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A once over lightly on We Care Community Trust

17/8/2026

We Care Community Trust are relatively new in the pokie game. They gave their very first grant in 2021 and last year gave away over $5m. They have a financial year end that corresponds with the calendar year end (31 Dec).

This growth has come from site acquisition. At the end of every year I download data ex DIA which shows which pokie has which venue. I then track the changes - including ownership of the specific venues. When writing this I also looked at We Care's website and see there are 15 venues! So that’s big growth in 2026: I’d expect to see over $7m granted in 2026. Also remember that site acquisition happens over the year. Note also that this growth comes at the expense of other pokies (Grassroots and Lion in particular): most councils have a sinking lid on pokies, which means there is very little opportunity for new venues in the system. Shout out if you want some guidance on this.

Year	Number of Venues	Location of Venues
2021	1 venue	Bay of Plenty (1)
2022	5 venues	Auckland (1), Taranaki (1), Waikato (incl Thames) (1), Bay of Plenty (2)
2023	7 venues	Auckland (1), Taranaki (1), Waikato (incl Thames) (2), Bay of Plenty (3)
2024	9 venues	Auckland (2), Taranaki (1), Waikato (incl Thames) (2), Bay of Plenty (4)
2025	10 venues	Auckland (2) Hawkes’ Bay (1), Taranaki (1), Waikato (incl Thames) (2), Bay of Plenty (4)
2026	15 venues (source: current website)	Auckland (4) Hawkes’ Bay (1), Taranaki (1), Waikato (incl Thames) (3), Bay of Plenty (5), Manawatu (1)

Its interesting to compare where the money comes from and where it ends up. Of course not all venues are the same: some produce large amounts of potential grants while others are less utilised. If I look back to the 2025 system review I can see that We Care has a $32.8k productivity, which means that every machine in their network produces $32.8k of grants. This compares well to the average of $29.3k – although somewhat shy of the most productive grant generator, Trillian at $43.2k per machine.

They do state on their website that they want the grants to go back into the regions that generated them. Some councils, particularly the smaller ones, have identified that grant money can flow out of their region. Indeed I have written on this before.

The chart below compares the actual grants given to specific regions the grant seeking entities are located to the amount that theoretically generated by those machines in the region, scaled back for the grants made to National bodies. I have used the average We Care productivity to drive the theoretical number. The actual grants per venue are not published: that would be commercially sensitive information. What the chart shows is that Auckland does pretty well. BoP looks ok, but Taranaki and Waikato could do better. My hot take for grant seekers in Taranaki and Waikato is to apply for grants from this outfit. You need to be sure to get your fair share.

On paper they have a fairly wide remit. From their website: We Care may make grants for:

Amateur sport
Youth development
Health and Welfare
Arts and Culture
Community Support
New Immigrants

So I've done my usual thing: downloaded their successful grants, cleaned them up and categorised them. Since inception they have made 820 grants to 348 different organisations. We can see four main areas of grants. That makes a nice change: balance.

If we really get into the weeds we can see some big licks of cash driving the above charts. Below is a table showing the top fifteen recipients over all years and the number of grants received.

Ambulance services are getting large amounts of grants from We Care getting 16% of total grants given since We Care started making grants. Unfortunately they don’t disclose why various entities are getting grants: I would suspect its capital for ambulances. I also find it pretty sad that Waipuna Hospice is so high on the list: I suspect this reflects the (somewhat broken) model of health funding.

The New Zealand Sikh Community Tauranga Trust received $750k in 9 grants last year. Latest accounts for this entity are not yet published, but this amount is higher than their annual income since inception, so I assume its capex.

Those who follow me know that there are a few flags I have around grant making. This isn’t to say that the existence of any of these factors is a red flag (well, with the exception of point f) but with a combination of a couple then I’d suggest those with the power to investigate do their job.

Charities with three or fewer trustees
NGOs registered in the past 24 months
NGOs with more than 2 grants from a single pokie in a year
NGO with name changes
NGO with registered address of private dwelling and rent as expense
NGO with registered address of Class 4 venue and rent as expense
NGO with principal associated with a venue or a pokie
NGO has income from any one pokie at more than 50% of total income

There are two relatively new charities getting some good amounts of grant money.

Do Good Charitable trust, a Rotorua based entity established November 2023 with one trustee. Received $255,916 so far in 7 grants.

New Zealand Education & Creation Centre, an Auckland based entity established in June 2024 with two trustees: received $209,800 so far in 10 grants. Most of this money I guess went to their rent: $154k in the first published year.

I have then asked AI who the Trustees are and if they are related to each other. Based on that answer it’s a family business. A while ago I did pose this question to DIA who came back and said they have no concerns about this. So its cool by the regulator, but what do you think? How should we judge stewardship over grant funding by pokies? I guess family foundations are all about the nepotism, but is that appropriate for pokies?

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. These pokies have considerable stewardship over community funding. 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: are they operating efficiently? Are they leveraging best practice? 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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Akarana Community Trust’s grants: 2026 edit

29/7/2026

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I last looked at these chaps two years ago. That sparked an article by Steve Kilgallon at Stuff. Funnily enough the blog's opening paragraph still holds: “A healthy dose of media and too much time on my hands has sparked up this interest again in grant money: where it comes from, where it goes to have how it gets there”. I may also have been gently nudged into this direction.

They are a pretty small but growing pokie: as at the end of 2023 they had six venues, but by the end of 2025 there were nine venues under their management, five in Auckland and one a piece in Hauraki, Hamilton, New Plymouth and Whangarei. i had thought of throwing in a chart from Granted showing where the grants end up, but to be honest the data is not looking all that clean. On first blush, in 2025 84% of grants ended up in Auckland.

Here’s a wee chart showing the growth in grants made over the past 10 years. While they are not a big grant maker they are certainly on an upwards trajectory based on venue growth. Last financial year (1 April to 31 March) they picked up two venues off Grassroots and one off Pelorus. What this means is that now both of those pokies have fewer grants to give. (Note I look at data on a financial year basis, while Granted.govt.nz looks at it by the calendar. I do this as have to rely on publicly available information rather than regulatory mandate).

On paper they have a fairly wide remit. From their website: Akarana may make grants for:

any charitable purpose;
any non-commercial purpose that is beneficial to the whole or a section of the community; and
promoting, controlling, and conducting race meetings under the Racing Act 2003, including the payment of stakes.

Akarana Community Trust don’t have any guidelines around groups applying several times in a year. What is immediately apparent is the sheer number and value of grants and going to specific groups. Below is a chart looking at the make up of the grant making portfolio. I’ve isolated the top 12 organisations in the last seven years (aka 84 months) and am showing here the amount given in total per annum, and the number of grants given.

Org	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026	Total	Count
Auckland Netball Centre Inc	$30.0k	$38.9k	$34.4k	$54.3k	$59.2k	$70.5k	$46.3k	$333.7k	51
Bay of Plenty Sikh Society NZ Trust	0	$25.0k	$350.3k	$234.0k	0	$80.2k	$95.1k	$784.7k	29
Chinese Senior People Help Centre	$200.0k	$202.9k	$85.2k	$20.6k	$64.5k	$68.9k	$125.6k	$767.6k	35
Good Care Community Trust	0	0	0	0	0	$208.0k	$484.3k	$692.4k	22
New Zealand Punjabi Multimedia Trust Board	$14.7k	$6.7k	$4.4k	$13.3k	$29.0k	$112.1k	$259.3k	$439.5k	32
New Zealand Sports & Community Development Trust	0	0	0	0	$312.5k	0	0	$312.5k	4
Roopa Aur Aap Charitable Trust	$165.4k	$134.5k	$96.5k	$200.3k	$164.7k	$139.4k	$60.6k	$961.5k	48
Sikh Heritage School	0	0	0	$60.3k	$196.3k	$134k	0	$390.6k	15
Supreme Sikh Society of NZ	$1,226.1k	$1,114.5k	$1,111.5k	$1,744.5k	$1,479.0k	$1,275.6k	$1,450.6k	$9,401.9k	228
Surf Life Saving Northern Region	$89.2k	$61.5k	$69.0k	$138.7k	$147.1k	$126.2k	$158.1k	$789.8k	52
Te Karere Community Trust	0	0	0	0	0	$67.1k	$348.1k	$415.2k	18
Woman Care Trust	$210.0k	$289.3k	$275.4k	$459.6k	$394.2k	$434.1k	$474.6k	$2,537.1k	84
Other	$826.7k	$480.5k	$350.5k	$1,071.8k	$1,087.2k	$802.7k	$1576k	$6,195.4k	693
Grand Total	$2,762k	$2,354k	$2,377k	$3,998k	$3,933k	$3,519k	$5,079k	$24,022k	1,311

We can see that Supreme Sikh received 39% of the available grant money from Akarana in the past seven years, in 228 successful grants. I find it wild that every year Akarana makes around 2.7 grants per month to this organisation. Now grant making like this is not unknown: rugby clubs have similar arrangements with other pokies: a practice I think is a little off but hey seems ok by the regulator. The amount of paperwork required to fulfil the accountability requirements must be confusing.

We can also see a few regular favourites: Woman Care Trust gets a grant a month from this operator, and Roopa Aur Aap Charitable Trust gets a regular amount too. Woman Care is quite interesting: if you look at their accounts the Trustees are on the payroll, with one of them and an ex trustee paid over $100k each in the last financial year. Akarana have declarations of conflicts with Roopa Aur Aap and Surf Lifesaving Northern.

However there is a new favourite for 2026, and one, if I were the regulator, I would have a look at: Good Care Community Trust. They registered as a charity in July 2024 and seem to have developed services as a food bank and school breakfast programme. To be honest I’m a little unsettled by their client photos on their site, and am wondering about the quality of the food parcels they send people away with: is this best practice? And how do the costs look to you? Check that out on Charities.govt.nz; they only have their first year of accounts up at this stage. Accounts prepared by Manakau Consultants Ltd shows income of $209k and expenditure of $179k, mostly on salaries ($94k) but a nice $30k surplus. They also bought a new iPhone and 2 new laptops. The next lot of accounts will likely be more interesting: hopefully they will disclose how many people they are helping and who is getting those salaries: after all the amounts granted from Akarana has doubled (and according to Granted Blue Sky put in $140k in 2025 as well).

This is partly why I advocate for benchmarking in this space. On the face of it yep there is community benefit: a number of schools have written letters of support. Yet how do these costs compare to others who operate in this space? If you unbundled the costs of the programmes and said to the schools that you can have the programme or the (say) $30,000 that it costs to provide this directly, what would be the answer?

Te Karere looks interesting too in that I can’t find it. Not on the Charities Register. And nothing on Gemini to speak of (except for a reference back to funding, an ad for two graphic designers paying between $37.3k and $49.8k (minimum wage) and one of my blogs. There is a Trust Deed on the Companies Office which suggests they are “a community newspaper is to inform and engage the local community with news, events, and issues that are relevant to them.” Given the amount of money given to them by Akarana (and Constellation Community Trust who have given them $110k last calendar year) over the past two years one hopes they have managed to pull this off: if they have then its possible they have done this under a different entity. Let me know if you can find them: they will not be the TV show that's on TVNZ at 4pm weekdays.

Another interesting one is New Zealand Sports & Community Development Trust (NZSCD), established in 2023. Crickets in grants from Akarana since the Stuff article above. So they are now not worth funding? Looking at Granted provides the answer (once I clean the data: there are three separate entries for this entity). Luckily for NZSCD, Milestone, Rano and Blue Sky think that yes they are worth funding. Based on their published services last financial year, they had 575 classes and 2% of their income comes from membership fees. Total grants = $765,603. That means a community subsidy per class of $1,331. I’m not familiar with the business model around community gyms, but again, some benchmarking to understand how this compares to others in this space would be pretty illuminating.

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. These pokies have considerable stewardship over community funding. 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: are they operating efficiently? Are they leveraging best practice?   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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$340,379,897 of Community Grants - 2025 Edit

15/7/2026

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DIA have published the 2025 Class 4 grants data. This covers all the grants made in the 2025 calendar year by Class 4 societies: pokies. You will no doubt have had a good look at what the data is telling you.

But if not, then lets have a look now. All this information can be found at Granted.govt.nz.

Below is a shot of the dashboard on the first page.

We have 9,420 organisations receiving these grants, with each organisation receiving an average of almost 2.75 grants per year from 33 separate grantmakers. HOWEVER looking at the data, unlike last year (but like years prior) the data isn’t clean. For some grantseekers we have multiple entries: I would suspect that the real number of organisations getting grants will be similar to last years 8.9k. If you are using Granted at the moment you may strike some challenges here: trick for young players.

So who got all this lovely money? Below is a table looking at the top twenty organisations receiving money, along with information on who the largest funder is for that particular grant seeking entity with the percentage that funder gives to the grant seeker. (Note: I’ve eyeballed the grant seekers to account for dirty data so my results may differ from the website). Some you will know, some aren’t actually legal entities so we have no idea what the spend is for, some you’ll have to google, and some I have complained about several years ago. So clearly nothing to see here.

You may be surprised that there are 33 grantmakers in this sector. Below is a wee chart looking at who they are, how much they have given away in the calendar years, and how many machines they have as at 31 December.

During the 2025 year we have lost one grant maker: Blue Waters Community Trust. Their single venue seems to have shut its doors. Looks like Auckland’s lawn bowls clubs will miss them the most: looking at the last five years of grants we can see 74% of their grants have gone to Bowls clubs. ILT's look strange: they have the same number of machines – which isn’t surprising given they are a licensing trust – but the amount of grants in the 2025 year has dropped by about $1.3m. Looking at their annual accounts for the ILT Foundation who runs the pokies (financial year end 31 March) I can see there is a $500k drop so suspect some of this being reporting is timing but the reduction is still puzzling.

You can see there is a column called 2025 Productivity. This is a measure of my own invention: it looks at the dollar grants given and divides by the number of machines it takes to produce that grant income. To some extent it’s a measure of network: how urban or well used the pokie venues are. Ignoring the smaller organisations whose results may well be skewed by timings, Trillian’s are most productive with each machine in their network producing $43k for community groups. Youthtown’s are the least productive, with each machine producing only $17k per machine. The average pokie machine produces a tidy $29k to community groups. If you are interested in this you can see the machine and venue data on DIA’s website – or get in touch as I capture this annually.

We can also see that the number of machines in NZ is down by just over 100. This is driven by 14 venues closing or getting rid of their pokies: we are down to 803 venues as at the end of 2025. Of course many councils have shrinking lid policies on pokie venues. The amount granted in 2025 compared to 2024 has dropped by about $5m: whether this is driven by reduced network, competition from online or by less disposable income by pokie players remains to be seen. I recall a few years ago I determined that a reduced network didn't make much difference to the amounts granted, but things have changed a little since then.

If you are interested in the pokies that operate in your region and the sorts of groups they fund you can easily look at that through Granted. Local Canterbury grant seekers may be interested to see that Rano has now left the region, with that site now a Youthtown one.

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. These 33 (now 32) entities have considerable stewardship over community funding. 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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New Horizons for a New Pokie

26/6/2026

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The other day I was reviewing an old blog Akarana Community Trust where I had noted a new player: New Horizons. I thought it might be worth having a further look now that they were established and we had some data on them.

New Horizons was registered as a company in July 2022 with three directors and two shareholders: one at 90%. They are now providing services to Auckland two venues (as at 31 December 2025): Counties Inn and Tuis Clubrooms, both owned by the same chap.

New Horizon's authorised purposes are copied below from their website:
The authorised purposes of New Horizon Community Trust encompass a broad range of initiatives aimed at enhancing community well-being and support.
New Horizon Community Trust supports a wide array of community initiatives. We fund local amateur sports, especially minority sports, youth programs, elderly support services, and public health projects.
Additionally, we provide grants for cultural and arts festivals, environmental conservation, climate change initiatives, and projects promoting Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles. Our funding also assists the Rainbow community, recent immigrants, and organizations fostering community cultural education and cohesion. Through these diverse funding areas, we aim to enhance community well-being and inclusivity.

Note some pokies do have restrictions on the frequency that organisations can come back to the pokie for further funding. This entity doesn’t seem to have that restriction.

They are getting the money out the door – which is really the job. In the 18 months that grant distributions have been published they have given away just over $2m. There were no declarations of interest made by the Net Proceeds Committee.

In 2025 they:

gave away $1.172m in 55 grants
declined 18 grants

In the six months to 30 November 2025 they:

Gave away $852k in 49 grants
Declined 14 grants

But, as regular readers know, I like to poke around a little. Below is a pivot showing the top ten recipients of grants from this pokie. Over 80% of the grant funds have gone to the below organisations.

A few numbers stand out here. The Institute of Sikh Studies was registered as a charity on 6 May 2024. And my word they’ve been most successful in attracting funding from this organisation. They already received $364k of grant funding in a total of 12 grant applications in these 18 months of pokie disclosure. If we look at the latest published accounts (31 March 2025) of this charity we have $49k in salaries, and a $15k in consulting and accounting. Granted.govt.nz hasn’t got the 2025 data in yet: but in 2024 New Horizons were the only pokie to fund this organisation. Now, not saying that anything is off here: it could be that these this pokie is helping organisations to start up, but if I were in charge I would have hard look at this. What set this entity apart of the multitude of others to get such support in start up phase?

We can also see $423k going to Sikh Heritage School in14 applications, and $218k to the Supreme Sikh Society in 10 applications.

Interestingly, although it hasn’t made the top 10, I did note a grant of $15k made to Waikato Women’s Advancement on 3 June 2025. It struck me as odd given, I am guessing based on the clue in the name, that its Waikato based. More interesting as its now been deregistered (March 2026) and has filed a zero return for the past three years. This charity was well funded by Blue Sky and Dragon late last decade (my database suggests to the tune of $333k) but they fell of the funders' dance card in 2019 and 2020 with a bunch of declined applications. So I’m unsure what that’s about.

If anyone is interested in having a look at the database I’ve pulled together please let me know. Its all publicly available data, but just assembled in a manner that makes it easier to interrogate.

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. In the greater scheme of things its rounding, but for many organisations surviving and doing great mahi it’s a lot of money. 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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If you've got the inclination, I have got the crime

28/5/2026

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I’ve always thought the best crimes are the ones where people don’t realise they’re being robbed. Take the One Cent Thief back in the early ’90s, quietly rounding fractions of cents from bank accounts into his own. As a banker he was a part of the system and could see the lack of oversight and the opportunity. Clever enough until he started living well beyond his means and attracted attention. The eyes of the risk people would have been focused on the big bucks elsewhere.

Lets face it: money and talk about money is pretty pretty dull. In the community space that’s why so many charities focus on story telling: a better way to capture hearts and minds. But if we look at this as an opportunity through a risk lens then perhaps there are some opportunities for those with inclination. Community groups themselves are susceptible to fraud within themselves as entities: we see stories like this all the time, although many likely remain quiet in order to protect the brand and retain the confidence of funders and communities. But often they come to light via governance or audits. So lets look in places where there is no oversight and large amounts of cash.

Now, to be clear, what follows is a fictional scenario. I have no direct evidence that anything like this is happening. But I do think the community funding model relies heavily on trust, and I’m not convinced the risks are particularly well managed, mitigated or monitored.

So let’s imagine I’m a moderately dishonest person.

First, I set up a charity with an associate as a second trustee and a fairly boring name. I’d probably pick someone with a different surname just to avoid making life too easy for anyone trying to connect the dots. We put together some grant applications and get to work. I keep it small enough so I am not required to have an audit.

I start writing grant applications and ask for rent.

Most charities operate out of somebody’s home. That’s completely normal. What’s less normal is claiming substantial amounts of funding to cover that “rent”. Yet imagine a charity applying for, say, $80,000 a year in grant funding under that heading.

Does your PTA invoice itself for using the dining room table? Does your local football club charge itself for keeping records in someone’s spare bedroom? Of course not.

But if you were inclined, there’s money sitting on the table.

Next application: salaries.

Many charities have no paid staff at all. According to Gemini AI, only 15% of New Zealand charities employ people. So imagine creating yourself a reasonably well-paid job, keeping the paperwork tidy, and collecting the salary. Better still, do a little genuine work. Run a class once a week. Hold some events. Maintain social media. Have real stakeholders. That way, anyone looking from the outside can see that the charity exists and does stuff.

The problem is that very few people ask whether the costs are reasonable, and those who know the truth are in the tent.

Maybe those weekly classes cost ten times what similar organisations spend. Maybe the salary is far higher than comparable roles elsewhere. We don’t tend to benchmark charities against one another (my day job was benchmarking), so inflated costs can hide in plain sight. And keep moving: close it down every few years and start a new one.

So far, so good. But how would this actually work?

That’s where you’d need some willing partners.

Partner One: the pokie provider
Not every pokie provider would entertain this sort of thing. Most wouldn’t. But if I were looking to exploit a potential hole in our systems, I’d be interested in trusts that display certain patterns:

Multiple grants to the same organisation every year.
Significant funding to recently established charities.
Large grants where supporting documentation appears thin.
Grants to organisations who get the majority of their income from a single gaming trust.
Grants to charities with very small governance structures and limited independent oversight.

None of these attributes prove wrongdoing. But if I were looking for a partner these may some behaviours I’d look for.

Partner Two: the venue
Technically, venues aren’t supposed to influence where grant money goes. In practice, however, there are plenty of examples where a venue changes gaming trust providers and, before long, a particular charity starts receiving funding from the new operator.

Sometimes the relationships are even closer. In one prosecuted case the venue owner was also the recipient of grant money. This came to light thanks to a whistle blower.

In fact, I reckon the venue could do a deal with the pokie operator to get a kick back from the grant money. Based on a database I developed a while ago I can see three trusts where their registered address is a pokie venue.

If I were imagining ways to skim money from the system, I might arrange for a venue to charge a charity rent. Or perhaps negotiate some sort of kickback arrangement linked to grant funding. As a legitimate charity or incorporated society if you’re receiving 90% of something you weren’t getting before, perhaps that’s still an attractive proposition.

The bigger question is this: who would notice?

That’s the uncomfortable part.

The system relies heavily on whistleblowers. Our systems are pretty high trust. Regulatory investigations are expensive, time-consuming, and relatively rare. Most people applying for grants are focused on their own organisation’s finances. They apply, they get funded or declined, and they move on. Based on my experience with the regulator, they want the smoking gun wrapped up in a big bow. Things that look off, or are a bit sniffy, seldom get a look in.

Because the money belongs to “the community”, nobody feels personally robbed when it is misallocated. The perfect crime.

Sadly, I’m far too honest to live like this and would likely break out in a huge rash as the required behaviours wouldn't align with my values. I would rather focus on actively managing this risk. Here’s two options:

Observers on grant distribution panels who have the power to bring in NZ Police where they suspect the law is not being applied. This would be relatively low cost but likely requires a tweak in the law.
Moving all grant decisions to local organisations (as Invercargill Licensing Trust where those making decisions are voted on by residents) which reduces the potential for nefarious behaviour. This is a more structural change to this solution but it opens up an opportunity for lower costs to serve, better money to good organisations and a potential for benchmarking over time.

Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting. 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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Blue Sky, Dragon, Rano and Milestone 2025

4/11/2025

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I am getting pretty slack on this grant work these days. Mainly due the challenge of having a real job, and the unending relentlessness of the stuff that goes on in this space. But below is a rinse and repeat of my last look at Blue Sky, Dragon, Milestone and Rano. I reckon these are worth keeping a beady eye on given some of the things we have discovered before about charities well supported by these pokies.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360547576/charity-struck-significant-failings-after-stuff-investigation
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/130928581/the-1-million-library-that-never-really-opened-appears-to-close-for-good

I looked at these four gaming trusts in August 2022 and raised a complaint specifically about Dragon. This complaint widened to include these four. I believe its STILL ongoing based on DIA’s response in the above articles. So while those tasked with regulation go about their jobs, the pokies and community groups they fund continue to go about theirs.

Looking at their Grant distributions over the years we can see growth has plateaued and indeed fell by around 8% ($2m) in the last financial year. This is despite an increase in the number of venues under management: in 2017 they had 17 venues and 269 machines: by 30 June 2025 they had 38 venues and 587 machines. The four also have a skew for Auckland / Waikato region. If we look at the calendar year 2024 (as that’s how I manage the venue data) they lost four venues and gained four venues.

I have developed a wee proposal which has died somewhere in the bureaucratic void (shout out if you want it), but I think would help those charged with managing our grant making systems a little more proactive. The objectives behind the proposal are:

Better understand the linkages between venues, Class 4 organisations and charities
Proactively manage any potential issues by actively monitoring the data of the Class 4 organisations, launching investigations when there is evidence to suggest issues
Be comfortable that the ecosystem is channeling grant monies to “good” organisations, minimizing that to bad, and eliminating grant monies going to ugly.

Over my decade or so of looking at this stuff I've come up with a few things from publicly available data that make me go hmmm. On the grantee front, I'd flag:

organisations with three or fewer trustees
organisations getting more than 2 grants per annum from a grant maker
organisations registered within the past months
organisations with a deficit in documentation including annual accounts
NGOs with a name change
NGOs with a registered address of a private dwelling and a charge of rent expense in their accounts
NGOs with a registered address of a Class 4 venue and rent expenses (yes, I've found several)
NGOs with address of other flagged NGOs
NGO has a principal associated with another red flagged organisation
NGO has a principal associated with a venue or a pokie
NGO has income from any one pokie of more than 50% of income

Now, not all of these means bad stuff is happening. However, if there are a couple of these flags triggered, then I reckon the organisation deserves a good look.

I thought you might be interested in the top twenty community organisations that have been granted funding in the last financial year, along with the number of grants, and the date they were registered as an entity. The reason I monitor the number of grants is because I'm quite surprised at the volumes that do go through to many charities. If you have written a grant application you will know that the process, paperwork and bookkeeping can drive a girl to drink. This is why I can't help but be a wee bit suspicious of organisations that get multiple grants per month from a single funder.

You can see 20 organisations are getting 39.6% of the total grants from these pokies. Some of last year's favourites no longer make the cut: both Lucky Clover and Woman Care have basically halved in amount of grants given, down from $545k and $319k respectively.

Charity Name	Total Grant Dollars Given	Number of Grants	Registration Date
Heritage Foundation	$233,455	20	17-10-22
Wushu Development of New Zealand Trust Board	$233,457	18	25-08-24
Wish Foundation	$236,075	19	24-07-24
Kotahitanga Charitable Trust	$248,900	25	09-10-13
New Life Charitable Trust	$251,467	32	06-08-18
New Zealand Shadow Puppet Art Troupe Inc	$251,787	11	13-11-19
Caring Hearts Foundation Inc	$271,649	14	10-07-23
Asian Help and Education Charitable Trust	$283,805	25	08-06-17
New Zealand Sikh Community Tauranga Trust	$306,382	6	19-07-12
Univision Community Trust	$320,411	14	19-01-15
Middlemore Foundation for Health Innovation (The)	$325,111	3	16-10-07
Next Era Sports (was New Zealand Child and Youth Education Trust)	$387,662	12	19-11-18
New Zealand Multiculture and Arts Exchange Centre (was New Zealand Chinese and Arts Exchange Centre)	$419,472	20	07-09-17
Supreme Sikh Society of New Zealand	$419,513	21	30-06-08
Happy Valley Women and Children's Foundation	$447,246	25	20-10-22
Asian Community Engagement Trust (was Natural Environment Defence Foundation)	$475,510	26	08-07-20
Indian Association (Manakau) New Zealand Inc	$489,000	3	15-12-81
New Zealand Sports and Community Development Trust	$559,498	31	20-09-23
Inspired Families Foundational Trust	$660,679	39	13-04-18
New Zealand Culture & Media Group Ltd	$2,074,570	62	27-04-21

We can look at groups in the Top 50 funded that have been registered in 2024. There are four groups which make my list:

Greater Bay Sports Association Inc (Incorporated Society, 3 officers, $171k in 29 grants, registered 14 March 2024)
Wushu Development of New Zealand Trust (5 Trustees, $233k in 18 grants, registered 25/7/2024)
Wish Foundation (2 Trustees. $236k in 19 grants, noted on NZBN as registered 24/7/2024 but not registered on the Charities Services register)
New Zealand Education and Creation Center (2 Trustees, received $166k in 12 grants, registered 20/6/2024)

Now, I'm not saying that anything is off here: it could be that these four pokies are helping organisations to start up, but if I were in charge I would have hard look at this. What set these organisations apart of the multitude of others to get such support in start up phase?

I also note that New Zealand Sports and Community Development Trust are pulling in the grants. The investigation into their money must have found no issues.

If anyone is interested in having a look at the database I’ve pulled together please let me know. Its all publicly available data, but just assembled in a manner that makes it easier to interrogate.

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. These groups gave $22.4m into our communities last financial year via 2512 grants. In the greater scheme of things its rounding, but for many organisations surviving and doing great mahi it’s a lot of money. 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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Submission into the Online Casino Gambling Bill

14/8/2025

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I did a submission to the Minister on the proposed Online Casino Gambling Bill. Reproduced below, mainly for posterity as there seems little appetite for any of these discussions.

For decades New Zealand has had a system of linking gambling to community funding: think Lotto and Class 4 pokies as an example. These funding streams blossomed in the late part of last century, along with other funding streams such as community and energy trusts. This grant money has now created an ecosystem where people and organisations now rely on significant grant funding for operational and capital purposes, and New Zealand has twice as many charities per capita than say Australia. This supports communities – and families working for those organisations getting that grant money.

I had looked into this: above is a chart looking at Canterbury’s grant making ecosystem. While old data, there have been no significant changes in grant makers in the past decade. We can see that pokie make up around 50% of the grants going into Canterbury. If we include Lotto then around 2/3 of grant funding comes from gambling. There is no reason to think that Canterbury is not similar to the rest of the nation in terms of their grant profile.

This data of course ignores Government contracts and private / corporate giving, focusing on organisations who make grants into entities.

Pokies have some big advantages.

Quick decision making
Broad range of organisations funded
Simple application procedures
High trust model

There are of course some issues with this grantmaking model:

Organisation overreliance on pokie funding
Misuse of funds
Some poor allocation of grant money – there are numerous articles on this
Poor oversight of the ecosystem

However, the majority of the funds end up doing some good in the communities they support. NZCT has a very good schematic on the split of pokie funding. This split shows the share that goes to community funding groups (3.2 cents in the dollar), the Government (2.9 cents in the dollar) and 1.5 cents in the dollar to the operator and to the venue, along with 90.9 cents paid back to the gambler. Casinos do not have the same community funding burden on their business model.

My concern over the proposed changes is on the impact to the funding ecosystem. Pokies make up a significant portion of grant funding. That money is used to support all manner or organisations: sports clubs, health charities, schools, community groups and arts organisations, and used to pay for community assets, events and support thousands of salaries in New Zealand.

If funding were to be part of the online casino industry, proceeds from that funding could easily be leveraged into an existing grantmaking body without a need for replication: perhaps local bodies, the existing Lotto decision makers, or perhaps an existing pokie who has vetted good practice. The advantage of the latter is that they are already a low cost operator, likely lower cost than the other options which means more money ends up with communities.

I do believe that the grant making sector needs thought at a high level. To make this structural change to our essential pokie funding without considering the long term effects of this on the recipients is short sighted and will only result in even more demands on the public purse for support. We do have too much reliance on gambling. We do have too many charities replicating services and chewing up cash. We do have paid staff where before communities and volunteers stepped up. We do have messy funding boundaries between state and philanthropy. We do have too much power for our community resources with highly paid staff in grant making organisations who are often driven by populist agendas. We do have high cost systems. 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.

There are few people thinking about this: grant makers tend to put themselves at the centre of the solution, and grant seeking organisations tend to be organized based on sector rather than as resource seeking entities. Change tends to be incremental to the system rather than system redefining. I wrote this a while back but still see no reason why New Zealand couldn’t rethink the model. But this rethink requires policy which cuts across multiple portfolios, vision and strategy at the system level rather than a death by a thousand cuts approach which is what is happening at present.

I also think that NZ based entities are likely to be more responsive: we can see with many offshore companies there is a complete lack of response in relation to complaints and customer issues. International entities have a poor track record of being good citizens to our small nation, an issue I am sure Problem Gambling will highlight as a real concern.

Online gambling is in New Zealand already and its great that the Government is looking to bring some order to the sector. However, I think its remiss for community funding to be excluded from the model given the likely impact of online gambling on pokies. A better solution would be leveraging local providers and adding a community funding element which is commensurate with the amount Class 4 are required to provide while taking some time to critically review the grant making ecosystem and adjusting once a strategy is in place. An even playing field seems fair and the right thing to do for both New Zealand businesses and New Zealand communities.

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$366,321,199 of Community Grants

12/7/2025

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DIA have announced that they have published the 2024 Class 4 grants data. This covers all the grants made in the 2024 calendar year by pokies. You will no doubt have had a good look at what the data is telling you.

But if not, then lets have a look now. All this information can be found at Granted.govt.nz.
Below is a shot of the dashboard on the first page.

We have almost 9k organisations receiving these grants, with each organisation receiving an average of almost 3 grants per year from 33 separate grantmakers. This does seem quite low to me: you will recall from some previous work that some organisations are getting over sixty grants from a single grantmaker in one year.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see Netball feature so highly. This year that code got $9.6m: of course that’s amateur hour compared to rugby’s $27m.

So who received all this lovely money? Below is a table looking at the organisations that received over $1m in the 2024 calendar year, along with the percentage of the total pokie money they received from the top giving grantmaker. Some you will know, some you’ll have to google, and some I have complained about several years ago. So clearly nothing to see here.

I could look back in time to see how grants to those entities changed over the years: only thing is there is a wee health check on this. The 2024 data looks quite clean (bouquet) however the historical data isn’t (brickbat) so without doing that exercise its tricky to compare. For example, in 2023 Youthtown is spelt three different ways in the DIA system: those three total $5.3m.

You may be surprised that there are 33 grantmakers in this sector. Below is a wee chart looking at who they are, how much they have given away in the calendar years, and how many machines they have as at 31 December. The Yellow is tagged as I find it odd that One Foundation has increased their grants by about $20m in one year with fewer machines (I do have a query in with DIA as of the end of June 2025 but not sure if they will get back to me). The red are the pokies that no longer exist, and green is a new entity.

If you are interested in the pokies that operate in your region, you can easily look at that through Granted. There is a tab called Pokie Grants by District where you can view who gives to what in your area.

I also have looked at productivity: the amount of grants produced per machine. Now, Problem Gambling Foundation may describe this differently, but my interest is around the grantmaking side of the business. The size of the circle relates to the amount granted (and apologies for the fuzzy words: only so much my free version of Power BI will do). You can see that One Foundation looks quite out of whack with the others: see above query. The most productive machines are managed by Blue Sky with each machine producing some $43,307 of grants, followed by ILT ($42,003) then closely followed by Rano ($41,851). ILT is an outlier: of course this is the Invercargill Licensing Trust. I suspect it has been able to manage its footprint within the area so historically not subject to the same competitive pressures. I confess ignorance as to the venue business model for pokies, but, given Blue Sky and Rano have been the subject of a few of my sector queries, I’d have a good look at why those specific venues have gone into business with these specific pokies. There are instances where venues do ask for a kick back from a charity receiving funding (illegal) or where a charity makes a rent payment to a venue. Sounds dodgy but can't be as there has been no action taken against those who have done 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. Pokies are low cost operators in terms of cost to serve, and are responsible for granting large sums of money to community groups. 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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Dive into Trillian Trust’s Grantmaking

25/3/2025

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I’m taking requests, and, not naming names, I’ve been gently nudged into looking at Trillian Trust. I was somewhat surprised to find on my computer a file, spreadsheets and a few years analysed. Then I remembered I had started to look at them, but felt there wasn’t enough data to be interesting. They restructured into a different entity in 2020 and took their previous grants off their website. Now we have four years of complete data. I’ve downloaded their newer data off their website, cleaned it up and classified it by sector / subsector and region.

So who is Trillian Trust? At the top there are five men making the grant decisions. Below copied from their authorised purpose: my highlights added.

Promotion of any amateur sport where that sport is conducted for the recreation of the general public. This includes, but is not limited to, the provision of ground fees, equipment and uniforms for amateur sporting clubs and teams. No donations and/or payments to professional sports people.
Donations for cultural educational purposes that are of a non-commercial nature.
Donations for educational advancement through grants to schools or other educational institutes for equipment or the development of better student amenities not covered by government funding, including playground equipment etc.
Donations to recognised charitable organisations to further the objects of those groups.
Promoting, controlling, and conducting race meetings under the Racing Act 2003, including the payment of stakes, and the provision and maintenance of public amenities primarily used for race meetings.

Interesting what is missing: that’s a reference to returning grant monies to the areas they were generated from. This is somewhat addressed in the FAQ (copied):

Trillian Trust endeavour to return as much funds as possible into the area in which those funds were raised, however, funding is also provided to organisations that operate nationally.

As at the end of December 2024 Trillian Trust were managing 22 venues: 14 in Auckland, two venues in Thames Coromandel and one venue in Carterton, the Far North, Hamilton, Manawatu, Napier and Christchurch. This is up two venues from 2020.

Last financial year (31 July 2024) they gave away around $14 million, down a wee bit ($700k) from 2023, but up from (Covid affected) 2021 when the number was a little shy of $9m.

Where does the money go to? 62% of Trillian’s funding goes to Sport. Almost 8% goes to education: although of course a fair bit of this education support will go to sport, but, unless there is an underlying club for the school’s sport team, its impossible to classify into the correct bucket.

Sport breakdown? Wow these guys love football! I guess this isn’t news.

Value	2021	2022	2023	2024	TOTAL
Football	2,165,059	1,867,981	2,772,183	2,294,155	9,099,377
Rugby Union	412,819	1,108,957	756,168	787,961	3,065,904
Rugby League	656,305	533,672	493,234	210,008	1,893,219
Basketball	350,140	400,239	468,421	386,252	1,605,053
Cricket	232,942	129,182	758,591	389,111	1,509,836
Hockey	300,006	267,708	441,526	423,245	1,432,485
Boating	125,935	156,244	281,894	619,422	1,183,495
Venue	221,999	314,024	298,154	339,761	1,173,938
Horse Racing	40,000	244,650	445,238	314,000	1,043,888
Other Sport	1,081,788	1,296,836	2,428,238	2,840,633	7,647,494
Total Sport	5,586,993	6,319,491	9,143,647	8,604,548	29,654,680

We have some history with a Martin van Beynen piece on Stuff in 2022. Martin did a great job of pulling some of the strands together with relationships of top football club Auckland City FC, Central United and Trillian Trust. So which are the football clubs getting Trillian’s support? 44% of that footie money has gone to clubs associated with Auckland City Football Club. (Note Super City Youth is a now dissolved entity – see this article for more).

Auckland City FC’s income looks largely the same as when Martin van Beynen looked at it. You can check out their accounts on Societies, but that will show you they have an income of just over $1.1m. Granted.govt.nz tells me that Trillian are pretty much the only funder of this club. And their own website tells me they have a whole 12 teams and membership of 400. So looking at this: In 2024 Trillian subsided each team to the tune of $52k. Each member to the tune of $1,576. They have wages of $852k. Heck – when my husband was running a footie club we had about the same number of teams and members – all funded on subs (curiously a line item not on Auckland City FC’s accounts!) and a bit of support from a generous sponsor. Nary a salary in sight.

I’m not going to repeat the analysis here, but I did benchmark a year or two ago. The club in the Mainland Football catchment with the most pokie subsidy was Nelson Suburbs at a $5,078 subsidy per team over 47 teams. I reckon the lead in the van Beynen article still stands: Auckland City FC is New Zealand's top amateur club. Yet it can't shake the rumours that it's in fact a club of professionals masquerading as amateurs. I also think NZ Football needs to figure out a better operating model for its top clubs.

Anyhoo – back to Trillian Trust. The clean was pretty simple as there were many rows of the same entity. Below I have looked at the top ten organisations by number of grants. Trillian have no limits on the number of times you can apply.

So Blue Light Ventures fill in 25 applications per annum. Tino Rawa restore wooden boats: quite lovely but Trillian is THE ONLY funder of this entity. This is feasible, but this pokie doesn't disclose conflicts so its a challenge to understand the why of these grant patterns.

I spent too much of my summer preparing a database for a wee database I was hoping the DIA would pick up to give them some better information to proactively manage risks. They don’t know who actually owns the venues which house the pokies. So I plodded through the 1,100 or so venues, figured out who owns them through a search of MoJ's (incomplete) database of liquor licenses, or MPI’s (much better) database of food licenses. I then searched up every commercial entity to see who were the directors / shareholders of said entities within the past decade or so. I captured that in a spreadsheet, and try to keep it up to date as I have all the commercial entities on a Companies Office watch list. Really need better hobbies.

I then intend to search all the humans on the list to see their interests. Under the legislation, venues cannot have a say in where funding goes. But, despite several complaints, I haven’t seen a behaviour change in the way grant money is allocated, so assume that its all good.

I spent about an hour or so looking for some linkages here. Here’s one. A chap who is an owner / shareholder of a Trillian Trust pub. Very strong ties to Auckland City FC AND Central United FC, who together in the last 4 years got almost $3.6m from Trillian. Oh – and he was a former director / shareholder of the now defunct Super City Football Academy – an entity that, according to Granted.govt.nz received $792k solely from Trillian in the years 2019 – 2022. To be clear, I’m not saying there is a situation where the venue is influencing where the grants go. But its probably worth a look.

The other thing I noticed about Trillian was some money ending up down south. You probably noticed that Horse Racing appears on the “most funded sport” list. Below is a pie chart looking at the locations for that funding. Trillian only has one South Island venue, in Christchurch. They did have one in Tasman in 2021, but that’s nowhere near Winton. There is nothing in their Authorised Purposes to say that they give back to where the funds are generated, but I can’t understand why they felt the needs of nine Southland harness racing clubs which do not operate nationally (and why they bothered to apply) outweighed the needs of organisations operating in the area their venues are situated.

If we look at all their grants, Auckland does get the lions share of their available funding: around 83% of total Trillian Trust funding goes to Auckland entities.

I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. No one else seems all that interested. 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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Rātā Update 2024

7/3/2025

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Looks like I now take requests. My one regular reader asked me to have a gander again at Rātā Foundation, which is Canterbury, Marlborough, Nelson and Chatham’s Community Trust. This Trust was set up by Central Government almost forty years ago when the regional Trust Banks were sold to Westpac. The money was then put in a perpetual trust. Government then appoints trustees to oversee both the investment, and the distribution of monies.

I wrote about Rātā last in 2021. My moans then still apply: copied below.

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.

So, nerd that I am, I downloaded the grants, cleaned and classified the data. Only took a week. Below is the last eleven years of Rātā 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 38% of grants made. Over the last seven years the average was 29%. Sporting clubs are not the flavour of the month at the moment: in 2024 Sport made up 8% of all grants, in 2014 that figure was 18%. I have no issues with this. Sport has plenty of places to go to for grants: many pokies are set up specifically for sport grant making.

Looking at a single year’s grant making is a little tricky with Rātā : as mentioned they do a bit of multi year funding (which is great: should reduce cost to serve for those getting the grants) but don’t disclose – at least that I could find – who receives it and how much (not so good). As a result, I will look at the last three year in the below work.

The biggest beneficiary of Rātā funding is the organisers: Sport Canterbury, Sport Nelson. We have a few venues with support, and then the usual suspects: rugby, cricket, basketball, boating, netball and football. But a big surprise to me is the support of boxing: in the last three years Rātā has given $365k to various boxing entities. They have given a tidy $395k over the past five years to the Canterbury Brain Collective so I guess the consequences of the boxing funding is taken care of.

The top ten funded organisations in 2024 are below: as previously stated some of this will be operational funding in a multi year, and some capex.

Charity	2024 Grant
Hokotehi Moriori Trust	$500,000
Tasman Environmental Trust	$450,000
Terra Nova Foundation	$385,700
Ngati Mutunga o Wharekauri Iwi Trust	$379,741
CORE Education	$337,562
Stopping Violence Services (Christchurch) Inc	$335,000
Community Law Canterbury/Te Ture Whanui O Waitaha Inc	$315,000
Nga Hau E Wha National Marae Charitable Trust	$300,000
St Lukes Samoan Assembly of God	$300,000
Te Ora Hou Otautahi Inc	$300,000
Grand Total	$3,603,003

Sport isn’t where its at for Rātā however. You may be scratching your head over the Community and Economic Development flag. Yes it’s a catch all, and yes it will include multi year funding or capital. I can’t tell the difference from the published documents. Below shows the top 10 organisations who have received funding in the past three years from Rātā :

Yep some big licks: housing sucks a fair bit up. So its not just me as a taxpayer, or me as a ratepayer helping out with social housing: its also me as a Canterbury citizen.

Last time too we had a skew towards the Nelson Marlborough area. Top of the South has about 23% of the population Ignoring multi-region (another reporting change) the amount staying in Canterbury over the last three years fluctuated between 69% and 76%. To be fair the Chathams, which of course has a very small population, did pick up a large slice of funding in the 2024 year: you can see that in the $500k to the Hokotehi Moriori Trust.

Because I have the data I thought it might be fun to look at Rātā ’s numbers of grants over the past 11 years. I did notice when I was cleaning that there was a large number of new organisations getting support. And while there is nothing wrong with this, I suspect that (again) we have a bunch of duplication going on with well meaning people starting their own thing rather than work with an existing entity.

In the 11 years I have data, Rātā has funded some 2633 entities, in 9721 grants. 35% of all entities getting funding only did once. The number of grants has more halved from 1240 in 2014 to 568 in 2024 while the amount given has increased by a total of around $2m. So we have fewer entities getting more money.

Let me know if there are any other grant insights you’d like. I'm keen to explore cost to serve so have had a look at a history of operating financials. This analysis EXCLUDES fund management costs, and takes the total admin cost and divides by the dollar value of grants given. In 2017, the costs per grant made were 16.16 cents. This means that for every dollar given, it cost 16.16 cents to get that dollar into the community. In 2025, that cost has gone to 21 cents – up about 25%. Looking at it another way, if we divide total admin costs by the NUMBER of grants then in 2017 the cost per grant was $3,247. In 2024 it is $7,882. This is less concerning (I think) given they now give MORE to FEWER organisations AND have introduced a multi-region tag which means where three grants were published before there is now just one.

My interest was piqued by a Matt Nippert piece in the Herald looking at New Zealand’s highest paid charity executives. We had a couple of grant makers in this list: not Rātā. My maths puts that the average salary of the top 4.2 staff at Rātā (as per their accounts) was $192k. That does seem like a wodge of cash, especially when they paid their fund managers $4.7m to manage the $675m under management. And if we look back to 2017 the average was $134k. So that's a 43% increase in top salaries since 2017. For reference, according to my scratchings from Stats NZ data, private sector salaries rose by almost 20% over this period. According to Google's AI the average CEO salary of a NZ NFP is $123k.

Below is a wee benchmarking exercise looking at entities which give away money, how much it costs to get a dollar out the door, total funds under management and top staff costs. I tried to take only the costs of grants, excluding investment costs and running costs in the case of the pokie. I looked at the two grant makers identified in the Nippert article, and a couple of other grant makers. The first three entities all have the same model: they are legacy Community Trusts. Central Lakes Trust manages some pretty sizeable energy assets (and I couldn’t unpick those costs from the Trust costs so their cost to serve is inflated), Tindall Foundation is a family trust with a fair whack of cash in Warehouse shares, and Pub Charity is a pokie whose costs of course are controlled by legislation. Its also just from the grant maker angle: those seeking grants have costs too which will increase the cost to serve.

Missing quite deliberately is Christchurch Foundation. They had a lot of coverage down here a while back for some big salaries, and to be honest they don’t really give away that much. Their salaries have been brought back a lot since then, but still: the job of the CHC foundation, I would argue, is a lot harder than a perpetual trust like Rātā . As anyone in the philanthropic game will tell you, it’s a lot easier giving the money away than getting it in in the first place. Also missing is any local or central government benchmarking: those figures are well buried. What’s Lotto’s cost to get a buck out the door? Christchurch City Council’s? I’d hazard its probably a bit higher than this. And I have seen some very high cost to serve in some smaller lawyer run funders: sometimes the management cost is more than what they give away. I admit to being a little surprised at the similarity of cost to serve and top staff costs across the Community Foundations. I suspect they likely all use the same reports around remuneration: although that’s likely not the NGO category that is benchmarked. If Rātā could do the job for Pub Charity's cost to serve, then as a community we'd be almost $2m better off. Is the extra cost worth the result? I don't know. Thoughts?

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. Shout out for any requests, and check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/

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Some musings on things

A once over lightly on We Care Community Trust

Akarana Community Trust’s grants: 2026 edit

$340,379,897 of Community Grants - 2025 Edit

New Horizons for a New Pokie

If you've got the inclination, I have got the crime

Blue Sky, Dragon, Rano and Milestone 2025

Submission into the Online Casino Gambling Bill

$366,321,199 of Community Grants

Dive into Trillian Trust’s Grantmaking

Rātā Update 2024

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