In the recent article on Angel’s Children Education Foundation, Grassroots was mentioned as a funder who had given them almost $50,000. Turns out this was granted in April 2021. A further two requests, both for $46,666, were declined in that year. I’m curious about them, and where their money goes so did my usual thing: downloaded their grants, cleaned them up and had a squiz at the results.
Grassroots is primarily a North Island based funder. There are two parts to them: they took over Infinity a few years ago now. That now operates under Grassroots Central. This piece looks specifically at Grassroots. They are run by a board of six (five men, one woman).
Their authorised purposes are fairly general:
Grassroots Trust Limited is licensed to operate gaming machines to raise money for the following authorised purposes:
They manage just under 7% of the total number of gaming machines in the country and give out a sizeable amount of money to the community each year. Below is a chart showing the grants by sector. A couple of things to note about this.
Grassroots is primarily a North Island based funder. There are two parts to them: they took over Infinity a few years ago now. That now operates under Grassroots Central. This piece looks specifically at Grassroots. They are run by a board of six (five men, one woman).
Their authorised purposes are fairly general:
Grassroots Trust Limited is licensed to operate gaming machines to raise money for the following authorised purposes:
- Amateur sport.
- Any charitable purpose.
- Any non-commercial purpose that is beneficial to the whole or a section of the community.
- Amateur sport through direct support of sporting bodies. Grants will only be granted to sports bodies which are formally established and legally constituted.
- Community organisations which are established for charitable, educational, or cultural purposes beneficial to the community or a section of it or any other purpose beneficial to the community or a section of it.
They manage just under 7% of the total number of gaming machines in the country and give out a sizeable amount of money to the community each year. Below is a chart showing the grants by sector. A couple of things to note about this.
In 2018 Grassroots had 664 machines under their management. By Dec 2022 this had grown by 50% to 998 machines. We can also see the effect of COVID on their grants. They have a heavy presence in the north part of the North Island, so of course were more negatively affected by lock downs. The 2023 bar represents eleven months of grants: I would expect them to add another two million to this total by financial year end. Around two thirds of this money goes to sport. The next most popular sector was community and economic development, sitting on 12.5% closely followed by education on 12.4%. You need to remember that education grants are often given for sport however, but this grant maker doesn’t disclose what the grants were for.
Which sports? Ho hum. Grassroots are huge supporters of rugby. This mostly goes to the big unions: Waikato and Bay of Plenty. The top funded sports look similar to many other grant maker’s profiles, although in Canterbury I'd expect to see Bowls up there.
Which sports? Ho hum. Grassroots are huge supporters of rugby. This mostly goes to the big unions: Waikato and Bay of Plenty. The top funded sports look similar to many other grant maker’s profiles, although in Canterbury I'd expect to see Bowls up there.
Lets look at the top 25 funded individual organisations over the past 35 months. I’ve also thrown in grant count.
If an organisation put in one grant application per month over the period we are looking at, that would be 35 applications. There are some big numbers here: Waikato Rugby Union on 54 applications to get $3.4m, NZFuture Community Trust on 45 to get $706k, Dynamo Cycling on 33 grants to get $533k. That’s a lot of paperwork.
Now, to be honest I’m not really sure why these rugby organisations need all this cash, and then quite why these organisations feel compelled to give it to them. Unlike Mainland Foundation (for example) there is nothing explicit in their charitable purposes about supporting rugby. It will be interesting to see what demand is like with the Silverlake deal in play – do you reckon that will displace pokie funding, or add to it?
I’ve started to look at linkages between venues and those seeking grants, and raised an eyebrow (and another complaint in November 2022) about these guys.
There is a bar in Hamilton, the Junction, with a legal name of PYN Investments Ltd. A former shareholder of this company has the same name as the General Manager of Hamilton Wanderers Football Club. Yep, the club that over the past 35 months has received $1.2m in 30 grants off the Grassroots Trust. We also have The Smith and McKenzie Chopshop, legal name Belgian Blue Ltd. This is a part of a wider commercial structure called Summerhouse Trustee Ltd, owned in part by a chap who seems to be in partnership with a likely service provider to the Hamilton Wanderers club.
Of course, venues are not allowed to have any influence on where money goes. But it does make me wonder if and how Grassroots Trust deals with such potential conflicts of interest.
What is interesting is that there were no grants given to Hamilton Wanderers Football Club since I made the complaint in November. So maybe I am making a difference!
We also have a lot of grants going to NZFuture Community Trust. They set up as a Charitable Trust in 2017. They have a website, Facebook and report back on their service delivery. And yes, there are 45 grants going to this organisation. But there are also 50 grants going to Waikato Rugby so maybe large numbers of applications are quite the norm for this organisation.
We also have a large number of grants going to Dynamo Cycling and Sports Club. 33 grants – that’s basically one grant a month. I can’t find a website for this club: rather a link to Dynamo Events which “..is a sports event delivery company that has a commitment to excellence across all facets of the event experience.” There is no company with this name: the nearest is Dynamo Temporary Fencing Ltd owned by the same people. I can’t see a pokie venue link between the parties, but I didn’t look that hard. Dynamo Cycling and Sports Club's accounts suggest 2/3 of their income comes from grants. Do other cycling events rely so much on grant money? I haven't looked.
But then again also noteworthy is some grant making that looks a bit like the activity in the Angel story: frequent amounts to relatively new organisations. Specifically, Amah Trust registered as a charity in April 2022. Since then they have received three grants totalling $66k. Similarly, we have the Baaj Sports and Cultural Trust which registered in August 2022 who received $28,838 two months later from Grassroots. We have the Kiwiora Community Trust, which applied to register August 2022 and who has already received $65k in three grants from Grassroots. We have the Hamilton Youth Club Inc, incorporated in Sept 2022 which received $44k the following month.
I’m not saying these grants are dodgy. It may be that these are organisations who do great things in their communities, and that Grassroots can be applauded for giving a leg up to new organisations. But if I were overseeing the integrity of the grant making system, I think I’d have a look myself.
I write about this stuff as I believe that we 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/
Now, to be honest I’m not really sure why these rugby organisations need all this cash, and then quite why these organisations feel compelled to give it to them. Unlike Mainland Foundation (for example) there is nothing explicit in their charitable purposes about supporting rugby. It will be interesting to see what demand is like with the Silverlake deal in play – do you reckon that will displace pokie funding, or add to it?
I’ve started to look at linkages between venues and those seeking grants, and raised an eyebrow (and another complaint in November 2022) about these guys.
There is a bar in Hamilton, the Junction, with a legal name of PYN Investments Ltd. A former shareholder of this company has the same name as the General Manager of Hamilton Wanderers Football Club. Yep, the club that over the past 35 months has received $1.2m in 30 grants off the Grassroots Trust. We also have The Smith and McKenzie Chopshop, legal name Belgian Blue Ltd. This is a part of a wider commercial structure called Summerhouse Trustee Ltd, owned in part by a chap who seems to be in partnership with a likely service provider to the Hamilton Wanderers club.
Of course, venues are not allowed to have any influence on where money goes. But it does make me wonder if and how Grassroots Trust deals with such potential conflicts of interest.
What is interesting is that there were no grants given to Hamilton Wanderers Football Club since I made the complaint in November. So maybe I am making a difference!
We also have a lot of grants going to NZFuture Community Trust. They set up as a Charitable Trust in 2017. They have a website, Facebook and report back on their service delivery. And yes, there are 45 grants going to this organisation. But there are also 50 grants going to Waikato Rugby so maybe large numbers of applications are quite the norm for this organisation.
We also have a large number of grants going to Dynamo Cycling and Sports Club. 33 grants – that’s basically one grant a month. I can’t find a website for this club: rather a link to Dynamo Events which “..is a sports event delivery company that has a commitment to excellence across all facets of the event experience.” There is no company with this name: the nearest is Dynamo Temporary Fencing Ltd owned by the same people. I can’t see a pokie venue link between the parties, but I didn’t look that hard. Dynamo Cycling and Sports Club's accounts suggest 2/3 of their income comes from grants. Do other cycling events rely so much on grant money? I haven't looked.
But then again also noteworthy is some grant making that looks a bit like the activity in the Angel story: frequent amounts to relatively new organisations. Specifically, Amah Trust registered as a charity in April 2022. Since then they have received three grants totalling $66k. Similarly, we have the Baaj Sports and Cultural Trust which registered in August 2022 who received $28,838 two months later from Grassroots. We have the Kiwiora Community Trust, which applied to register August 2022 and who has already received $65k in three grants from Grassroots. We have the Hamilton Youth Club Inc, incorporated in Sept 2022 which received $44k the following month.
I’m not saying these grants are dodgy. It may be that these are organisations who do great things in their communities, and that Grassroots can be applauded for giving a leg up to new organisations. But if I were overseeing the integrity of the grant making system, I think I’d have a look myself.
I write about this stuff as I believe that we 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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