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).
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.
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/
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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