These four pokies are a part of my origin story, so for better or worse I simply can’t peel my eyes off their goings on.  

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 ongoing. So while those tasked with regulation go about their jobs, the pokies and community groups they fund continue to go about theirs.

I’ve done my usual process: download their grant disclosures, clean up the data and sense check.  What I do not do with these guys is categorise by type of activity: most the interesting stuff is at the micro entity level.  I did find something quite off with Rano’s disclosure for the first part of this calendar year.  I checked it with Granted.govt.nz’s disclosure and took a degree of comfort that it seemed likely they simply misreported some grants in the first half reporting.  With the charities I rely on publicly available information, generally from Charities, Google, and now a bit of AI who kindly helps me drill through a bunch of websites.  

Looking at these four entities Grant distributions over the years we can see growth has bounced back from 2025’s drop, increasing to (just) an all time high in the 2026 financial year.  

This increase will be in part driven by an increase in the number of venues under management: in 2017 they had 17 venues and 269 machines: by 30 June 2026 they had 40 venues and 634 machines.  The four also have a skew for Auckland / Waikato region. If we look at the calendar year 2025 (as that’s how I manage the venue data) they lost five venues (which includes the infamous Edinburgh Castle) and gained eight venues. 

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.  You can see 20 organisations are getting 40.2% of the total grants by value from these pokies.   Note that I am not saying there is anything untoward with these grants.  However there are a few with very thin governance, and very high numbers of grants, that makes me wonder what is going on here. After all, Blue Sky was the funder of Angel Children's Education which (finally) got deregistered after some Stuff investigations.  Of course Blue Sky may not have understood what was happening with Angel although if not then it suggests some lapses in process.

What is interesting here?  A media company that received $2.3m in grants in one year from 53 separate grants?  At 4.4 grants per month that is a lot of applications.  Looking at Granted.govt.nz data for 2025 (which to be fair isn’t 100% clean but I’ve tried to spruce it up a little), they were the 7^th highest funded entity out of ALL pokie funded grantseekers, achieved a 99% funding rate AND were never declined a grant.  If we look at the accounts of New Zealand Culture & Media Group Ltd, we can see that 94% of the revenue comes from grants (Blue Sky, Milestone and Rano).  Rano’s 2021 accounts disclose a related-party connection involving New Zealand Culture & Media Group and the management company behind Rano. I have previously raised concerns about aspects of this funding, although I cannot confirm whether DIA has assessed this particular relationship or reached any conclusion about it. The existence of a related-party connection does not, in itself, establish that the funding was improper but the success rate is astonishing.

The second most funded entity, at $859k in 39 grants (so, 3.25 grants per month!) is effectively an Auckland based community gym where the community subsidy (ie, the pokie funding) is effectively $1313 PER SESSION.  

I’m left scratching my head over Inspired Families Foundational Trust: three trustees and the Chair is an employee.  $468k this last year from 30 grants.  According to their accounts they did much the same this year as the year before: service deliverables are pretty much the same.  Including a typo.  They wrote over $300k of capex off last year: a lot of that in computer and camera equipment.  I was unable to find receipted revenue for these assets.  In the past eight years they have received $4.9m in 285 separate grants from these pokies.

And Asian Community Engagement Trust.  They got $450k in 26 grants.  Its publicly available records raise governance questions that warrant closer examination. The records I reviewed appear to show one trustee, while the trust deed I consulted specifies a minimum of two. The accounts also disclose a “Directors Service Fee” of $86,000. I have not independently established whether the trustee arrangements or payment complied with the deed, so I would not treat either as a confirmed breach without further verification.

Next Era Sports.  From their description on Charities: “Two full time employees (General Manager & Operations Manager), one contractor (waka ama coach), community volunteers to deliver programmes. We partner with schools, local clubs, and community groups to support training, competitions, and events”.  Ok; so they have two staff and should be out and about.  From the latest (2025) accounts there is $80k in NET RENT.    

Wish Foundation has jumped on in.  Starting in 2024 with two trustees, I couldn't locate the organisation on the Charities Register, so I haven't been able to use that register to verify its current status or review its charity filings. In the past two years they have received $465k in 39 grants.  

I’ve also looked at groups in the Top 50 funded list, and view that by year.  Some significant changes:

Lucky Clover Trust: its gone.  In the past seven years they have received $4.1m from these four pokies, in an eye watering 294 grants.  Their latest set of published accounts (2025) suggests they are winding up operations.  It will be interesting to see what happens with the almost $250k worth of assets that the trust owns.  In 2025 they paid $194k in rent for (presumably) their venue at 2163 Great North Road in Avondale. 

We’ve also lost New Life Charitable Trust.  They have now deregistered although still do have a website.  Since 2018 they have received $2.6m in 261 separate grants (that’s an average number of grants of 32 per annum). 

I am saddened to see the deregistration of Sports Development Foundation New Zealand.  Between 2019 and 2022 this entity received over $1.3m in 121 different grants.  Their charitable purpose boiled down to take kids to Snowplanet.  In 2021 they had a registered address at 211 Richardson Road, an address shared by Richardson’s pub (a pokie venuer) for which they paid $78k in rent in their financial year ended March 2021.  

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’d love to know more about connections between funded entities and venues: I do have a full up to date database on who owns which venues: under law venues cannot have a say in where grant money goes.

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 $24.5m into our communities last financial year via 2,361 grants.  In the greater scheme of things its rounding, but for many organisations surviving and doing great mahi it’s a lot of money.  I've come to believe that we, NZ Inc, need some greater oversight of how that money is granted to communities.  These pokies have considerable stewardship over community funding at a time when many groups are starved for funding. 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/