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I rabbit on about the grantmaking ecosystem, so much so that people roll their eyes and nod politely while considering where the nearest exit is. Except you.
I am super interested in how grants get into organisations. We have many people in many organisations doing the same jobs from both a grant seeker and grant maker perspective.
Most grant seekers do great work – or at least good work. However we have many grant seekers who may operate their organisation in a less than optimal manner. This could include factors such as cozy relationships with grant makers, poor governance, strong brands and loud voices where the organisation itself doesn’t really play nicely with others, or fail to operate according to best practice.
We have most grant makers who perceive their role as centre of the universe – rather than simply as an enabler to community works. They may pay themselves a lot to distribute “their” money to grant seekers. They may favour certain groups based on business dealings or community ties.
Let’s look at Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust (CWCART). I’m basing the analysis below on their 30 June 2025 accounts which can be found on the Charities website. If you look at these accounts you can see two sets: Group and Parent. The Parent is CWCART and the Group is Air Rescue Services (the pokie), and New Zealand Flying Doctor Trust (NZFDT). Got it?
They have two primary functions within the ecosystem:
Firstly, sponsorship. We have Westpac's totalling $849k, and ROA Mining’s of $263k. These sums go to CWCART. NZFDT also looks to attract $469k from other sources.
In addition the team fundraised $4.9m from the community in 2025, up $1.4m from the previous year. The total operating expenses for CWCART to raise that $4.9m were $1.5m.
The pokie, Air Rescue Services, gave CWCART $2.9m in grants. And it looks like NZFDT received $3.2m. ARS then gave a further $10.3 to other community groups (including $4.4m to football – based on my data).
If we look at capex and opex CWCART then gave $4.2m to GCH, up from $3.1m in 2024. It then looks as if the Group gave around $4m to NZFDT in 2025.
The balance sheet for CWCART looks pretty healthy with net assets of $16m. That said there is a note that CWCART will be providing the capex for four new helicopters, so I would expect the 2026 accounts to look a little different. But, if this is the case, I would also expect the demands from GCH to reduce accordingly given that capital sits elsewhere.
So my question is: why bother with the fundraising within CWCART? If the pokie operation were to provide 100% of the amount purported to be needed to run the operation, they could easily cover this simply by getting rid of all the grants to football clubs (as, let’s face it, these grants DO NOT enable kids to play the sport despite the rhetoric). And costs of $1.5m would be removed from the entity as an instant cost reduction, and the community could (I am sure) find other places to make their donations to other charities. The corporate sponsorship from Westpac and ROA would probably continue without the CWCART as a go between. On the basis of 2025 accounts, this would add an extra $600k or so to ARS's grants to both CWCART and NZFDT.
Don’t get me wrong: Rescue Helicopters do provide an essential service to New Zealanders. In a nation like ours they are a vital part of our emergency ecosystem. Looking at other accounts of similar entities suggests that me, taxpayer, contributes around 66% of total costs. I did try a small benchmarking exercise (as I did a decade ago) but the service deliverables were not aligned so my wee brain fried. Which is another story around how we, as a community, measure the deliverables of entities that proport to do good for us.
I think the community funding mechanism for these guys is a little off. I suspect that an argument would be “well if the pokie business changes we would be stuffed”. True. However, to me that’s a branding issue: we can see with (for example) the establishment of another Canterbury charity, the Maia Foundation in 2015 generated a pretty good donation revenue pretty quickly without the benefit of any pokie income. My point is that if the need is there for a purpose such as this the community will support.
ARS are not the only such “for purpose” gaming trust: in Canterbury we also have Mainland Foundation, which supports rugby union (amongst a lot of other things). Yet in 2025 Mainland gave around $1.5m to Rugby Union in Canterbury, gave another $1.5m to other groups, and Rugby got an incremental $1.5m from OTHER pokies. So yeah… lots of incremental cost when Mainland could fund ALL rugby clubs in Canterbury and the other pokies could leave them to it.
Happy to share my workings if anyone is interested and wants to figure this out.
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/
I am super interested in how grants get into organisations. We have many people in many organisations doing the same jobs from both a grant seeker and grant maker perspective.
Most grant seekers do great work – or at least good work. However we have many grant seekers who may operate their organisation in a less than optimal manner. This could include factors such as cozy relationships with grant makers, poor governance, strong brands and loud voices where the organisation itself doesn’t really play nicely with others, or fail to operate according to best practice.
We have most grant makers who perceive their role as centre of the universe – rather than simply as an enabler to community works. They may pay themselves a lot to distribute “their” money to grant seekers. They may favour certain groups based on business dealings or community ties.
Let’s look at Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust (CWCART). I’m basing the analysis below on their 30 June 2025 accounts which can be found on the Charities website. If you look at these accounts you can see two sets: Group and Parent. The Parent is CWCART and the Group is Air Rescue Services (the pokie), and New Zealand Flying Doctor Trust (NZFDT). Got it?
They have two primary functions within the ecosystem:
- As a Grant seeker via the PARENT they seek grants and donations to fund the Westpac Rescue Helicopter in Canterbury, and the ROA Mining Rescue Helicopter on the West Coast AND (via the Group) the NZFDT.
- As a Grant maker they operate Air Rescue Services, a special purpose pokie with 30 venues all over New Zealand.
Firstly, sponsorship. We have Westpac's totalling $849k, and ROA Mining’s of $263k. These sums go to CWCART. NZFDT also looks to attract $469k from other sources.
In addition the team fundraised $4.9m from the community in 2025, up $1.4m from the previous year. The total operating expenses for CWCART to raise that $4.9m were $1.5m.
The pokie, Air Rescue Services, gave CWCART $2.9m in grants. And it looks like NZFDT received $3.2m. ARS then gave a further $10.3 to other community groups (including $4.4m to football – based on my data).
If we look at capex and opex CWCART then gave $4.2m to GCH, up from $3.1m in 2024. It then looks as if the Group gave around $4m to NZFDT in 2025.
The balance sheet for CWCART looks pretty healthy with net assets of $16m. That said there is a note that CWCART will be providing the capex for four new helicopters, so I would expect the 2026 accounts to look a little different. But, if this is the case, I would also expect the demands from GCH to reduce accordingly given that capital sits elsewhere.
So my question is: why bother with the fundraising within CWCART? If the pokie operation were to provide 100% of the amount purported to be needed to run the operation, they could easily cover this simply by getting rid of all the grants to football clubs (as, let’s face it, these grants DO NOT enable kids to play the sport despite the rhetoric). And costs of $1.5m would be removed from the entity as an instant cost reduction, and the community could (I am sure) find other places to make their donations to other charities. The corporate sponsorship from Westpac and ROA would probably continue without the CWCART as a go between. On the basis of 2025 accounts, this would add an extra $600k or so to ARS's grants to both CWCART and NZFDT.
Don’t get me wrong: Rescue Helicopters do provide an essential service to New Zealanders. In a nation like ours they are a vital part of our emergency ecosystem. Looking at other accounts of similar entities suggests that me, taxpayer, contributes around 66% of total costs. I did try a small benchmarking exercise (as I did a decade ago) but the service deliverables were not aligned so my wee brain fried. Which is another story around how we, as a community, measure the deliverables of entities that proport to do good for us.
I think the community funding mechanism for these guys is a little off. I suspect that an argument would be “well if the pokie business changes we would be stuffed”. True. However, to me that’s a branding issue: we can see with (for example) the establishment of another Canterbury charity, the Maia Foundation in 2015 generated a pretty good donation revenue pretty quickly without the benefit of any pokie income. My point is that if the need is there for a purpose such as this the community will support.
ARS are not the only such “for purpose” gaming trust: in Canterbury we also have Mainland Foundation, which supports rugby union (amongst a lot of other things). Yet in 2025 Mainland gave around $1.5m to Rugby Union in Canterbury, gave another $1.5m to other groups, and Rugby got an incremental $1.5m from OTHER pokies. So yeah… lots of incremental cost when Mainland could fund ALL rugby clubs in Canterbury and the other pokies could leave them to it.
Happy to share my workings if anyone is interested and wants to figure this out.
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/