’s Major Giving Circle, and recently you partnered with Damon Gameau and Anna Kaplan from Regen Studios, the company behind 2040 and Regenerating Australia. Can you tell us about how and why you came to support that organisation and their new film Future Council?

Valuing arts and creativity has been a theme throughout our history and remains core to the business today. We’ve also been at the forefront of amplifying voices of generational change. This was particularly strong within the pop and rock music heyday of Alberts.

For us, Regen Studios and Damon and Anna encapsulate those areas of creativity and elevating voices, and their brilliant work perfectly aligns with our focus on environmental sustainability and mental health. Actually, it really fits across all of our pillars.

The partnership began when we were looking to create a new pioneering philanthropy pillar to support an organisation we felt was truly breaking new ground.

We had come across Damon from his work with the solutions-focused documentary 2040 and built a relationship over time.

Alberts actually used the short film Regenerating Australia in our strategic planning session. We all watched it and tried to pull insights to help shape our ideas. Damon came to present as well, and after that was when we began the partnership.

We provide three years of untied funding to Regen Studios, so it is up to them how they allocate it. At the time, their main focus was on the Future Council film.

We really felt that it was a perfect fit because they were elevating the youth voice and bringing them to the centre of the conversation.

We loved their films but we also think they’re world leaders when it comes to the impact campaigns they roll out after the film’s screening. It shows their commitment beyond telling a story to actually inspiring action and encouraging participation to drive change. We want something that is going to mobilise action, and they embody that.

In terms of the partnership, it was broader than the grant. We always look for ways to support our partners beyond just the financial. We hosted the first pre-screening for Future Council in Sydney before it was released to bring stakeholders together early. It was right before they were going to the UN General Assembly, and our screening helped them get donors to support getting people over there.

Something we really loved about the film, and all the work they are doing, is the way it gets people thinking about how they can play a role in nurturing and protecting the planet. It shows that everyone can contribute. Everyone matters, everyone can play a role, and action, big or small, makes a difference.

You’ve mentioned that, with the urgent challenges facing humanity, it’s not enough just to do good, you also have to ‘be vocal’. How has Alberts shifted its strategy regarding thought leadership, advocacy, and your new passion for inspiring would-be changemakers to raise their impact ambitions?

Being more vocal came out of our recent strategy review. We had achieved our objectives of transitioning the foundation and investing within the VC allocation. We were looking at what other tools we had beyond capital deployment to drive better outcomes. The two areas we identified were advocacy, specifically being more vocal, and collaboration.

We’ve made the effort to speak on panels like SXSW Sydney and the Impact Investing Summit Asia Pacific about a range of topics, including investing in the arts and how foundations can be a catalyst for impact; and we’ve given some keynotes sharing our history, philosophy and learnings around creating change. And, as mentioned, we hosted the film screening.

One of the biggest stories we are sharing is our own foundation’s corpus shift. For a long time, we had been granting out as a Private Ancillary Fund and considering the impact that was having. However, we hadn’t considered what the capital sitting in the corpus was doing. We were potentially having 95% of that capital creating harm and 5% doing good.

That was an ‘aha’ moment. So we separated the corpus with its own investment policy and responsible investment framework. Now we look at investment across the ABC spectrum: avoiding harm, benefiting, contributing to solutions, and catalysing solutions. We’re proving that you can generate a return and have a positive impact and we’re hoping others will follow our example.

A lot of the work I do today is speaking on this and having the conversation with other foundations who are looking to make similar shifts. We have been at the forefront of foundations making that change, so we are trying to provide support and guidance where we can.

We are also really passionate about gender equality and social justice. We launched Equity Clear with Giant Leap and Scale Investors to develop a common data standard for diversity reporting in the VC ecosystem, and we also publicly supported the Voice referendum, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and the Victorian Treaty.