He turned to philanthropy after a life-threatening accident in 2002, and founded the Balnaves Foundation in 2006, which by the time of his death had given A$20 million to arts organisations.
[5] The company later went through various mergers and incarnations, becoming Endemol Australia in 2013/2014,[6] Southern Star was responsible for bringing shows such as Water Rats, and McLeod's Daughters, Big Brother and Bananas in Pyjamas to Australian television screens.
Growing up with polio, and being on life support for a while and not being able to walk for a year after his 2002 boating accident led to an interest in health and medicine.
[7] Balnaves also helped to fund Sculpture by the Sea in Sydney, and Australian presentations at the Venice Biennale in a partnership with the Australia Council.
He supported the START program at AGSA in Adelaide, giving families with children access to gallery events each week.
[3] Around 2007, he provided funding to subsidise tickets to eight shows at the Sydney Opera House per year, for welfare recipients and pensioners to access the arts there.
[11] In 2017, Balnaves supported the Adelaide Festival, then under the directorship of Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield, and started the "Tix for Next to Nix" program,[3] which still runs today (as of April 2022[update]).
[13] In 2021, the foundation helped to fund Unsettled, an exhibition on the colonisation of Australia through Indigenous perspectives mounted at the Australian Museum in Sydney,[14][15][16] enabling free entry to for the more than 70,000 visitors.
[17] Nick Mitzevich, NGA director, said of Balnaves: "The beauty of his philanthropy was to leverage and do more with the support he gave to make it bigger and better.