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Update on Rata Foundation Grants 2020

26/2/2021

Summer is quite stunning in the South Island. The trees are looking great. As I gazed at the view on Kina Beach in Tasman, I wondered how Rata Foundation had performed this year (tragic right). So I’ve had another wee gander at Rata Foundation’s grants and financials. They were published sometime in September for the year ending 31 March. They are pretty important in the grant funding ecosystem: from some older numbers they account for around a quarter of grants going into Canterbury organisations.

I last had a good look at Rata a year ago. Check out that blog and a few previous to see who this grant maker is and the genesis of their money. What I found there was some increases in the amounts given, to fewer groups. I had noted a change of trustees given the change of government (Trustees are appointed by the Minister of Finance) and wondered if there would be material changes in where the money goes. I found:

Top of the South (Nelson and Marlborough regions) got 30% of 2019 grants, whilst having 23% of the population
Rugby is still the number one sport getting funding from Rata.
They are giving fewer, bigger grants.
The cost per grant has shot up by over $1500. This is driven by both rising costs and fewer grants.

So how have things changed? A fair bit is my assessment.

First things first: I’m moaning about the data. I use publicly available information, and over the years its got worse in terms of disclosure. Two years ago multi year grants were identified and the time span given. Now, not so much. This year I am throwing in the towel over allocating multi year funding over several years as I’m having to make far too many assumptions. What this will do is mess up the view of sector allocations on an annual basis. So the chart below shows the multi year allocations 2018 and 2019, but sadly not 2020. I’m not sure that this will affect the story at a high level, but will mess up if I start drilling down too much.

I’ve also given up on trying to figure out if spend is for operational purposes or capital. This information used to be published, now its not. It’s a shame, as is helpful for understanding funding of community assets. Grant decisions used to be published within weeks after the decision was made: now we have to wait for the annual report, in some cases up to 17 months, to see how the community funding decisions are made. Another useful piece that gaming trusts publish but these guys don’t is declined applications. That helps to give a view of where the organisation is making resource trade-offs and in my nerdy opinion can be pretty interesting.

Anyhoo… below is the last seven years of Rata grants (backing out the $25m Special Earthquake fund). What is rather interesting here is the drop in sport and the rise in community and economic development, which is 2020 made up around 30% of grants made. Over the last seven years the average was 24%.

Its interesting to think about what is driving this change. We are seeing more cash injections going out to capability building, including almost $30k to a private group to run some work. We also have a different group of people making decisions around the Board table due to the change in government.

Below is a list of the top 10 grants made in 2020. Now remember some of these could well be multi year funding, others could be building projects. Others could just be really good projects! It’s hard to know: for some I have done a google to find out but was unable to do that consistently so not presented here.

CORE Education $654,325
University of Canterbury- A Better Start $367,083
Bone Marrow Cancer Trust $250,000
He Waka Hou Trust $250,000
Community Wellbeing North Canterbury Trust $240,000
St John of God Hauora Trust (Waipuna) $240,000
Te Whatu Manawa Maoritanga o Rehua Trust $233,333
Te Ora Hou Otautahi Inc $233,333
LEAD Centre for Not for Profit Leadership $201,966
Whakatu Te Korowai Manaakitanga Trust $186,000

Sporting venues are the most funded sporting groups with over $320k going to such venues. They tend to be multi sport ones like rec centres and the like. Within code Football is the favourite sport funded by Rata Foundation, with $250k given to the code, followed closely by Cricket at $235k. Basketball got $170k, organisers (such as Sport Canterbury) $170k, Life Saving $161k, Cycling $157k, Rugby, last year’s winner, got $151k, followed by Netball (!) at $120k. Loving the rise of Basketball here: it’s a growing code within the region.

Speaking of regions, the balance between Canterbury spend and Top of the South more reflects the population, with 77% of funds going to Canterbury organisations. Last time I looked Top of the South got 30% of funds despite having 23% of the population.

If you are interested in looking at this a bit more, please get in touch.

Now, cost to serve is an interesting view. You may have seen a look at the Christchurch Foundation recently. They do a different job that Rata of course: in addition to managing funds and making grants they also have to build the capital fund by finding donors and asking for money.

With Rata I’ve had a look at a history of operating financials. In 2014, the costs per grant made were 14.8 cents. This means that for every dollar given, it cost 14.8 cents to get that dollar into the community. In 2020, that cost has gone to 19.9 cents. This growth is driven by an increase in fund management costs (perhaps using different methodologies), and salaries up 60%. In 2014 the cost per grant was $2,263. In 2020 it is $4,376.

Now, another interesting figure is the top staff costs. In 2016, the first year this data was published, that number was $654k. This was over the top five staff. The top five salaries went up $18k in the next year to bring an average top five salary of $124,400 in 2017. In, 2018 there is a drop in the gross figure. Its now $549k. However, now it’s over the top three staff. In 2019 this number increased by $50,000, and in 2020 by $26,000. Dividing that 2020 top staff number by 3 gives us an average salary of $209k. What are your views on this? How does it sit with others in the third sector? I should look at that!

If the grant decisions made now are wiser than before then absolutely. But the data suggests that just over half of groups getting funding in 2020 usually get funding. 14% of grants were brand new grantees to Rata, although eyeballing the list many were usual suspects to other funding channels. Does the increase in costs mean our community has had better investments made into it? Well this isn’t measured – and quite frankly would be jolly difficult to measure at least using public information. Happy to talk if you have some ideas on this.

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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Mainland's grants: one surprise but mostly meeting expectations

24/11/2020

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Mainland Foundation have recently released their latest funding, so I thought I’d have a look. Their financial year finishes at 31 July, so their 2020 grants cover the lockdown period. I now have a 4,600 line spreadsheet with 8 years of grant data. Good times.

If you want a reminder of who Mainland Foundation is, they are a For Purpose Class 4 gaming Trust. Their Authorised Purpose can be found here, but basically it covers:

Amateur South Island rugby north of the Waitaki River, including the West Coast
Amateur sport
Charitable purposes for the relief of poverty
Cultural grants beneficial for the community
Grants for education of training

The chart below shows the amounts of grants, by segment. On the secondary axis are the number of gaming machines. My grant numbers are slightly different from Mainland’s, which I suspect in part is due to me not accounting for grants returned, and due to my terribly manual method of data analysis where errors can creep in. There are a few things I think are really interesting in this chart.

Firstly, the COVID 19 lockdown seems to have had a minimal effect on the dollars that Mainland gives. There looks to be a 12% annual decline here: much less than I had expected. Surprise! This is driven a wee bit by Mainland putting on a new venue in the Tararua District in 2020, but also suggests that consumer behaviour hasn’t changed all that much despite lock down. I think some people have thought those users of gaming trusts would find other avenues for their pastime. This does not appear to be the case.

Secondly, they are true to their authorised purpose. Rugby is the winner on the day, receiving around half of the total funds given by the Mainland Foundation.

The third point is that the dips in grants don’t appear to relate to machine numbers. DIA publishes some good data on gaming machine numbers. I have used 31 December numbers for the period under review. Although the number of machines hold fairly stable, there seems to be a bit of churn in the venues: over the 8 years under review there have ben 26 venues with Mainland machines, but in any one year there are between 13 and 15 venues with their machines. They won’t lose one venue and pick another up the same day, so I suspect some of this variability in total grants given is affected by timing.

Now, I know that you are wondering which lucky rugby organisations get all that wonderful cash. Some 70 different rugby groups were the recipients. Below is a chart with the last 8 years of data showing the top ten beneficiaries. And no surprises where the lion’s share went.

Below shows the entity, the amount of money granted, the number of grants made over those eight years, and the average dollar value of each grant.

A very cursory look at the accounts of Canterbury Rugby Union it’s a bit hard to see how those funds are used, but it must be for the amateur game. I haven’t looked at accounts of other organisations.

What is also interesting is where some of the other grant money goes, and a few allocations drive my eyebrows up. In 2020 Mainland gave money to $4,807 to Redzone Drone Racing Incorporated. Of course it's their money to give, but in the same year they declined 214 applications for various groups, thereby making resource allocation decisions for many activities in the NGO sector.

This chart shows their grant profile: the amount given verses the amount requested. It shows that they give 50% of what is asked for, that sport has the best odds of getting funded (although this will be driven by rugby) and that community and environmental causes have a lower chance of success.

We can also look at this data regionally. The chart below shows where 2020 grant money goes to by region. Note that the numbers are not quite the same as above: this is driven by the fact some groups are national, so are tagged accordingly in my system. Other groups seem to not have caught up with the fact that Mainland’s venues have changed so keep applying even though they have no chance of getting funds. Around 4% of total money requested came from groups outside of where the machines are who went on fishing expeditions for cash.

This also shows that Canterbury gets around 60% of available grants, which is around our share of gaming machines (62%).

Anyway. There is a bunch of really interesting stuff in this material: the average amount given in 2020 was $6,235, up from 4,936 in 2019. There were 633 grants approved this year, down considerably from 909 grants in 2019: numerics which I suggest are driven by COVID given that many events / tournaments didn’t happen this year, there was government support for many groups, and I suspect many groups have not applied. Shout out if there is anything you want to explore here.

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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Pub Charity Update 2020

28/8/2020

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I thought I would revisit this funder. They run a nationwide gaming trust and thoughtfully categorise their grants into Territorial Authority which helps my work. Last financial year they gave around $34m to groups across the country, so are a pretty solid funder of New Zealand NGOs.

I have looked at all their grants going into the greater Canterbury region, and categorised them into the sectors that I use for reporting.

Their COVID effect has been quite profound. As of the end of August 2020 their last grants were made in March 2020, with a new round proposed for September 2020 (the end of their financial year). As it stands now, the dollar value of grants into the region is down $2.5m compared to last year (which admittedly was pretty huge). These guys tend to give smaller amounts (average of $6,110 over the seven years under review) to a wide range of groups (3,519 grants in the seven years under review).

You can also see that these guys give to all sectors, which is great. Indeed a good chunk of the Arts money goes to Court Theatre every year (over $100k per annum since 2013) to help with their rental costs.

Health and Wellbeing took boost in 2019 when Pub Charity granted $375k as a contribution towards two new ambulances. Now of course that could lead to another discussion around full state funding of ambulance services, but we will leave that to others. They were also very generous to the Canterbury Charity Hospital in 2018, granting $108k.

We have almost 40% headed to Sport. The usual suspects of course make up the top recipients for funding, but they are not the amounts of other funders. In 2019 the top sports and amounts were:

Rugby 210,554.97
Football 138,909.04
Bowls 104,763.00
Cricket 94,447.14
Tennis 72,472.02
Hockey 69,242.48
Golf 66,965.60
Fringe 63,618.44
Netball 47,962.33
Marching 47,739.10
Yachting 44,055.45
Softball 38,521.75
Swimming 32,438.00
Rowing 31,217.70
Skiing 30,900.00
Horses 29,068.90

Yes you read that: Marching got $47k from this funder, about on par with netball.

What I love about Pub Charity is that they provide a far bit of detail around where the money goes, and this is where things can get interesting. Indeed, the word cloud at the top of this blog is based on their data. I’ve picked on footie enough, so lets look at where the cricket money goes. In 2019 cricket received $94k over 16 different clubs. This went to coaches, cricket equipment (such as balls, training nets, uniforms and helmets), travel and umpire costs and a lawn mower. Now the clubs are perfectly entitled to ask for this money, and Pub Charity are perfectly entitled to give it for those purposes. But should we, as members of these clubs, expect such costs to be borne by the community. After all, plenty of organisations were turned down for the $5k worth of cricket balls my local club got.

Marching’s money went towards travel, accommodation and registration costs for various competitions, kit and venue costs for training.

Let’s have a look at Education. We had 62 schools and preschools receiving funding in the 2019 year. Of the secondary schools in Canterbury, 15 of them received money mostly to enable school sport: CBHS’s surfing programme, travel and accommodation for Rangi Ruru, STAC, Villa, Riccarton High, Rangiora High, Burnside, Haeata (whose request also included swimming lessons for their younger pupils), sports uniforms for Lincoln.

Now, I am hypothesising, but I reckon Tournament week is driving many of the school funding requests. So its clearly not happening this year, but if a good bunch of schools are applying for money to travel to these competitions, perhaps there could be a better way to ensure participation by a range of schools and athletes than the “every man for himself” approach this demonstrates.

Pub Charity do a great job with spreading their grant money widely over a range of NGOs. My questions come back to the NGOs who are applying for the money: what is an acceptable cost for the participants to pay, and what are you asking the community to provide. Looking at the sidelines of various sport there seems a fair whack of grant money tied up in gear that seems of dubious value to the participants. Do the “bells and whistles” paid for by grant money add to the participants’ enjoyment of the code? If they understood the opportunity cost for that money would they still have their hand out? Or put their hands in their own pockets? What is the cost to serve here? Does the cost of the grant outweigh the benefit?

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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Post COVID grants from CERT

29/7/2020

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Our big bold disruptive future in a post COVID funding world does not seem to have happened, and we are going back to BAU. The Government’s fairy dust to Sport seems to have displaced any tension for change, and there seems no engagement or discussion on the whole ecosystem by any party (save TOP). So back to my knitting.

Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Trust publishes their grants fairly promptly after the decisions are made. I have written about them previously. Below is a chart showing grants by month for the last 3 or so years. Now, they are a fairly small player (which makes analysis simple) giving out $2.8m last year, but I am a fan as they seem broad church in their approach to grants.

As someone who occasionally looks for grants I am pleasantly surprised by this. Obviously there were no distributions when our nation was in lock down in April and May so that will reduce the total given by around 16%. And in June, when we opened up again, they have only dropped 25% off the average for the previous 3 years, 30% compared to last year. My previous work suggested that we would see a 40% reduction… so my guestimate turned out OK. It will be interesting to monitor this moving forward to see if gaming habits have structurally changed.

I have started capturing declines in my database, and noticed an interesting new tag for CERT. Bug 4/2, which runs the Imagination Station, has been turned down by CERT in the last financial year, with a comment “Inconsistent with CCC Gaming Policy”. We can see in the Annual Report that “CERT accepts Christchurch City Council’s sinking lid policy. To be consistent with Council’s approach, CERT does not favour grant applications that involve Council”. They also turned down Canterbury Literacy Association, Christchurch Symphony Trust and Vikings Swim Club for the same reason. Tough luck for those organisations, and an interesting quandary for organisations who are CCC supported should this get picked up by other funders.

CERT have also started capturing and reporting the NZBN. This is a Government issued number to organisations to help these businesses manage their relationships with Government It also happens to be a handy unique identifier just in case any entity did want to construct a database with many of the third sector organisations, so nice to see disclosure here.

No real change where their money goes: below is a graph showing the quantums by sector. Sport is getting just over half of the money, but there are some decent dollops going to other sectors. Education too is often sport related so we must be careful about interpreting this.

The average grant in 2019 was $5,519. Interestingly this has dropped from $8374 in 2014. I would suspect that this is because more organisations are applying to it. The top 10 organisations supported by CERT in 2019 are below. What I find interesting about this is that all have multiple grants. We also have some “unusual suspects” at the top of the list: although with the drama over sport funding for basketball at a national level at least this gaming trust is a big supporter!

However, when we look at where the money goes by sector, old patterns are restored. In the financial year ended 31 March 2020 Rugby received 7% of the total amount given ($206,470). This was followed by cricket receiving $148k, Golf on $140k, Basketball $133k, Football $86k and Bowls $84k. What is happening here is that there are fewer organisations asking for funding in Basketball. Indeed, only two clubs receive funding from this organisation: the money mostly goes to organisers. I have a kid just started playing basketball amongst other sports: as parents we pay the cost of the competition, school provides the uniforms thanks to the good old PTA, facilities are CCC funded by ratepayers, and the coach is a wonderfully passionate teacher. Simple.

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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Grant Funding Manifesto 2020 - For discussion

16/6/2020

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Last time I wrote about the implication that the COVID pandemic was going to have on funders. It’s a little too early to look at what is actually happening here: June will have the first full data for some funders, and sure as eggs I will do so.

But, in some words that have been attributed to Niccolo Machiavelli, lets never waste the opportunity offered by a good crisis.

In my last blog I wrote this. The impact of the COVID pandemic is going to have a profound effect upon how third sector organisations deliver their services. It exposes a funding ecosystem in New Zealand where around 2/3 of the grant money coming to communities comes from gambling activities. It exposes chronic underfunding of core service delivery by government, and a rise of professional staff (and their resultant cost) within third sector organisations tasked with getting that diminishing pool of grants and private philanthropy.

What are the answers? If I knew that I wouldn’t be writing this. But I do know that if we want to make some systemic changes, the opportunity is now, so let’s get those ecosystem conversations going.

So with some dog walking time, a few conversations, and some reading, I do have a bit of a solution which will put the control of community funding back into the hands of those who receive the benefits: the community.

The issues are complex.

We have supply issues. Money coming from gambling makes up over two thirds of grant funding for community groups. Around $358m goes into the New Zealand TSO ecosystem from gaming trusts. Lotteries too put $261m into the community last year.

We have demand issues. Most groups want more money. But sometimes there seems little community benefit in how that money is spent. We have a lot of middle class capture within the sector, little benchmarking, and little innovation due in part to lack of access to capital.

We have cost to serve issues. Some of my earlier work suggests that the cost of this process to NZ Inc is around $260m per annum, and that a grant costs around $4k to get into the community.

Any conversation around third sector organisations always ends up with money. This is driven in part by the fact that many people participating in these discussions are paid members of community organisations whose mortgages depend on this, which is perfectly reasonable. Those groups who are purely voluntary, be they structured or unstructured community groups, just keep on doing what they do and don’t realise they have a place in the conversation. Funders too drive the conversation, but see solutions which put them at the heart of a solution, rather than as an enabler.

The Problem Gambling foundation have proposed to the Minister that Class 4 gaming is phased out. That has huge implications for the sector. Now the simplest response will be to stick with the status quo. It will be interesting to see how the Government reacts to this proposal, and of course community groups will come out in favour of the status quo due to their inability to actually say what they really think as they need the money produced by this sector.

A key issue is WHO gets to decide where the money goes. Gaming trusts by and large are middle aged men allocating “their” money to various groups, with some eyebrow raising resource consequences. Check out some of my blogs for a dive into that stuff. Community trusts and various local and central government funds have a legion of staff making assessments, with either elected politicians or friends of those elected politicians determining what communities need. Surely the people who know what their communities need are people within those communities?

So let’s get radical.

Let’s get rid of pokies. We set up a voucher scheme for every citizen of New Zealand.

Third sector organisations can be part of a national voucher scheme: sports groups, arts groups, community groups, education groups, youth groups, health groups, environmental groups. Every citizen of New Zealand could be entitled to a state funded $100 voucher which can be applied through a portal. 5,000,000 * 100 = $500m. The portal takes each person through a few questions around what each person values. Sport? What sports do they play? Do they play for a club? Arts? Like the theatre? Dance? Baby and me classes? Cancer support? The first step helps people consider how they engage with groups in the community. The portal then gives people options around groups, benchmarking them against each other in terms of costs, efficacy and other elements. Perhaps the voucher does not need to be a flat amount. Perhaps in an effort to drive equity poorer communities get a bit more. Perhaps $100 is too low? Too high? Don’t know. Let’s discuss.

Secondly, money is applied from this system to operating costs. It can be spread over as many or as few groups as each citizen chooses. Perhaps we have an age range: from Year 7 and up people create their profile and allocate their money. This could be wrapped around a citizenship module to help students understand their power in a modern democracy. (Or not).

And no, if an individual choses not to spend it they do not get it. Rather, perhaps it gets allocated out according to the profile of the community the person lives in.

Third sector organisations who have chosen to be on the portal have put in what additional value can the voucher income can provide them that their current revenue does not. This could be around ensuring equity to enable children to play sport, ensuring support for health issues, or to keep community groups resourced. They simply fill in a form with their annual accounts and leave it open. No multiple requests: just the accounts, the plan for the money, and evidence to support why a dollar spent with this community group is a good investment. So there is an instant admin saving for those applying for money.

“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.” Another Machiavelli quote. Because here is where we need to be careful in execution. This voucher scheme is not a popularity contest. There should be no incentive for charities to spend precious money on branding exercises to appeal to people. Rather, we use a bunch of tools to demonstrate community value and drive a bit more critical thinking (a skill, in these unprecedented times, that I am sure we agree needs practice). The number of people playing within the sports club. The group’s cost base compared to others. The outcomes that the group actually achieves with its money.

This portal, and the analysis on each organisation is centrally funded but managed outside government. People are paid a piece rate for analysis, and perhaps go through some form of certification. Analysis is peer reviewed, and public. Obviously there is a cost here: say 50,000 of the 114,000 TSOs are seeking money. If reviewers are paid $200 a review, and peer reviewers $100, that’s $15m. We have an IT system in here to which would cost a bit to set up and run, and a few staff to manage it. New cost? Not so. The cost to serve I mentioned before suggests it costs at least $260m per annum for the status quo. These costs are hidden in the accounts of funders and TSOs seeking grants.

Councils and others such as private foundations and other funders can use the portal too saving costs as well: costs often hidden well within Council budgets. However, I’d like to see a stop in both Council and Lotteries funding for community groups opex: this opex should be able to be covered with the above system, and Council can then focus on community capex opportunities. After all, taxpayer / ratepayer: we are all the same people providing the money for these grants.

When I have floated this concept in the past, some people in TSOs have said, “well, what say we get no money?”. I suspect that’s the point. If the community sees no value in what you are doing, then why are you still doing it? Innovation in this sector is rare due in part to access to funding. JB Were released a report in 2017 called “The New Zealand Cause Report”. This is super interesting, and I would recommend anyone with an interest in the sector to have a gander. The writer looks at Innovation, and summarises “While there have been some large changes in growth rates between different charity sectors over time, there hasn’t been much change in the names of the large organisations dominating the sector suggesting the ability for new and smaller organisations to innovate and grow is limited. Almost 80% of the 40 largest New Zealand charities have existed for over 20 years. This is in contrast to the for-profit sector where dramatic change in ranking order is common, availability of risk capital is higher and the financial rewards for success are greater.” And in the summary the point is rammed home with this comment: “The Facebooks of the charity sector are rare”.

This model as proposed enables some healthy competition for funding. This concept could well be an anathema to many groups, but I suspect funding in a more transparent manner is a better framework for competition than the current murky ecosystem.

Organisations that perform services with government contracts on behalf of the community should be 100% government funded. Some work done by Social Services Providers Association puts the dollar tag here at $630m. To be honest this feels a little on the light side, but it could result in a bunch of cost savings as focus goes on delivering best practice around the social service provision rather than the marketing and other activities that are needed to fill the current funding shortfall.

Organisations that have contracts with the Government around service delivery would register on the portal. People are referred to that portal based on their specific needs. For example, say I have a child with special needs. I have the cost of providing Health, Education and Social Services allocated to me to use as I choose, and those costs are based on audited best practice, Government rates to support my needs. I choose a service provider whose programme best suits my needs, and they receive my voucher income for the contracted years. This should see an increase in Government income to Third Sector organisations, as the contract rate is based on what it would cost the Government to provide best practice support, and bundle service delivery around the person rather than the Government department providing that aspect of care.

Similarly, these organisations undergo review on the portal. We have seen examples of largesse within the contract system, and there seems little appetite within Government for stronger management here. So its up to us, the taxpayers I think to ensure that the groups do what they say they will do, and do it well.

Curiously I wrote most of this before I watched a Zoom with members of different political parties discussing the charitable sector. It was hosted by Hui E Community Aotearoa (I have shared a link on my Delfi Facebook page if you want to watch the 90 minute webinar). The wind was taken out of my sails a bit by Geoff Simmons from TOP advocating just this: a voucher system for funding (funded ex alcohol taxes). This idea was then pooh poohed by Jan Logie who felt it could turn into a popularity contest (which I think I have addressed above). TOP I believe are not precious in their policies, and they seemed the only ones in that chat who had a real alternative to the funding status quo.

The definition of stupidity is often defined as doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I’m keen to get a community sector discussion going about how we can drive a outcome to solve some of the supply issues, the demand issues, and that pesky cost to serve, As our mate Machiavelli is purported to have said, “I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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Rethinking Community Funding Part 2

30/4/2020

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My last blog has sparked a wee bit of conversation, so I thought it may be helpful for organisations to explore the numbers further. I am already seeing how the reduction in funding, particularly gaming trust, is manifesting itself, with letters from various organisations and public appeals now doing the rounds.

It will be difficult for the community to dig deep, particularly with the uncertainty of what lies ahead over many people.

This chart looks at three years of data, over 12000 grants. I take each grant and categorise it with a bunch of useful parameters. I have then averaged the annual amount given. This chart simply shows the sectors that the various funding buckets put their money into. We can see that sport is the biggest recipient of grants in the Canterbury region.

What I want to focus on is the gaming trust contribution to third sector groups. In the last blog I estimated that nationally, gaming trust giving will be down $120,000,000 this year. That’s a drop of 40% of total giving from that sector. Indeed, although saddened, I was vindicated on this by Martin Cheer from Pub Charity who proffered the same number in a recent interview on National Radio.
Let’s look at the local effect. Canterbury has around 10% of grants into the area. There are a couple of little system quirks however.

For purpose Class 4 trusts give have some preferred organisations they give to. We have two of these in Canterbury: Air Rescue and Community Services, who give to the Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust, and Mainland Foundation, whose primary purpose is amateur rugby union north of the Waitaki including the West Coast. The impact on these organisations is different: the air rescue pretty much gets all of its grant money from their gaming trust, while rugby (last time I looked) gets just over half of their money from Mainland Foundation.

What I have done is assume that Canterbury gaming drops $12m. I have then assumed that Air Rescue will maintain their giving to the rescue helicopters, but that rugby drops with everyone else. I then assume that groups get what they got in the past, just scaled back amounts.

This chart then shows the effect of this. It’s a wee bit complicated so let me explain. The first column is the average of 2015 – 2017 gaming trusts grants allocated by sector. The second includes my scaling back of grants given the pandemic effect. The third column is the average amount given by all other funders, which I am assuming won’t change over the next financial year (big assumption). The fourth column sums what we would expect without the pandemic. The second to last column shows the total projected dollar effect on various sectors, and the final column the percentage drop for each sector.

I have made a bunch of assumptions about how gaming user will behave, and about how the men sitting round tables allocating funds will make decisions. So of course these numbers are wrong. However, while we debate these assumptions, that doesn’t mean the conclusion is off: namely that the supply of grant money is looking pretty ordinary, particularly for sports organisations.

But which ones? Here is a cut of Canterbury sporting codes by Average 2015 – 2017 total grants, with the amounts adjusted down for the 39% anticipated drop. Using averages reduces the lumpy effect of capex.

The effect of reductions in grant funding on many of these codes obvious. Will it impact player numbers? Possibly not, although I can envisage more calls for access to sport as the pandemic increases poverty within the nation. Will it impact how clubs are run? I imagine so. I have not looked at other sources of income for clubs at a macro level as grants are my thing, although I have looked at a few organisations historically and noticed that, with grant income, expenses have risen, particularly around people costs.

The other big loser under this scenario is education with a loss of 23%. Often this money goes to school sport programmes, so there’s a further hit to sport. Of course, a lot of capex for schools, such as play grounds and other small assets. However, there does seem to be a high decile skew around this, so it may be that parents will need to be asked to stump up with a bit more around donations if they want the same. Of course, the bigger effect to schools will be the loss of international student income, which again exposes the fragile funding ecosystem for possibly one of the most important jobs we ask our state to do.

The impact of the COVID pandemic is going to have a profound effect upon how third sector organisations deliver their services. It exposes a funding ecosystem in New Zealand where around 2/3 of the grant money coming to communities comes from gambling activities. It exposes chronic underfunding of core service delivery by government, increases in demand for money by groups for cash, and a rise of professional staff (and their resultant cost) within third sector organisations tasked with getting that diminishing pool of grants and private philanthropy.

What are the answers? If I knew that I wouldn’t be writing this. But I do know that if we want to make some systemic changes, the opportunity is now, so let’s get those ecosystem conversations going.

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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Rethinking Community Funding Post Covid19

22/4/2020

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My word it’s a crazy old time. Shelves are bare all over town. I can’t help but think how dire funding will be for third sector organisations for the foreseeable future.

I thought it might be interesting to look at where money comes from the third sector. The excellent JB Were report 2020 puts the “…total giving at $3.8 Billion with volunteering adding a further $2 Billion.” This is represented on page seven of the report (which I can’t copy sadly as its subject to copyright). This chart does not take into account funding from contracts (such as the government contracts around service delivery common in the Social Services sector). My work also only looks at about $900,000,000 of this pie chart (the grant ecosystem), and doesn’t look at individual or corporate giving.

Gaming trust returns will be negatively affected. Pubs are closed, and the machines are not running. This will reduce the money available for groups. Lotto too has gone online: although the coffers will be boosted by that huge jackpot a few weeks ago, New Zealanders usually buy them in store – some 75% of tickets are bought in the “real” world. I would expect the sums available to give away as reduced for the next few months (at least).

Ratepayers too will be antsy with their Councils on spending of rates. I can’t see that local government will be in any shape to up their levels of support: pressure will come on Council budgets.

Community Foundations, foundations and those who give money based on investment return will not make great returns on their investments. Indeed, like our own Kiwisavers, I would expect those to be negative this year, and (if we think we are headed for recession) for a few years more. They are required to run those funds into perpetuity: I would expect the money available to groups to reduce.

Private givers and businesses will be negatively affected by this all. Many businesses are having to tighten their belts, many will strip their businesses down and focus on looking after that and their employees.

Our volunteers will be affected: for many groups their volunteers are older and more at risk. And of course we are all stuck inside at the moment anyway. However, volunteering may be an upside into the future; with the projected unemployment this will be an opportunity for people to feel better about themselves through volunteering.

The one area of potential growth is quite possibly bequests. But not sure I’d want to be the charity which kickstarts this in the midst of a pandemic!

I do think some structural change is happening with community funding. The third sector is fairly reliant on gaming trusts, with around $300m headed to the third sector from this source. This will drop this year: if we assume customer behaviour picks up the day after we come off lock down, community funding will take a $40,000,000 hit this year. However, I don’t think customer behaviour will return to what it was before: habits have been broken. Further, hospitality businesses have been negatively affected. However, for the sake of this analysis let’s assume for now that the businesses are all good. If we assume that 20% of customers account for 80% of the income (the good old 80 / 20 rule applies for many things), and say half of them have now broken the habit, then that takes about $120,000,000 out of the community funding pool. That’s a lot of zeros, and no amount of Covid special funds from other community funders will bridge that gap. Further, we are seeing greater demand on those funds, as the sector reacts to an instant recession with all of those resultant issues.

So if we look at sectors by funders we can see some stark realities. The chart looks at Canterbury 2017 data where I took all 4,672 grants made and categorised them according to where the money came from. If we assume a 40% drop in those grants that’s a big hit for many organisations. And sport will be quite impacted, both by clubs and at schools. Is this OK? What gets lost?

Missing here is of course the government contract amounts which feed much of the sector - although not the sport sector.

A lot has been said in the media about our team of 5 million. The nation has, to date, done a great job of managing the impacts of the Covid19 virus. We hear of disruption, about a fundamental change to our economy, and the need to think of others during this time. I’d be keen for us to have some conversations about the future of funding for third sector organisations. We have major supply and demand issues for cash within the sector.

As we in the third sector sit around various Zoom calls talking money, can we ask whether our organisation actually NEEDS the money as opposed to wants. Over the past twenty years we have allowed organisations to put costs into to support our community aspirations (or perhaps just the aspirations of the board). Have we professionalised what volunteers used to do? Will spending a dollar with us get a better community return than the organisation down the road? Can we think as a part of the ecosystem and not as individuals?

Moving forward, there are some good questions which we as communities should discuss.

What do we want the government to enable our organisations to do. Why is the partial funding of particularly social service organisations considered OK? If our groups are delivering great results which achieve community priorities at a relatively low cost, why should they have to fundraise?
How should the things we expect to be funded be funded? What’s the role of community in all of this?
How should we consider community asset ownership?
What do good community funding arrangements look like? Who is a part of these conversations? How do we ensure our organisations are accountable to the communities they serve?
Why has the ecosystem evolved in the shape it did and how can we consciously shape it going forward?

Business as usual for third sector groups in a post COVID 19 world seems a little bleak, and an opportunity lost. Let’s use this crisis to ensure that our communities enter the rest of the 21st century strong, resilient and capable of being as great as we know we can be.

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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One Foundation Update

4/3/2020

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I thought it might be a good idea to update on this gaming trust. I included these guys in the work I did earlier for my TedX CHC talk when they were called First Sovereign, but of late they have struck me as a bit hard: namely due to the fact they seem to have moved away from identifying where their grants were made and it’s not quite the simple copy paste job it used to be.

But I have time on my hands so started afresh with 5,046 lines of five years of grants data. Some two months later, much gnashing of teeth and questioning my life choices, here you have it.

They have venues throughout the country, with a particular historical strength in Rotorua. Indeed, the men who made the decisions on where the money goes are mostly based in Rotorua.

Looking at the past five years of data we can see a lot of growth in Wellington, and a bit in Manawatu Wanganui. It makes me wonder: Why the drop off in 2019? And what’s the grant growth in Wellington.

To answer the first question. I am pretty sure that incorrect data has been published. Sadly there are no financial statements published for One Foundation since 2017, so I can’t check this, but given the number of gaming machines under their management actually INCREASED by 12 in the nine months from 31 December 2018 to 30 September 2019 (the last time numbers were published by the Department of Internal Affairs on this) I’m guessing that’s the situation. I have a query in with DIA about publication of grants as I’m too lazy to read the legislation, but I suspect, given these organisations tend to be very transparent with their grant making, that this is an error.

The second question is pretty interesting. I have looked at DIA data for venues over the past five years. Wellington region’s machines have grown from 8 machines at 31 December 2014 to an astonishing 205 at 30 September 2019. They picked up nine venues it seems in 2015, all from Infinity Foundation. I’d love to know the story behind that! I did try to see if that affected the grant decisions, but unfortunately Infinity Foundation only have their most recent financial year grants available on their website (again, really?) so I can’t dig. One Foundation’s numbers have held in other parts of the country, although they are now out of Queenstown, and numbers have halved in the Tauranga region. Auckland numbers also rose from 24 machines up to 78 in 2017, only to drop off again to 36.

Then we can look at where the money goes. I’m only going to look at years where I have full data: 2015 – 2018. Money goes to all sorts of community organisations, with sport getting around half, and community and economic development, and education taking around 15% of the total given. They give an average of around $9,000 per grant, in 2018 made around 1,500 grants to 964 different organisations across the country.

What’s quite interesting is the regional split. For example, Bay of Plenty sports clubs get 43% of the Foundation’s total spend into the region, Canterbury’s get 59% while Wellington’s sports bodies receive some 73% of total grants into the region.

Sport? Well it’s a bit predictable: below is a wee table showing the top 11 codes over 2015 – 2018 financial year. Organiser is those organisations who run things (like Sport Canterbury) and Club is those clubs where several codes are offered under one entity.

Now, one thing I just don’t get is multiple applications in any one year. We see this often with “For purpose” gaming trusts, such as Mainland Foundation or Air Rescue, where their bodies they are established to support receive support usually once a month. One Foundation has a fairly general authorised purpose.

There are a bunch of groups that have received multiple grants in any one financial year. Below is a table showing the top number of grant writers and their successful applications.

There seems to be a mix of many small grants and many large grants. Who received the most in 2018? Wellington Rugby Union on $309k followed by Ole Academy with a whopping $280k in grants from this one grant maker. Now, I had a wee gander at Ole Academy last time when I wrote about the Air Rescue Trust. In fact that review sparked this decent look at One Foundation. Stuff had a look at Ole Academy at the start of this year. A cursory glance at what they do and their website suggests it the polar opposite of what Sport NZ is trying to achieve with its programmes to keep young people in sport. To me, it’s another indicator that parent organisations need to understand where the money is coming from, and look to use some sticks to bring grass roots organisations working against the strategy into line.

One Foundation put around $14m into our communities through the operation of their gaming venues. Their processes are simple, they fund a lot of different organisations, but their disclosure leaves a bit to be desired. I’m a little uncomfortable too with those sitting around the table making decisions to fund specific organisations, and I can’t help wonder why all those Wellington venues came over to this organisation in 2015 and why they are so supportive of football in the capital. I also have not looked at who made up the $8.7m declined grants (2018). I have the data but I don’t find it quite as interesting. Let me know if you do!

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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Selwyn Funding Ecosystem

2/3/2020

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Something popped up on my Facebook telling me that there is a session on Thursday for those in Selwyn District for those groups looking for funding, with SDC, Rata and Lotteries.

So I thought I would have a wee look at my database and see what is happening over there.

So what does this show? It shows that Gaming Trusts are the most important funder into the region. Lotteries gave it a nudge in 2016 with a $500k grant for presumably capital (to SDC). And you could cry foul: there is nothing here from the local government. That’s because when I did this work a few years ago, I decided the amounts they gave were rounding: the discretionary fund for this year is around $84k. The only local government I have included is CCC, who of course doesn’t fund SDC organisations (and let’s not think about the Christchurch City Third Sector organisations which are utilised by residents of Selwyn… we live our lives beyond municipal boundaries!).

Where does the money go? I was surprised by this. Groups in Community and Economic Development in Selwyn get a greater share than when I have looked at this at a macro level. I suspect this is driven by the fact Selwyn is growing very fast. Groups in other third sector buckets, such as Health, Social Services and Arts, tend also to operate on a provincial level, so its not surprising there is little to those groups.

I have then cut 2017 data to see where money for specific sorts of groups is coming from, as below. No real surprises here of course.

Which sports got the money in 2017? 2017 Rugby received $130k, golf $104k, Selwyn Sports Trust $85k, and hockey $62k.

Gaming Trusts are responsible for the lion’s share of grants going into the region, and the average amount given to each group is smaller than those other grant makers looked at. They are pretty good at funding schools too.

So I’m not sure what will be presented on Thursday at the funders forum, but if anyone wants to better understand the ecosystem for those getting and giving grants, then a little data can be useful. You’re welcome.

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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Snouts so far in the trough

28/11/2019

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I attended an Annual General Meeting earlier this week of a charitable board that I am on. It was a good, very formal meeting where we went through achievements this year and racked our brains on how to ensure the long term sustainability of the service in an environment of a chasm between best practice service provision and unsatisfactory government contracts, and a tired and increasingly more cynical giving market. We then headed off to lunch which we, as individuals, paid for.

So, you can imagine the head scratching I have had with the recent news of the Hepatitis Foundation. Check out the story here, but the upshot is they have been investigated for some expenditures, hundreds of thousands of dollars of those charitable dollars on travel and entertainment.

The ex CEO of the charity has just been on the radio talking about issues with the board where he was basically told to mind his own business. He talked of salaries to the board members, international junkets and top flight board dinners. Direct quote: I think some people just had their snouts so far in the trough they couldn't see the daylight. This is a truely wonderful sentence!

There are a couple of things with this.

A complaint was made to Charities Services by a member of the public. While I don’t know, I would suspect that that complaint may well have come from the ex CEO. This is because no-one has any incentive to look in depth at the financials of this organisation: it’s 100% funded by the taxpayer under (I assume) a Ministry of Health services agreement.
The investigation has taken two years to complete, and then was not published at the time as the regulator believed the charity would take some action. The report has been made public thanks to an OIA, four years after the member of the public raised the complaint, and goodness knows how many taxpayer dollars spent investigating.
There has been no change to the Board. Indeed, the same board has been in place since 2011 (as at 27 November 2019 – this could well change). I would have expected someone to take the hit acknowledge a mea culpa and stand down. Once again, my expectations are not met.

There is also another interesting snippet in the financial reports, one that has not been covered by the media yet. This is a screen shot of page 19 of the 2019 financial statement. Yes, you are reading this correctly. The charity has stated they have 2 Full Time Equivalents, paid an annual amount in 2019 of $452,537. That’s $226k per annum per FTE. I acknowledge that this is over several staff and governance: the accounts define key management personnel as Board of Trustees, the Chief Executive Officer, the Nurse Manager and the Financial Controller, however they themselves have identified the effort as 2 FTEs. It’s a bit difficult to understand what’s actually achieved by the charity as no statement of service provision is provided: whilst most do give this information these days: operations get more transparent in 2021 when all charities will need to provide this data. Often its hard to separate the good work that a charity does from the money spent doing it, which is where the service provision statement helps.

Now, I don’t know how those salaries sit with other health NGOs. I do know that a salary like this in most third sector organisations would be … unusual.

There is no acknowledgement that the taxpayer is actually a stakeholder here. The charity is 100% government funded. I know that I have been arguing for 100% government funding for more charities, but if this level of what I perceive to be largesse is a consequence, then perhaps not. After all, its taken a number of years for the Charities Services to review the organisation, and the result of that review was a report which had no real consequences for the charity.

I suspect the whistle blower on this is a bit peeved given the lack of consequence given the hit over the wrist with a limp bus ticket response from the regulator. Organisations who benefit from public monies and an accommodating legal structure to achieve their charitable purpose do have to be open and transparent. It should not take two years to look at an organisation to see if its acting in accordance with the spirit of the law.

There is also considerable onus with the organisation providing the funds: the Ministry of Health. They are about to write a letter to the charity to express their “concern and disappointment”. Four years after the complaint was made. I also hope other charities don’t shrug their shoulders and wonder what they could get away with. I also hope our donors don’t shrug their shoulders and view all charities through this lens of entitlement.

If I were in charge, I’d look to beef up the investigations of charities. We need a bigger, faster stick. We need to support members of the public who see things happening in the communities that are a bit whiffy and enable them to do something about it. We need to keep an eye on things like costs both within organsiations and across different ones: benchmarking perhaps. I’d ensure that those funding organisations under review were part of that process.

But what can WE do as citizens? I have written before about a need for vigilant eyes. And what I wrote then still stands: its good to be more curious about the organisations that serve our communities. Its good to understand how and why they operate, separate the spin from reality, and how money spent in the name of community is spent. In the meantime, our Board will continue to do the right thing, and look to make our wee piece of the world a better place, following principles and values of integrity, trust and compassion.

I write about this stuff as I believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more then happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

Apologies to the swine for the photo. A much maligned animal.

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Some musings on things

Update on Rata Foundation Grants 2020

Mainland's grants: one surprise but mostly meeting expectations

Pub Charity Update 2020

Post COVID grants from CERT

Grant Funding Manifesto 2020 - For discussion

Rethinking Community Funding Part 2

Rethinking Community Funding Post Covid19

One Foundation Update

Selwyn Funding Ecosystem

Snouts so far in the trough

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