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).
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:
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/
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
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/
RSS Feed