I have been poking my nose around up north recently, mainly because what’s happening up there is just so interesting, and I suspect a taster for what’s coming south. Check out some of my previous pieces on this.
I noticed that a couple of funders had Rotorua venues, but there weren’t corresponding grants going into the region. So I have dived into some data for three years, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Firstly I’ve looked to see what the average machine would produce by taking the total dollar value of grants made in a particular year and dividing that by the number of Class 4 gaming machines in NZ. Of course there are some huge health checks on using averages: is that site a big or small earner, when did the site transfer happen etc. I just look at who manages that site on 31 December and work back from there. It will be more nuanced.
Secondly I’ve then used the DIA’s newly launched Granted system to look at actual grants going into the Rotorua region by provider. This information allowed me to produce the table below. Health check again: the quality of the data is only as good as the data provided by the gaming trust.
I noticed that a couple of funders had Rotorua venues, but there weren’t corresponding grants going into the region. So I have dived into some data for three years, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Firstly I’ve looked to see what the average machine would produce by taking the total dollar value of grants made in a particular year and dividing that by the number of Class 4 gaming machines in NZ. Of course there are some huge health checks on using averages: is that site a big or small earner, when did the site transfer happen etc. I just look at who manages that site on 31 December and work back from there. It will be more nuanced.
Secondly I’ve then used the DIA’s newly launched Granted system to look at actual grants going into the Rotorua region by provider. This information allowed me to produce the table below. Health check again: the quality of the data is only as good as the data provided by the gaming trust.
Now before you judge too much, of course Rotorua is a part of a wider area, Bay of Plenty. A lot of money generated from Rotorua will go to support those regional bodies generally based out of Tauranga. I also wouldn’t expect this to balance at all: in a community of this size there will be significant capital expenses which will swing the grant total of all applications. However, there are some interesting decisions.
Dragon is pretty stingy to the Rotorua community. Over three years they have netted out over $1.1m from this community. This seems to contradict with their authorised purpose from their website (copied below).
Dragon was set up to support the local community where the funds are generated and give priority funding to Asian organisations within the local community, in particular to the young and elderly members of the Asian community.
Dragon's gaming venues are located across the country. It gives priority to grant applicants based in the cities where its gaming venues are located.
To be fair they only had 19 applications totalling $86k from maybe 10 different organisations for the period under review.
Youthtown too looks a bit tight: of course one expects that their funding to themselves supported Youthtown activities in Rotorua over this time. The relationship with the venue clearly didn’t last long, as now Air Rescue Services manages it, however with the same impact on local communities. And although the data not in the above chart, my up to 30 June 2022 information on Air Rescue Services has them giving $20,000 to one school. Again, no other applicants. Youthtown picked that venue up off Aotearoa Gaming, which may explain the big contribution that gaming trust made over my theoretical number.
The good folk of Rotorua must love NZCT and One Foundation! Not so much Lion and Grassroots. TAB of course takes out a lot gaming grant money to fund their own organisations: below is a graphic I’ve taken from Granted showing the top five organisations supported by TAB Class 4 gaming.
Dragon is pretty stingy to the Rotorua community. Over three years they have netted out over $1.1m from this community. This seems to contradict with their authorised purpose from their website (copied below).
Dragon was set up to support the local community where the funds are generated and give priority funding to Asian organisations within the local community, in particular to the young and elderly members of the Asian community.
Dragon's gaming venues are located across the country. It gives priority to grant applicants based in the cities where its gaming venues are located.
To be fair they only had 19 applications totalling $86k from maybe 10 different organisations for the period under review.
Youthtown too looks a bit tight: of course one expects that their funding to themselves supported Youthtown activities in Rotorua over this time. The relationship with the venue clearly didn’t last long, as now Air Rescue Services manages it, however with the same impact on local communities. And although the data not in the above chart, my up to 30 June 2022 information on Air Rescue Services has them giving $20,000 to one school. Again, no other applicants. Youthtown picked that venue up off Aotearoa Gaming, which may explain the big contribution that gaming trust made over my theoretical number.
The good folk of Rotorua must love NZCT and One Foundation! Not so much Lion and Grassroots. TAB of course takes out a lot gaming grant money to fund their own organisations: below is a graphic I’ve taken from Granted showing the top five organisations supported by TAB Class 4 gaming.
Where did the money go? I’ve again used Granted to pull the information out onto a spreadsheet. This supports the statement that a lot of sport support in particular will be run out of Tauranga.
Now the gaming funders make their own decisions based on the applications that are on their desks at any one time. Rotorua also has other funders within their funding ecosystem: Bay Trust, Lotteries and probably few others as well. Thinking about this, I really think that local councils need to be over which organisations are operating in their region, and making sure that groups within their community are aware of the funding ecosystem. Otherwise groups won’t apply, and communities like Rotorua will miss out on millions. What do you think?
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/
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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