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Unless you live under a rock, you will have seen that FIFA’s Women’s World Cup is about to start, so I thought I'd have another look at the money side of things here in NZ. For a while I have been looking at pokie grants as I have seen that where money comes from, where it goes and how it gets there is something that’s pretty unexamined. DIAs 2022 review of pokie data shows that Football received a total of $17.34m last calendar year from a total spend of $328m: second only to rugby who got $23.4m.
Like anything, community grants are subject to supply and demand issues. As the supply of money grows, perhaps due to legislation (in the case of pokies and community trusts) then the demand for that money grows accordingly: costs like roles which were previously done by volunteers, friends and families. There will never be enough money to meet the wants of the community sector.
Let’s look at the demand side for Football clubs. What I have noticed over the years is that some football clubs have close ties to specific venues who then host pokies who are exceedingly generous to said club. This is often despite Section 113 of the Gambling Act which prohibits key people involved in a venue to have a say in where grants go. Anyone found guilty of doing this will be fined up to $10,000. As an aside if I were in charge I might also consider putting the $10k fine up: perhaps to the value of the money siphoned off to the grant seeker.
You can see some of those activities in these old blogs:
http://www.delfi.co.nz/blog/looking-at-grassroots
http://www.delfi.co.nz/blog/update-on-air-rescue-trust-2022
http://www.delfi.co.nz/blog/a-million-dollars-a-month
The impact of these relationships can be quite profound. It would be helpful if sports peak bodies published the number of registered players that each club has, but they don’t. Nor do many organisations publish their annual accounts or player numbers. But we do have some hardish data:
Like anything, community grants are subject to supply and demand issues. As the supply of money grows, perhaps due to legislation (in the case of pokies and community trusts) then the demand for that money grows accordingly: costs like roles which were previously done by volunteers, friends and families. There will never be enough money to meet the wants of the community sector.
Let’s look at the demand side for Football clubs. What I have noticed over the years is that some football clubs have close ties to specific venues who then host pokies who are exceedingly generous to said club. This is often despite Section 113 of the Gambling Act which prohibits key people involved in a venue to have a say in where grants go. Anyone found guilty of doing this will be fined up to $10,000. As an aside if I were in charge I might also consider putting the $10k fine up: perhaps to the value of the money siphoned off to the grant seeker.
You can see some of those activities in these old blogs:
http://www.delfi.co.nz/blog/looking-at-grassroots
http://www.delfi.co.nz/blog/update-on-air-rescue-trust-2022
http://www.delfi.co.nz/blog/a-million-dollars-a-month
The impact of these relationships can be quite profound. It would be helpful if sports peak bodies published the number of registered players that each club has, but they don’t. Nor do many organisations publish their annual accounts or player numbers. But we do have some hardish data:
- DIA’s Granted.govt.nz website. The dollar amount below is as at 8 July for the full calendar year. Great the figures for the full 2022 year now published, and great to see data back to 2017. However the data still needs to be cleaned - there are multiple ways to spell the same entity, and some of course change name to reduce detection.
- Mainland’s competition framework which I can use as a proxy for player numbers. I confess to counting these up off a website counting up all the junior, youth and senior grades without my glasses so may not be hugely accurate, but likely within cooee. It will also exclude in house footie programmes that tend to be for the young kiddos, or in the case of University the social intra club teams. In brackets I have put the number of male and female teams in the higher cost top league which involves considerable travel.
- Annual accounts where they are provided from Societies.govt.nz. Coaching costs are interesting: see this Stuff piece around how some clubs approach this. https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/football/129546987/the-sham-of-amateurism-in-top-club-football
Some quite different business models appear to underpin these clubs, but there are a few questions I’d ask:
Rugby is a different kettle of fish. DIA’s report shows that Rugby received $23.46m in 2022. I’ll look at that later.
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. 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/
Photo by Peter Glaser on unsplash
- What is a reasonable pokie subsidy? I don’t know why Cash Tech need so much: the many times our kids played them over the years we played at a Council park at the back of a school. Their kit was fancy though! I do acknowledge that organising all these teams would take a lot of admin effort but families do pay to play. And of course: grants can’t be used for support of professional sports.
- Christchurch United stands out as paying a lot for coaching yet not having any grants. I suspect a lot of this is underpinned by their Academy in terms of paying that cost.
- Universities again gets no grants. I expect they benefit from association with the University as a home base.
- SAS’s coaching costs are pretty high. Looking at 2016, there was a line item “Coaching Training and Courses” with a cost of $11,286. Six years later the Coaching figure is $104k.
- How do funders determine where money is needed. What is the “right” level of user pays? How much of the community subsidy goes to subsidising the clubrooms aspect of the organisation? How much to support the amateurs playing at the top level for their clubs? How do the clubs manifest the national sporting strategies? And are they financially rewarded for this? I am totally happy to benchmark this for you funders!
Rugby is a different kettle of fish. DIA’s report shows that Rugby received $23.46m in 2022. I’ll look at that later.
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. 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/
Photo by Peter Glaser on unsplash
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In the recent article on Angel’s Children Education Foundation, Grassroots was mentioned as a funder who had given them almost $50,000. Turns out this was granted in April 2021. A further two requests, both for $46,666, were declined in that year. I’m curious about them, and where their money goes so did my usual thing: downloaded their grants, cleaned them up and had a squiz at the results.
Grassroots is primarily a North Island based funder. There are two parts to them: they took over Infinity a few years ago now. That now operates under Grassroots Central. This piece looks specifically at Grassroots. They are run by a board of six (five men, one woman).
Their authorised purposes are fairly general:
Grassroots Trust Limited is licensed to operate gaming machines to raise money for the following authorised purposes:
They manage just under 7% of the total number of gaming machines in the country and give out a sizeable amount of money to the community each year. Below is a chart showing the grants by sector. A couple of things to note about this.
Grassroots is primarily a North Island based funder. There are two parts to them: they took over Infinity a few years ago now. That now operates under Grassroots Central. This piece looks specifically at Grassroots. They are run by a board of six (five men, one woman).
Their authorised purposes are fairly general:
Grassroots Trust Limited is licensed to operate gaming machines to raise money for the following authorised purposes:
- Amateur sport.
- Any charitable purpose.
- Any non-commercial purpose that is beneficial to the whole or a section of the community.
- Amateur sport through direct support of sporting bodies. Grants will only be granted to sports bodies which are formally established and legally constituted.
- Community organisations which are established for charitable, educational, or cultural purposes beneficial to the community or a section of it or any other purpose beneficial to the community or a section of it.
They manage just under 7% of the total number of gaming machines in the country and give out a sizeable amount of money to the community each year. Below is a chart showing the grants by sector. A couple of things to note about this.
In 2018 Grassroots had 664 machines under their management. By Dec 2022 this had grown by 50% to 998 machines. We can also see the effect of COVID on their grants. They have a heavy presence in the north part of the North Island, so of course were more negatively affected by lock downs. The 2023 bar represents eleven months of grants: I would expect them to add another two million to this total by financial year end. Around two thirds of this money goes to sport. The next most popular sector was community and economic development, sitting on 12.5% closely followed by education on 12.4%. You need to remember that education grants are often given for sport however, but this grant maker doesn’t disclose what the grants were for.
Which sports? Ho hum. Grassroots are huge supporters of rugby. This mostly goes to the big unions: Waikato and Bay of Plenty. The top funded sports look similar to many other grant maker’s profiles, although in Canterbury I'd expect to see Bowls up there.
Which sports? Ho hum. Grassroots are huge supporters of rugby. This mostly goes to the big unions: Waikato and Bay of Plenty. The top funded sports look similar to many other grant maker’s profiles, although in Canterbury I'd expect to see Bowls up there.
Lets look at the top 25 funded individual organisations over the past 35 months. I’ve also thrown in grant count.
If an organisation put in one grant application per month over the period we are looking at, that would be 35 applications. There are some big numbers here: Waikato Rugby Union on 54 applications to get $3.4m, NZFuture Community Trust on 45 to get $706k, Dynamo Cycling on 33 grants to get $533k. That’s a lot of paperwork.
Now, to be honest I’m not really sure why these rugby organisations need all this cash, and then quite why these organisations feel compelled to give it to them. Unlike Mainland Foundation (for example) there is nothing explicit in their charitable purposes about supporting rugby. It will be interesting to see what demand is like with the Silverlake deal in play – do you reckon that will displace pokie funding, or add to it?
I’ve started to look at linkages between venues and those seeking grants, and raised an eyebrow (and another complaint in November 2022) about these guys.
There is a bar in Hamilton, the Junction, with a legal name of PYN Investments Ltd. A former shareholder of this company has the same name as the General Manager of Hamilton Wanderers Football Club. Yep, the club that over the past 35 months has received $1.2m in 30 grants off the Grassroots Trust. We also have The Smith and McKenzie Chopshop, legal name Belgian Blue Ltd. This is a part of a wider commercial structure called Summerhouse Trustee Ltd, owned in part by a chap who seems to be in partnership with a likely service provider to the Hamilton Wanderers club.
Of course, venues are not allowed to have any influence on where money goes. But it does make me wonder if and how Grassroots Trust deals with such potential conflicts of interest.
What is interesting is that there were no grants given to Hamilton Wanderers Football Club since I made the complaint in November. So maybe I am making a difference!
We also have a lot of grants going to NZFuture Community Trust. They set up as a Charitable Trust in 2017. They have a website, Facebook and report back on their service delivery. And yes, there are 45 grants going to this organisation. But there are also 50 grants going to Waikato Rugby so maybe large numbers of applications are quite the norm for this organisation.
We also have a large number of grants going to Dynamo Cycling and Sports Club. 33 grants – that’s basically one grant a month. I can’t find a website for this club: rather a link to Dynamo Events which “..is a sports event delivery company that has a commitment to excellence across all facets of the event experience.” There is no company with this name: the nearest is Dynamo Temporary Fencing Ltd owned by the same people. I can’t see a pokie venue link between the parties, but I didn’t look that hard. Dynamo Cycling and Sports Club's accounts suggest 2/3 of their income comes from grants. Do other cycling events rely so much on grant money? I haven't looked.
But then again also noteworthy is some grant making that looks a bit like the activity in the Angel story: frequent amounts to relatively new organisations. Specifically, Amah Trust registered as a charity in April 2022. Since then they have received three grants totalling $66k. Similarly, we have the Baaj Sports and Cultural Trust which registered in August 2022 who received $28,838 two months later from Grassroots. We have the Kiwiora Community Trust, which applied to register August 2022 and who has already received $65k in three grants from Grassroots. We have the Hamilton Youth Club Inc, incorporated in Sept 2022 which received $44k the following month.
I’m not saying these grants are dodgy. It may be that these are organisations who do great things in their communities, and that Grassroots can be applauded for giving a leg up to new organisations. But if I were overseeing the integrity of the grant making system, I think I’d have a look myself.
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. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
Now, to be honest I’m not really sure why these rugby organisations need all this cash, and then quite why these organisations feel compelled to give it to them. Unlike Mainland Foundation (for example) there is nothing explicit in their charitable purposes about supporting rugby. It will be interesting to see what demand is like with the Silverlake deal in play – do you reckon that will displace pokie funding, or add to it?
I’ve started to look at linkages between venues and those seeking grants, and raised an eyebrow (and another complaint in November 2022) about these guys.
There is a bar in Hamilton, the Junction, with a legal name of PYN Investments Ltd. A former shareholder of this company has the same name as the General Manager of Hamilton Wanderers Football Club. Yep, the club that over the past 35 months has received $1.2m in 30 grants off the Grassroots Trust. We also have The Smith and McKenzie Chopshop, legal name Belgian Blue Ltd. This is a part of a wider commercial structure called Summerhouse Trustee Ltd, owned in part by a chap who seems to be in partnership with a likely service provider to the Hamilton Wanderers club.
Of course, venues are not allowed to have any influence on where money goes. But it does make me wonder if and how Grassroots Trust deals with such potential conflicts of interest.
What is interesting is that there were no grants given to Hamilton Wanderers Football Club since I made the complaint in November. So maybe I am making a difference!
We also have a lot of grants going to NZFuture Community Trust. They set up as a Charitable Trust in 2017. They have a website, Facebook and report back on their service delivery. And yes, there are 45 grants going to this organisation. But there are also 50 grants going to Waikato Rugby so maybe large numbers of applications are quite the norm for this organisation.
We also have a large number of grants going to Dynamo Cycling and Sports Club. 33 grants – that’s basically one grant a month. I can’t find a website for this club: rather a link to Dynamo Events which “..is a sports event delivery company that has a commitment to excellence across all facets of the event experience.” There is no company with this name: the nearest is Dynamo Temporary Fencing Ltd owned by the same people. I can’t see a pokie venue link between the parties, but I didn’t look that hard. Dynamo Cycling and Sports Club's accounts suggest 2/3 of their income comes from grants. Do other cycling events rely so much on grant money? I haven't looked.
But then again also noteworthy is some grant making that looks a bit like the activity in the Angel story: frequent amounts to relatively new organisations. Specifically, Amah Trust registered as a charity in April 2022. Since then they have received three grants totalling $66k. Similarly, we have the Baaj Sports and Cultural Trust which registered in August 2022 who received $28,838 two months later from Grassroots. We have the Kiwiora Community Trust, which applied to register August 2022 and who has already received $65k in three grants from Grassroots. We have the Hamilton Youth Club Inc, incorporated in Sept 2022 which received $44k the following month.
I’m not saying these grants are dodgy. It may be that these are organisations who do great things in their communities, and that Grassroots can be applauded for giving a leg up to new organisations. But if I were overseeing the integrity of the grant making system, I think I’d have a look myself.
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. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
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In 2022 we have seen the media get into some of this grant space, and thank goodness. Here's hoping we get some real traction on this in 2023.
https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/charities/supreme-sikh-council-under-scrutiny-over-crematorium-pokie-grants
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/129999258/new-pokie-trust-in-canterbury-gives-only-one-local-grant--so-far
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/130205773/milliondollar-library-never-opens-yet-claims-small-fortune-in-community-funds
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/130287653/pool-champ-and-pokies-boss-on-dishonesty-charges-after-major-investigation
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2211/S00381/former-publican-found-guilty-after-buying-audi-with-grant-funding-from-pokies.htm
Still to hear about the results of my (numerous) complaints. Anyhoo,... some of this reportage particularly made me revisit an old favourite, Air Rescue Services Ltd. A reminder about their Special Purpose (copied from their website):
The Directors resolved to continue to apply the current criteria, methods, systems and policies for net proceeds distribution, to effectively maximise returns to the rescue helicopter service through Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust, and to ensure the even distribution of funding for other charitable or community organisations within the company's operating areas.
I would also like to remind you that venues are not allowed to have any say in where grants go. That is in the legislation.
What I have done is pull their grants data that ARS has made to the end of their financial year June 2022, and added this to my previous work, cleaned it up and categorised it. Here is a chart looking at where their money has gone over time. No surprises: money mostly going to their CWCART and a large amount to sport. What is interesting however is the growth in the dollar value of grants over these ten years. This is due to growth in venue management: in 2015 they had 420 machines under management: at the end of 2021 that had grown to 583. This represents around 5% of the total gaming machines in New Zealand. What I have also started to do is to look at who owns the venues (DIA does not do this – I’ve asked). Venue ownership can be quite telling if you want to understand why certain sorts of activities get favoured: although as previously stated venues really are not allowed to influence grant decisions.
The COVID effect is striking for 2020. Interestingly ARS has only recently moved into Auckland (after an effort which didn't end well earlier last decade), so the impact of that city’s lockdowns in later years is minimised.
https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/charities/supreme-sikh-council-under-scrutiny-over-crematorium-pokie-grants
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/129999258/new-pokie-trust-in-canterbury-gives-only-one-local-grant--so-far
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/130205773/milliondollar-library-never-opens-yet-claims-small-fortune-in-community-funds
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/130287653/pool-champ-and-pokies-boss-on-dishonesty-charges-after-major-investigation
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2211/S00381/former-publican-found-guilty-after-buying-audi-with-grant-funding-from-pokies.htm
Still to hear about the results of my (numerous) complaints. Anyhoo,... some of this reportage particularly made me revisit an old favourite, Air Rescue Services Ltd. A reminder about their Special Purpose (copied from their website):
The Directors resolved to continue to apply the current criteria, methods, systems and policies for net proceeds distribution, to effectively maximise returns to the rescue helicopter service through Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust, and to ensure the even distribution of funding for other charitable or community organisations within the company's operating areas.
I would also like to remind you that venues are not allowed to have any say in where grants go. That is in the legislation.
What I have done is pull their grants data that ARS has made to the end of their financial year June 2022, and added this to my previous work, cleaned it up and categorised it. Here is a chart looking at where their money has gone over time. No surprises: money mostly going to their CWCART and a large amount to sport. What is interesting however is the growth in the dollar value of grants over these ten years. This is due to growth in venue management: in 2015 they had 420 machines under management: at the end of 2021 that had grown to 583. This represents around 5% of the total gaming machines in New Zealand. What I have also started to do is to look at who owns the venues (DIA does not do this – I’ve asked). Venue ownership can be quite telling if you want to understand why certain sorts of activities get favoured: although as previously stated venues really are not allowed to influence grant decisions.
The COVID effect is striking for 2020. Interestingly ARS has only recently moved into Auckland (after an effort which didn't end well earlier last decade), so the impact of that city’s lockdowns in later years is minimised.
This chart shows a few things:
- Air Rescue’s grants have grown a fair bit. This is generally driven by venue expansion
- Their core purpose, funding to the Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust, has grown a fair bit too. We can only assume that demand is increasing here: as previously stated the operations of this are in a private business so we have no insights.
Football grants have grown substantially: from 6% of total grants made to 16% of total grants made in the last financial year. These football clubs are mostly in Canterbury and in Wellington, although there are two Nelson sites, and some of these Auckland ones are getting their noses in the trough: Fencibles United got $118k from ARS in 2022. The Nelson ones are interesting. We have a site in Nelson, Hardy’s Bar, which is owned by a chap with strong ties to Nelson Suburbs football team. Indeed, this potential conflict of interest has previously been considered by the Gambling Commission in a 2015 judgment (GC22/15). And this was when the amount going to NSFC was less than $20k. Now? Looks like $182k in the 2022 year. For the record, I did go to the Gambling Commission to ask how this judgement was managed and received this:
Unfortunately, the Gambling Commission is unable to assist you because it is not within the Commission’s jurisdiction to look into complaints of the type that you have raised. Any complaints in relation to class 4 gambling should be made to the Department of Internal Affairs because it is part of the DIA’s job to investigate such matters. Obviously you have done this, but it is not clear from your email whether the DIA has not investigated your complaint, or whether it has investigated it, but you were not happy with the outcome. If it is the former, you should continue to communicate with the DIA until you receive a substantive response.
I assume things are all tickety boo given I haven't heard anything substantive from DIA, and that Nelson community organisations are not getting penalised by this level of grants.
We can see a few clubs have fallen from favour, including Mainland Football.
Any keen observer of my website will also have remembered that ARS have a venue in Rotorua. In a site that theoretically generated almost $400k, they gave $20k to one school. Might have a dive down this rabbit hole in a later piece, but community groups of Rotorua: apply!
Another measure that I’ve noticed particularly with some northern based activity is that the number of grants given can be an indicator of relationships which may be tricky. You will recall from some previous work that I've seen this as a red flag: after all it can be quite involved applying for grants. Many pokies have policies around minimising the number of grants to individual organisations, limiting them to a couple per annum. Apparently not these guys.
Unfortunately, the Gambling Commission is unable to assist you because it is not within the Commission’s jurisdiction to look into complaints of the type that you have raised. Any complaints in relation to class 4 gambling should be made to the Department of Internal Affairs because it is part of the DIA’s job to investigate such matters. Obviously you have done this, but it is not clear from your email whether the DIA has not investigated your complaint, or whether it has investigated it, but you were not happy with the outcome. If it is the former, you should continue to communicate with the DIA until you receive a substantive response.
I assume things are all tickety boo given I haven't heard anything substantive from DIA, and that Nelson community organisations are not getting penalised by this level of grants.
We can see a few clubs have fallen from favour, including Mainland Football.
Any keen observer of my website will also have remembered that ARS have a venue in Rotorua. In a site that theoretically generated almost $400k, they gave $20k to one school. Might have a dive down this rabbit hole in a later piece, but community groups of Rotorua: apply!
Another measure that I’ve noticed particularly with some northern based activity is that the number of grants given can be an indicator of relationships which may be tricky. You will recall from some previous work that I've seen this as a red flag: after all it can be quite involved applying for grants. Many pokies have policies around minimising the number of grants to individual organisations, limiting them to a couple per annum. Apparently not these guys.
Now that ARS has moved into Auckland we can see some changes in the way grants are being made. Above is a cut of the Year End June 2022 grants. I have pulled out the top 20 organisations being funded by number of grants. ARS moved into Auckland in 2020 picking up The Weighbridge Venue off Grassroots, and the two venues, 123 Karaoke Bar and 123 Palm Bar, in 2021, both off Youthtown.
The most funded organisation with 26 grants is Jasmine Arts and Culture Charitable Trust. This charity was registered in Jan 2018. According to Granted.govt.nz it received around $50k from Youthtown in 2019, nothing in 2020, and then in 2021 a further $50k from Youthtown, and $176k from ARS. Curious don’t you think that this organisation only received pokie grant money from the two organisations which were associated with the above venues? Jasmine’s own accounts state: The Trust's primary source of funding is through receipt of corporate donations from Youthtown. Additional sources of funding include a mixture of donation from corporate and individuals, who attend to various training courses and workshops.” It would be interesting to see if Jasmine’s accounts change this year to reflect the change of funders. Although I’m unsure how this sits with the stated purpose of ARS’s Special Purpose.
Dewey Centre Foundation registered 7 June 2021. They haven’t received anything in the calendar year 2021, but looks to have been busy in 2022, asking ARS for almost $85k, and receiving $75k. According to the Government’s Granted website, they haven’t received any money from anyone else to June 2022. Their website locates them at Unit 2, 9 Gooch Place in Auckland, just a couple of doors down from 123 Casino, a Air Rescue Venue.
Drury Youth Charitable Trust registered 2017 although have not submitted any annual accounts since 2020. In 2019 they received $36k from North and South, and $10k off Youthtown. Nothing in 2020. In 2021, according to Granted.govt.nz they received $95,731 all from ARS. In the 2019 accounts most that money went to salaries, rent and costs of a tournament. In 2020 there was no rent paid. Since ARS started funding this group in Q1 2021, they have provided some $125k of cash, and the charity has asked for $160k: a 78% strike rate. I can't find a website.
One other change this calendar year which made me go hmmmm is another venue change. In the September 2022 quarter The Rudder, an Auckland venue, moved from BlueSky to ARS. This venue used to have a person involved with Angel Children’s Education Trust as a shareholder. You may recall a piece Stuff did on that organisation (note – the above link used to work before the Stuff article). Looking forward to seeing the Oct to Dec 2022 grants.
One Wellington organisation receiving a lot of funding quite often is Sport Education Community and Cultural Foundation (SECC Foundation). Registering on 22 Jan 2019 as a charity, the have received $729k from 36 grants, including $139k before they were registered! ARS is their only funder, and they look to spend all the money on sporting equipment for schools with no salaries nor rents.
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/
The most funded organisation with 26 grants is Jasmine Arts and Culture Charitable Trust. This charity was registered in Jan 2018. According to Granted.govt.nz it received around $50k from Youthtown in 2019, nothing in 2020, and then in 2021 a further $50k from Youthtown, and $176k from ARS. Curious don’t you think that this organisation only received pokie grant money from the two organisations which were associated with the above venues? Jasmine’s own accounts state: The Trust's primary source of funding is through receipt of corporate donations from Youthtown. Additional sources of funding include a mixture of donation from corporate and individuals, who attend to various training courses and workshops.” It would be interesting to see if Jasmine’s accounts change this year to reflect the change of funders. Although I’m unsure how this sits with the stated purpose of ARS’s Special Purpose.
Dewey Centre Foundation registered 7 June 2021. They haven’t received anything in the calendar year 2021, but looks to have been busy in 2022, asking ARS for almost $85k, and receiving $75k. According to the Government’s Granted website, they haven’t received any money from anyone else to June 2022. Their website locates them at Unit 2, 9 Gooch Place in Auckland, just a couple of doors down from 123 Casino, a Air Rescue Venue.
Drury Youth Charitable Trust registered 2017 although have not submitted any annual accounts since 2020. In 2019 they received $36k from North and South, and $10k off Youthtown. Nothing in 2020. In 2021, according to Granted.govt.nz they received $95,731 all from ARS. In the 2019 accounts most that money went to salaries, rent and costs of a tournament. In 2020 there was no rent paid. Since ARS started funding this group in Q1 2021, they have provided some $125k of cash, and the charity has asked for $160k: a 78% strike rate. I can't find a website.
One other change this calendar year which made me go hmmmm is another venue change. In the September 2022 quarter The Rudder, an Auckland venue, moved from BlueSky to ARS. This venue used to have a person involved with Angel Children’s Education Trust as a shareholder. You may recall a piece Stuff did on that organisation (note – the above link used to work before the Stuff article). Looking forward to seeing the Oct to Dec 2022 grants.
One Wellington organisation receiving a lot of funding quite often is Sport Education Community and Cultural Foundation (SECC Foundation). Registering on 22 Jan 2019 as a charity, the have received $729k from 36 grants, including $139k before they were registered! ARS is their only funder, and they look to spend all the money on sporting equipment for schools with no salaries nor rents.
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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I have been poking my nose around up north recently, mainly because what’s happening up there is just so interesting, and I suspect a taster for what’s coming south. Check out some of my previous pieces on this.
I noticed that a couple of funders had Rotorua venues, but there weren’t corresponding grants going into the region. So I have dived into some data for three years, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Firstly I’ve looked to see what the average machine would produce by taking the total dollar value of grants made in a particular year and dividing that by the number of Class 4 gaming machines in NZ. Of course there are some huge health checks on using averages: is that site a big or small earner, when did the site transfer happen etc. I just look at who manages that site on 31 December and work back from there. It will be more nuanced.
Secondly I’ve then used the DIA’s newly launched Granted system to look at actual grants going into the Rotorua region by provider. This information allowed me to produce the table below. Health check again: the quality of the data is only as good as the data provided by the gaming trust.
I noticed that a couple of funders had Rotorua venues, but there weren’t corresponding grants going into the region. So I have dived into some data for three years, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Firstly I’ve looked to see what the average machine would produce by taking the total dollar value of grants made in a particular year and dividing that by the number of Class 4 gaming machines in NZ. Of course there are some huge health checks on using averages: is that site a big or small earner, when did the site transfer happen etc. I just look at who manages that site on 31 December and work back from there. It will be more nuanced.
Secondly I’ve then used the DIA’s newly launched Granted system to look at actual grants going into the Rotorua region by provider. This information allowed me to produce the table below. Health check again: the quality of the data is only as good as the data provided by the gaming trust.
Now before you judge too much, of course Rotorua is a part of a wider area, Bay of Plenty. A lot of money generated from Rotorua will go to support those regional bodies generally based out of Tauranga. I also wouldn’t expect this to balance at all: in a community of this size there will be significant capital expenses which will swing the grant total of all applications. However, there are some interesting decisions.
Dragon is pretty stingy to the Rotorua community. Over three years they have netted out over $1.1m from this community. This seems to contradict with their authorised purpose from their website (copied below).
Dragon was set up to support the local community where the funds are generated and give priority funding to Asian organisations within the local community, in particular to the young and elderly members of the Asian community.
Dragon's gaming venues are located across the country. It gives priority to grant applicants based in the cities where its gaming venues are located.
To be fair they only had 19 applications totalling $86k from maybe 10 different organisations for the period under review.
Youthtown too looks a bit tight: of course one expects that their funding to themselves supported Youthtown activities in Rotorua over this time. The relationship with the venue clearly didn’t last long, as now Air Rescue Services manages it, however with the same impact on local communities. And although the data not in the above chart, my up to 30 June 2022 information on Air Rescue Services has them giving $20,000 to one school. Again, no other applicants. Youthtown picked that venue up off Aotearoa Gaming, which may explain the big contribution that gaming trust made over my theoretical number.
The good folk of Rotorua must love NZCT and One Foundation! Not so much Lion and Grassroots. TAB of course takes out a lot gaming grant money to fund their own organisations: below is a graphic I’ve taken from Granted showing the top five organisations supported by TAB Class 4 gaming.
Dragon is pretty stingy to the Rotorua community. Over three years they have netted out over $1.1m from this community. This seems to contradict with their authorised purpose from their website (copied below).
Dragon was set up to support the local community where the funds are generated and give priority funding to Asian organisations within the local community, in particular to the young and elderly members of the Asian community.
Dragon's gaming venues are located across the country. It gives priority to grant applicants based in the cities where its gaming venues are located.
To be fair they only had 19 applications totalling $86k from maybe 10 different organisations for the period under review.
Youthtown too looks a bit tight: of course one expects that their funding to themselves supported Youthtown activities in Rotorua over this time. The relationship with the venue clearly didn’t last long, as now Air Rescue Services manages it, however with the same impact on local communities. And although the data not in the above chart, my up to 30 June 2022 information on Air Rescue Services has them giving $20,000 to one school. Again, no other applicants. Youthtown picked that venue up off Aotearoa Gaming, which may explain the big contribution that gaming trust made over my theoretical number.
The good folk of Rotorua must love NZCT and One Foundation! Not so much Lion and Grassroots. TAB of course takes out a lot gaming grant money to fund their own organisations: below is a graphic I’ve taken from Granted showing the top five organisations supported by TAB Class 4 gaming.
Where did the money go? I’ve again used Granted to pull the information out onto a spreadsheet. This supports the statement that a lot of sport support in particular will be run out of Tauranga.
Now the gaming funders make their own decisions based on the applications that are on their desks at any one time. Rotorua also has other funders within their funding ecosystem: Bay Trust, Lotteries and probably few others as well. Thinking about this, I really think that local councils need to be over which organisations are operating in their region, and making sure that groups within their community are aware of the funding ecosystem. Otherwise groups won’t apply, and communities like Rotorua will miss out on millions. What do you think?
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
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There have been a few good articles recently around my obsession of late.
https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/charities/supreme-sikh-council-under-scrutiny-over-crematorium-pokie-grants
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/129999258/new-pokie-trust-in-canterbury-gives-only-one-local-grant--so-far
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/130205773/milliondollar-library-never-opens-yet-claims-small-fortune-in-community-funds
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/130287653/pool-champ-and-pokies-boss-on-dishonesty-charges-after-major-investigation
We hope that investigations happen looking at the issues. I also hope its being looked at soon: when we see what’s happening and what has been going on unexamined and unabated for at least six years, this costs our communities at around $1million per month. There is considerable opportunity cost to our communities of that money.
What I have done is combined the grants from those gaming trust based grant makers who were identified in the third article: Milestone, Rano, Blue Sky, and Dragon. These grant makers share the same characteristic: they make a large number of grants to a few of the same organisations. Just to explain my methodology: I copy the grant disclosures off websites, clean it up and categorise it. The year I report against is the gaming trust’s financial year. So if you are looking at Granted.govt.nz, my information will differ because they work on calendar year, and they don’t seem to clean the data. Together, in the last six years these groups have provided $86.6m to 1325 different organisations. That’s a lot of money.
For funsies below is a pivot table showing the last six years of grant funding by these four organisations to the aggregate top 30 grant recipients by dollar value. No shade to the groups that are on this list: rather they are here because they are the recipients of a high dollar value of grants from the above grant makers. And many have received a large number of grants from these four: the last column shows the number of grants given to these organisations over the past six years. I have got a bit nervous about putting their names in: I can provide if anyone wants them. Yes, Angel's Children Education Foundation is on this list, as are the other charities in the last referenced article.
We can also look at this another way: comparing the total dollar value of grants to the total dollar value of the top 30 applicants. This shows a couple of things: the amount granted has increased over time, and the amount of money going to the top 30 has almost quadrupled. Growth overall is driven by an increase in venues under management by the four: at the end of 2016 there were 14 venues with 225 machines: that number has tripled to 43 venues managing 646 machines at the end of 2021.
I’ve had a glance at quite a few of these organisations, and on the face of it they all do have genuine charitable purposes. However when you drill into the financials – because why not – there are some which are interesting. In this list we have some really quite new organisations, some who share spaces with commercial operators who share trustees and shareholders, some who rent spaces off their business partners, one whose charitable purpose involves taking groups off to skiing, getting $1.3m in the process, some who got money before they actually registered as a trust, some who got some after they deregistered. Others seem to have close ties to venues, or close ties to the management company. But one clearly obvious issue, I think, lies with the sheer volume of grants going to a few organisations.
Check out the column Grant Count. The one that ends in 4,578. This is the number of grant applications that have been approved by these 4 grant makers for these 30 organisations over six years. 45% of all of the grants approved by these organisations has gone to these 30 groups. In dollar terms 59% of all grants have gone to these groups.
Now, for anyone in the grant seeking game, they will quite possibly be surprised by this. Generally, a grant seeker will have a budget they need to find grants to back fill, and they will have a number of grant makers that they apply to, which may include energy trusts, community trusts, local and central government, and other Class 4 gaming organisations, along with a bunch of private trusts. Many grant makers will only allow you to come once, maybe twice, for financial support a year. This is so others can have a fair go at the money, and also to make sure a grant seeker doesn’t become too dependent on one source of money.
In my research, I have seen some organisations receive multiple grants before, but they either tend to be those “for purpose” grants (such as Mainland Foundation or Air Rescue Services), or those more questionable grants, such as many for football clubs (I’m not much of a fan of professional payments as personally struggle to see the line between professional and amateur players – and yep there’s one of these on this list, who, in six years, got $1.45m in 204 grants).
However, here we have some extreme grantmaking. Synergy Community Trust received 425 grants totalling $3.1million off two grant makers in the period under review. That’s on average 71 grants per annum from two grant makers. Anyone who does grants will also know what a headache that would be from an accountability reporting perspective. This does me wonder how the management company is paid: are they paid on a “per grant” basis? This, I think, would be the only possible reason for such an insane number of grants. Any thoughts? I’d love to know!
Supreme Sikh Society of New Zealand in the last financial year reported a total SURPLUS of $1.7 million, which matches their reported grants of $1.7m. These four grant makers provided $602k in 2022, receiving this in one year off 24 successful grants from the four grant makers under analysis. supplemented by a very generous Akarana who I believe gave $1.1m in 35 grants.
I’ve also, in two hours of googling, managed to find two pokie venues where the owner shares a surname with someone pretty high up in an organisation which gets a fair bit of money. Now, this could be a co-incidence. But if I were looking to enforce the law – because lets be clear under the legislations venues cannot have a say in where money goes – I’d have a good hard look at fringe organisations receiving large lumps of cash.
One new issue I’ve just become aware of is kick backs to the venue owner: one instance where the venue was asking for a 20% cash kickback on a grant that “came through their venue”. However, unless that's a line item in a set of accounts identifying "kick back" its hard to prove.
I have reported nearly all of this, so we shall wait to see what if anything happens. In my last blog, I put down some ideas on what I would do to ensure those responsible for overseeing the system do get alerted to potential issues earlier. But what’s playing in my mind is how long this investigation may take, and the cost incurred by communities. Until an investigation is complete I would:
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
Image of course from Austin Powers. Fabulous movie.
Check out the column Grant Count. The one that ends in 4,578. This is the number of grant applications that have been approved by these 4 grant makers for these 30 organisations over six years. 45% of all of the grants approved by these organisations has gone to these 30 groups. In dollar terms 59% of all grants have gone to these groups.
Now, for anyone in the grant seeking game, they will quite possibly be surprised by this. Generally, a grant seeker will have a budget they need to find grants to back fill, and they will have a number of grant makers that they apply to, which may include energy trusts, community trusts, local and central government, and other Class 4 gaming organisations, along with a bunch of private trusts. Many grant makers will only allow you to come once, maybe twice, for financial support a year. This is so others can have a fair go at the money, and also to make sure a grant seeker doesn’t become too dependent on one source of money.
In my research, I have seen some organisations receive multiple grants before, but they either tend to be those “for purpose” grants (such as Mainland Foundation or Air Rescue Services), or those more questionable grants, such as many for football clubs (I’m not much of a fan of professional payments as personally struggle to see the line between professional and amateur players – and yep there’s one of these on this list, who, in six years, got $1.45m in 204 grants).
However, here we have some extreme grantmaking. Synergy Community Trust received 425 grants totalling $3.1million off two grant makers in the period under review. That’s on average 71 grants per annum from two grant makers. Anyone who does grants will also know what a headache that would be from an accountability reporting perspective. This does me wonder how the management company is paid: are they paid on a “per grant” basis? This, I think, would be the only possible reason for such an insane number of grants. Any thoughts? I’d love to know!
Supreme Sikh Society of New Zealand in the last financial year reported a total SURPLUS of $1.7 million, which matches their reported grants of $1.7m. These four grant makers provided $602k in 2022, receiving this in one year off 24 successful grants from the four grant makers under analysis. supplemented by a very generous Akarana who I believe gave $1.1m in 35 grants.
I’ve also, in two hours of googling, managed to find two pokie venues where the owner shares a surname with someone pretty high up in an organisation which gets a fair bit of money. Now, this could be a co-incidence. But if I were looking to enforce the law – because lets be clear under the legislations venues cannot have a say in where money goes – I’d have a good hard look at fringe organisations receiving large lumps of cash.
One new issue I’ve just become aware of is kick backs to the venue owner: one instance where the venue was asking for a 20% cash kickback on a grant that “came through their venue”. However, unless that's a line item in a set of accounts identifying "kick back" its hard to prove.
I have reported nearly all of this, so we shall wait to see what if anything happens. In my last blog, I put down some ideas on what I would do to ensure those responsible for overseeing the system do get alerted to potential issues earlier. But what’s playing in my mind is how long this investigation may take, and the cost incurred by communities. Until an investigation is complete I would:
- Stop any venue movements to these organisations until the investigation is complete.
- Parachute in a few assessors to look at the grant applications going through these organisations. This could be some Auckland City Council grant makers, or Lotteries staff or even other pokie operators who play by the rules. They will have a pretty good idea about costs, others who do similar things, and could likely continue to get money out into the community.
- Engage with the Ministry of Ethnic Communities on a programme to educate communities around the law as it relates to grant funding.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
Image of course from Austin Powers. Fabulous movie.
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A wee while ago I stumbled across a report done a few years ago by KPMG on Gaming Trusts proceeds. It looks at grants made over one year: 2019. I came across this report when looking at Rano Community Trust. One issue I clocked then was the crazy number of grants being given to some groups. The Supreme Sikh Council was identified as having received $3.5m over 86 applications from 6 different gaming trusts in one single year. This resulted in a complaint to DIA, and this piece on Business Desk. I haven’t heard how that complaint has panned out.
The organisation with the most applications was Synergy Community Trust who were given $701k in 95 different grant applications from two pokies. So I had a sniff around and then dived into Dragon Community Trust, downloaded their grants, categorised them and cleaned them all up. I wrote something and then self-censored based on what I found.
That sparked another complaint to Charities Services and Serious Fraud Office for good measure.
Since then I have really gone down a rabbit hole on a few different grantmakers. I’m quite fascinated by how this all pans out, but in the meantime I’ve learned a fair bit about red flags. If we consider this from a risk point of view there are several places where people have opportunities to manipulate the system.
It can be a messy business. In the past two weeks I’ve seen:
I do think the system can be improved: like any industry there are good actors and some who need a bit of help. Some practices seem now so ingrained that they are no longer questioned. Critique is a way organisations evolve and stay at the top of their game, away from complacency. We need to have systemic, independent oversight of the whole of the grant making ecosystem: the gaming trusts, local and central government and trusts set up using community money, such as the community trusts or energy trusts.
A Grant Thornton report into the Not for Profit put funding as the number one issue for community groups. Money is a treasure: we need to be sure that those bodies and institutions who have significant power distribute it in an effective manner.
If I were looking to overhaul the system I’d put some further checks into the system and put some real teeth into investigating and prosecuting infractions of our grant making system. This would include:
There is a fair bit of money floating around the ecosystem which would enable a better monitoring framework. The Government clips the ticket: according to NZCT’s latest annual report, for every dollar into the machines, 91 cents goes back to the punter, 3.3 cents goes to grant recipients, 2.9 cents to Government duties and levies, 1.4 cents to operating and machine costs, and 1.4 cents venue costs. Based on 2021 industry numbers, and if my maths is right (and it probably isn’t) that’s about $236m into government coffers from this industry. I think it would be in everyone’s best interests to push a bit more money over to the monitoring side of the ledger and make sure the ecosystem is fair, equitable and structured to get money to organisations who can do the most good in their communities. And in a shameless plug I’d be super keen to be a part of the solution.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
The organisation with the most applications was Synergy Community Trust who were given $701k in 95 different grant applications from two pokies. So I had a sniff around and then dived into Dragon Community Trust, downloaded their grants, categorised them and cleaned them all up. I wrote something and then self-censored based on what I found.
That sparked another complaint to Charities Services and Serious Fraud Office for good measure.
Since then I have really gone down a rabbit hole on a few different grantmakers. I’m quite fascinated by how this all pans out, but in the meantime I’ve learned a fair bit about red flags. If we consider this from a risk point of view there are several places where people have opportunities to manipulate the system.
- Money in. For gaming trusts, obviously they are an opportunity for money laundering (I’ve watched Ozark!). We can’t see how individual machines operate (as quite rightly that is sensitive information), but one hopes that there are checks and balances in place to manage that. I do understand there are around large amounts going through machines.
- Venues. Now the law specifically excludes venues from having any say in where money goes. But I can’t help but wonder why some venues do move operators. Its an issue I have poked at in the past. It would be interesting to understand what checks and balances are in place to mitigate against this: given what I’ve found in my work I’m not sure there are many.
- Community grant decision making. Who gets the money is then the decision of net proceeds committees.
It can be a messy business. In the past two weeks I’ve seen:
- Inflated grant applications. Media has reported on inflated rents being paid as grants. It doesn’t seem that practice is changing.
- New charities receiving significant sums. I’ve found a number of newly established charities who then receive significant support via some gaming trusts. Some have never lodged annual returns, despite receiving significant grants. For example, Waikato Women’s Advancement Charitable Trust registered on 29/3/2016. They were deregistered on 19/1/2021 for failing to provide annual returns. Ever. They received some $219k from Dragon in the four years that my work covered. They have now re-registered as a charity.
- Significant number of grant applications. Synergy Community Trust received 201 grants from Dragon totalling $1.4m in just 6 years. That’s 33 a year and suggests a very close relationship between grant maker and charity. In 2021 Eastern Suburbs Football club received 58 grants. Many grant makers will only entertain one or two applications per annum in order to allow others a chance for funding and manage their cost to serve.
- Venues switching operators, and then the grant profile of that operator changing. I’ve written on this before.
- Significant amount going to organisations before they were registered as a charity, and after they deregistered as a charity
- Significant amounts going to various organisations, including sporting, where there remain questions over professional fees.
- Significant amounts of cash ending up in Auckland instead of where it was generated (from the latest numbers, Dragon have 88% of the cash going into Auckland from 62% of the machines). But that’s OK because Rotorua has no discernible social issues that this money could have helped with right?
I do think the system can be improved: like any industry there are good actors and some who need a bit of help. Some practices seem now so ingrained that they are no longer questioned. Critique is a way organisations evolve and stay at the top of their game, away from complacency. We need to have systemic, independent oversight of the whole of the grant making ecosystem: the gaming trusts, local and central government and trusts set up using community money, such as the community trusts or energy trusts.
A Grant Thornton report into the Not for Profit put funding as the number one issue for community groups. Money is a treasure: we need to be sure that those bodies and institutions who have significant power distribute it in an effective manner.
If I were looking to overhaul the system I’d put some further checks into the system and put some real teeth into investigating and prosecuting infractions of our grant making system. This would include:
- Capture all grant information on a monthly basis from all those making gaming trust grants, including the following information:
- The purpose of the grant, including physical address for any rent payments
- NZBN of the organisation receiving the grant
- Declines
- Territorial Local Authority of grantee
- The purpose of the grant, including physical address for any rent payments
- Run exception reports looking for organisations receiving large numbers of grants. Review those organisations for links to gaming trust / venues. Ensure stated process followed for those grants, and the accountability reports are completed.
- Pull data from Societies and Charities with registration date, key person data and other key flags including street address, and missing financials. Map this to grant data and venue data and investigate issues.
- Examine grants made for rent and other opex, flag up rents which seem out of context for the location and investigate building ownership. Share same with IRD.
- Gather the accountability reports for cumulative annual grants over a certain threshold. Ensure those reports include IRD numbers and share same with IRD.
- Review venue changes as they happen, look for linkages between the venue and any recipient charities, then review profile of grant making decisions.
- Work with Lotteries on benchmarking organisations who do similar things – for example football clubs, youth organisations, rescue helicopters. Use those benchmarks to ensure that amounts going to “for purpose” Class 4 operators are fair and reasonable.
- Come up with clear enforceable guidelines on for sport club grants and monitor for compliance
- Add in company name and directors / shareholder information into the Gaming Machine data provided by DIA.
- Make available grant reports to TLAs so they have a better understanding of the funding ecosystem that operates within their own communities
- Grow the database to include other sources of contestable funding, including community trusts, Lotteries and Local Government so that the ecosystem is available for scrutiny. Communities can then better see who is getting what, why, and perhaps have some voice in how this precious resource is allocated.
There is a fair bit of money floating around the ecosystem which would enable a better monitoring framework. The Government clips the ticket: according to NZCT’s latest annual report, for every dollar into the machines, 91 cents goes back to the punter, 3.3 cents goes to grant recipients, 2.9 cents to Government duties and levies, 1.4 cents to operating and machine costs, and 1.4 cents venue costs. Based on 2021 industry numbers, and if my maths is right (and it probably isn’t) that’s about $236m into government coffers from this industry. I think it would be in everyone’s best interests to push a bit more money over to the monitoring side of the ledger and make sure the ecosystem is fair, equitable and structured to get money to organisations who can do the most good in their communities. And in a shameless plug I’d be super keen to be a part of the solution.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
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One grant maker I have been meaning to have a look at for a while now is Youthtown. I have gone to their website, copied their distributions for their financial year end 30 June, and done a spot of data cleansing. They have been a bug bear for a little while when I realised, after I had blogged about my ecosystem numbers, that I hadn’t accounted for their grants to themselves.
From their website, here are the authorised purposes of Youthtown’s distributions.
They are a reasonable player in this space. As at 31 December 2021, nationally they have around 2.3% of Class 4 machines under their management, although this varies by region: in Canterbury for example they have 4.4% of machines under management: in Waitaki that number increases to 22%.
They have a different model from some of the other for purpose Class 4 organisations, such as Air Rescue and Mainland Foundation. These guys show the distribution to the primary entities they support as a grant, whereas within Youthtown its simply in their financial accounts, not their grant distributions, as a (technical term) lump of cash to Youthtown.
I have forced the numbers to make them look like others to try to allocate those grants to a region.
From their website, here are the authorised purposes of Youthtown’s distributions.
- Development and operation of Youthtown programmes and facilities
- Encouragement and development of amateur youth sport and facilities in established and legally constituted sporting organisations
- Encouragement and development of youth outdoors and cultural activities or programmes (including art, music and drama) and facilities in legally constituted organisations in community
- Financial support for community based organizations that provide direct or indirect benefits to groups of youth
- Any charitable purpose or any non-commercial purpose that is beneficial to the whole or a section of the community
They are a reasonable player in this space. As at 31 December 2021, nationally they have around 2.3% of Class 4 machines under their management, although this varies by region: in Canterbury for example they have 4.4% of machines under management: in Waitaki that number increases to 22%.
They have a different model from some of the other for purpose Class 4 organisations, such as Air Rescue and Mainland Foundation. These guys show the distribution to the primary entities they support as a grant, whereas within Youthtown its simply in their financial accounts, not their grant distributions, as a (technical term) lump of cash to Youthtown.
I have forced the numbers to make them look like others to try to allocate those grants to a region.
- I’ve taken the figure from their annual reports called “Gaming Contribution”. Note by taking this figure I assume that the cost of making the grants is included in the line item “Gaming Indirect Costs”. (Note that right now you can’t access accounts from DIA’s website for organisations that are part of a group: there is a system issue. I asked nicely and a human sent them to me.)
- I’ve then looked to allocate those costs to the regions that the operator was in. To do this I looked at gaming machines under their management at the end of each year (data ex DIA).
- I then assumed 30% of the total Gaming contribution should be allocated nationally to cover head office costs, with the balance allocated to the regions as per above.
What is completely self evident (and not entirely unexpected) from the chart is that Youthtown grant themselves a significant portion of the proceeds generated by their machines. In the six years under review, they have granted themselves on average 78% of their grant proceeds, although this figure rose to 90% in 2020 due, I expect to COVID.
Machines under their management has bounced around a bit too: from 302 in 2015, up to 383 in 2020, and back down to 314 in 2021.
Machines under their management has bounced around a bit too: from 302 in 2015, up to 383 in 2020, and back down to 314 in 2021.
This chart looks at the NON Youthtown grants by region. Here you can see what money went where by year. You can also see better some of the peaks and troughs in the grant funding that has been available to community organisations between 2015 and 2020. National refers to organisations where I simply don’t know where the benefit of that grant money went: unlike others the disclosure from this funder aint that great. They don’t reveal the amount that was actually asked for, nor the territorial authority where the grant came from. However, based on what is provided it looks like the chances of a grant from Youthtown are fairly low: in 2018 71% of applicants were turned down for funding, 2019 the odds were better with a 61% rejection rate, but in 2020, somewhat unsurprisingly, the rejection figure was 79%. If you have been using my earlier work on demand for grant money in Canterbury, then you should add an extra $800k or so onto the Youth bar.
Because I always look at sport, and of course it’s the top sector for Youthtown to give to, below is a pivot table looking at the top 10 sports. Don’t think you’ll see any surprises in this.
Because I always look at sport, and of course it’s the top sector for Youthtown to give to, below is a pivot table looking at the top 10 sports. Don’t think you’ll see any surprises in this.
You may be looking at this and going “well that’s all very interesting but its now July 2022 so this data is two years old. The COVID period is actually where things get interesting. I agree. However, the 2020 – 2021 numbers are not published. Six weeks ago I did ask DIA who responded with the below from Youthtown.
As you know as an end user trust, we are not obligated to publish our grants data each year, although we often do, and at least publish a range of community grants. As the last two years were covid years, we like many community delivery organisations have struggled with the very impactful knock of lockdowns and managing our commitments to communities across New Zealand. We are happy to list the grants made as best practice and are busy compiling this for our website.
From the 2021 summarised published accounts I can see that they did give away $1,415,000 to 135 different organisations. I can’t quite figure out what they granted themselves as the only information I have is the summarised financials. I am surprised that they are listed as an end user trust – I guess I thought they were a corporate and had the same reporting obligations that the others do. In fact I didn’t realise there was a difference. However, I do agree that the provision of this information is best practice and that providing feedback on who got the funding is only fair to the likely 500 or so organisations who did apply and spent money on making applications. If we assume that each organisation took a day to apply (in terms of assembling background information, including the resolution etc, and the accountability report at the end….), then that’s around $300 / application = $150,000 for all those who applied for funds. Which is around 10% of the total money given away. This is why I rabbit on about cost to serve!
A chap I work with has shown me Power BI, so please excuse the playing with the graphics. I’m sure I’ll improve as time goes on…. Quite exciting to try out a few tool for this. I am also pretty keen to improve my database skills so hopefully pieces will fall into place so I can pull these various pieces together in a more cohesive ecosystem manner: shout out if you have any ideas around how I can do this and teach the old girl some new tricks.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
As you know as an end user trust, we are not obligated to publish our grants data each year, although we often do, and at least publish a range of community grants. As the last two years were covid years, we like many community delivery organisations have struggled with the very impactful knock of lockdowns and managing our commitments to communities across New Zealand. We are happy to list the grants made as best practice and are busy compiling this for our website.
From the 2021 summarised published accounts I can see that they did give away $1,415,000 to 135 different organisations. I can’t quite figure out what they granted themselves as the only information I have is the summarised financials. I am surprised that they are listed as an end user trust – I guess I thought they were a corporate and had the same reporting obligations that the others do. In fact I didn’t realise there was a difference. However, I do agree that the provision of this information is best practice and that providing feedback on who got the funding is only fair to the likely 500 or so organisations who did apply and spent money on making applications. If we assume that each organisation took a day to apply (in terms of assembling background information, including the resolution etc, and the accountability report at the end….), then that’s around $300 / application = $150,000 for all those who applied for funds. Which is around 10% of the total money given away. This is why I rabbit on about cost to serve!
A chap I work with has shown me Power BI, so please excuse the playing with the graphics. I’m sure I’ll improve as time goes on…. Quite exciting to try out a few tool for this. I am also pretty keen to improve my database skills so hopefully pieces will fall into place so I can pull these various pieces together in a more cohesive ecosystem manner: shout out if you have any ideas around how I can do this and teach the old girl some new tricks.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
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Last time I looked at the players in the Greater Christchurch pokie scene. I found that we had seen some changes and market share and a few of these grant makers haven’t got the memo about diversity in decision making. This is a pretty important issue, as pokies put around 50% of grant money into Canterbury organisations.
Anyhoo… in that work I found there was a new entrant in town who looked intriguing. After I sent an email or two to DIA to find out why their grant weren’t disclosed, magically now grants are disclosed (thanks me).
They have been in operation since 2018. They clearly did get the diversity memo, with three women and one man making decisions.
Their Authorised Purpose is very broad (below copied from their website). What’s interesting is the heavy religious overtones in the charitable purposes: something I admit to never having seen before in a gaming trust.
Rano Community Trust Limited may make grants for any charitable purpose and any noncommercial purpose that is beneficial to the whole or a section of the community. Priority funding will be given to amateur sport, religion, education and not-for-profit organisations which actively support community education and cohesion.
The above authorised purpose includes (but is not limited to) providing grants for:
So what’s interesting then is how that Authorised Purpose is applied. I’ve taken all the grants given since inception that have been published (to July 2021), categorised using my very special algorithm, and hey presto.
Anyhoo… in that work I found there was a new entrant in town who looked intriguing. After I sent an email or two to DIA to find out why their grant weren’t disclosed, magically now grants are disclosed (thanks me).
They have been in operation since 2018. They clearly did get the diversity memo, with three women and one man making decisions.
Their Authorised Purpose is very broad (below copied from their website). What’s interesting is the heavy religious overtones in the charitable purposes: something I admit to never having seen before in a gaming trust.
Rano Community Trust Limited may make grants for any charitable purpose and any noncommercial purpose that is beneficial to the whole or a section of the community. Priority funding will be given to amateur sport, religion, education and not-for-profit organisations which actively support community education and cohesion.
The above authorised purpose includes (but is not limited to) providing grants for:
- The promotion of health via participation in amateur sport in particular cultural games that include an element of education;
- Provision of amateur teams playing and training uniforms to be retained by the club or team;
- Amateur teams training costs;
- Amateur players reasonable and necessary travel expenses including accommodation and insurance costs associated with the travel;
- Wages and salaries where the employing body has an entirely non-commercial or charitable purpose and provided that the payment is necessary to achieve the organisation’s purpose, that is, where the non-commercial or charitable purpose would not be achieved without it (the wider benefit to the community must outweigh any private benefit);
- Vehicles for any organisation which are related to any an entirely non-commercial community or charitable purpose (excludes club courtesy vans);
- Classes that teach swimming for adults to protect human life;
- Supporting primary and secondary schools, training and education;
- The provision of non-profit childcare and educational services for young children;
- Scholarships and prizes for academic achievement (provided the students are selected in a fair and open manner, and are overseen by a recognised educational authority or school board);
- The promotion, planning, organising and running of non-profit events that celebrate or concern different cultures such as community cultural and arts festivals including cultural music festivals;
- Providing or maintaining grounds and buildings to be used by churches, temples or other religious organisations;
- Public works and services e.g., public car parks, footpaths, cycleways and roads;
- The promotion of public amenities such as parks or museums;
- Supplying of religious literature;
- Providing religious education through religious schools, theological colleges and conducting religious retreats; and
- Provision for other not-for-profit organisations which promote community cultural education and cohesion.
So what’s interesting then is how that Authorised Purpose is applied. I’ve taken all the grants given since inception that have been published (to July 2021), categorised using my very special algorithm, and hey presto.
What this pivot table shows is that in total they have given away $7.0m over four years. The top sector by a long shot is Community: and this is because my algorithm categorises temples and the like as that category.
Now, I think you will find this super interesting. The top ten Community Organisations who received funding from Rano are:
Now, I think you will find this super interesting. The top ten Community Organisations who received funding from Rano are:
Sport is pretty popular too (of course you say). However, I think you’ll be surprised. The most popular sport was fringe! This is because I have never heard of Kabaddi. It’s a team sport very popular in India. Next most popular was Touch: again a surprise, followed by a usual suspect of Football, then Volleyball. Our traditional favourite of rugby only got 2.4% of the funds and cricket? 1.2%.
I stumbled across this report on the gaming association website. Its some work done by KPMG around where money goes from those in this sector. Its been commissioned by the Gaming Machine Association, Sport NZ, and DIA, looking at data from the 34 Grant making Gaming Organisations, as at 2019. Total adjusted grants were $319million. That's a lot of money. It’s a very interesting report: I hope they update it. However, note to the funders: to really add value around the whole ecosystem the scope needs to be broadened to include all grants DIA!
Now my brain got befuddled here. According to the KPMG report. the Supreme Sikh Council of NZ Inc was the second most funded charity in terms of numbers of applications approved. From the data provided by the gaming trusts in the 2019 year they received 86 grants from some 6 different Class 4 grant makers totaling $3.5million. Yet the Council in financial year 2019 reported only $20k. The Supreme Sikh Society of New Zealand, which has the same address as the above group, and a few of the same trustees, reported an income of $5.4m, including $4.6m of grants: I suspect the grants that KPMG identified went to the Society.
However, Rano’s grants are a little curious, and are reported as varying between the two entities. Rano gave around $620,000 of that (52% of their total grants) and in 2020 almost $800k (66% of their total grants). Curiously enough, so far for the 2021 year they haven’t given anything to them. Rather than split hairs and try to figure out what happened lets skip to this piece of the puzzle: have a gander the screen shot below from the Council’s financial reports from Charities Office.
What is a bit curious is that, when you look at the accounts of the Society, the Rano grant matches the rent to the private business, Three Guys Investment Ltd. This expense line hadn’t appeared in the accounts before 2019. I guess if they are getting more services and previously had free accommodation then great, but the matching of the amounts looks interesting. Anyway – there’s a rabbit hole I’m not keen to go down.
Other quick stats:
- Those seeking grants have asked for $15.5m since inception, over 680 grant requests. They have given $7.7m, declining 199 grants completely.
- 92% of money ends up in the Auckland borders.
- 87% of Arts and Heritage dollar requests are approved. This compares favorably to 60% of Sport requests, and 41% of Community and Economic Development requests.
- There were no Environmental organisations who asked them for support.
Rano has grown from 45 machines over three Auckland venues at the end of 2018, to 112 machines over seven venues in Auckland, Northland, Christchurch, Tauranga and Waikato. Remember that all these venues were operating before they became a Rano venue, with the proceeds coming through to a different organisation. Of the eight venues that have worked with Rano, (one has now gone to the Dragon Community Trust) three came from Pub Charity who are a broad based funder in their own right: also (in Canterbury anyway) their favourite sport is rugby. Others came from a variety of other Class 4 providers who I haven’t looked at.
So this is my point. This isn’t new money. The money generated by those machines already been going into communities, albeit to different organisations. Our third sector organisations who’ve grown used to the money from those venues will be left hanging as market shares of grant making bodies wax and wane. But will those expectations have gone away? Unlikely. Will the ecosystem have evolved that a grant taking organisation has costs that need to be covered by grants? Probably. Will they now put some cost into their organisation to chase those grants to make budget? Of course.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
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When I was looking at Lion in my last blog I wondered why they were bouncing around a bit on machine numbers, and why the Canterbury share was so small..
So I did what any normal person would do: get the Class 4 data from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) and graph it.
So I did what any normal person would do: get the Class 4 data from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) and graph it.
This chart shows 9 years of data from 31 December. There’s a bunch of interesting insights in this.
Firstly, I have put the working men’s clubs and machines associated with those as Other. There are 14 different entities which are within that category.
Secondly, you can see that there have been a few name changes over time. I have the new name with the (old name) beside it. Unlike some who give community money away, there isn’t a huge marketing budget (and rightly so).
What this shows is that there are a lot of players in the industry. Some are regionally based, some national, some have a real sports skew, others are “for purpose” which means they are set up specifically to benefit certain third sector areas. Above we have Air Rescue, which at the start of this year has 16% of Greater Chch’s machines, and whose distributions are skewed towards Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust, Mainland Foundation (with 8% of machines) to Rugby, and Youthtown (4% of machines) to, oddly enough, Youthtown.
What’s also really interesting is the growth of Kiwi Gaming Foundation (formerly Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Trust). Since 2013 their number of machines has grown by around 400%. This growth I think has come at the expense of a few of the national players. These guys do well on disclosure, and they do fund a wide range of NGOs. Click here for more about that. If I were looking for funding I’d try these guys: with this growth and their lack of brand awareness there is less competition for grant funding I reckon.
What’s also interesting is some different players active in the Canterbury market. Trust Aoraki has now exited the Canterbury market. No more funding there I’m afraid. We have The Trust Community Trust Foundation, which basically runs the West Auckland Licensing Trust, and has now gone national. I’ve looked at them in the past. We have the Trillian Trust, and a new entrant just last year, Rano Community Foundation. They have picked up one venue: after a query from me to DIA on why they don't publish their grants now they do: they look super interesting so I might do that next time. They are operating in Canterbury now and can be applied to.
I don’t know anything about the business model around venues. It must be fairly competitive out there as venues do chop and change. That said returns are all regulated. Given the number of players and some new entrants I suspect that those regulated returns still leave a fair bit of money floating around the players.
It is within the legislation that venues don’t get any say in where grants go. From the DIA’s website:
Venues: Formerly 'Sites', these are the pubs and other venues where gaming machines are located. They do not own the machines and must not be involved in decisions about who can apply for grants, who receives them or how much the grant should be.
That said, I’ve never seen any repercussions of late for infringements on this rule. So it must be all are playing by the rules.
How the decisions are made is pretty interesting. Now, I get nervous talking about diversity in decision making. To me diversity in thought is far more important than in physical attributes. However, what I’ve done is to look at all the grant decision makers within the Greater Canterbury network. And it looks like this. Around 20% of those making allocating grants to our communities are women. 6 of the 15 organisations giving money have no female decision makers. These organisations account for around 42% of machines under analysis. I don’t want to get into ethnicity, namely because it would require a few assumptions based on a photo and a name.
However, on the surface, this attribute is not something that any organisation could shout from the rooftops.
Its pretty important to get these decisions right. My previous work shows that gaming trusts account for around 50% of the contestable funding into the region: that’s $30million for third sector organisations. I’m not sure that other methods are that great either: elected officials in local government (subject to political pressures), or government appointees in the cases of community trusts or Lotteries. Check out my manifesto for a better fairly wacky idea (which just might work!). It probably wouldn’t be worse than what we have at the moment.
Firstly, I have put the working men’s clubs and machines associated with those as Other. There are 14 different entities which are within that category.
Secondly, you can see that there have been a few name changes over time. I have the new name with the (old name) beside it. Unlike some who give community money away, there isn’t a huge marketing budget (and rightly so).
What this shows is that there are a lot of players in the industry. Some are regionally based, some national, some have a real sports skew, others are “for purpose” which means they are set up specifically to benefit certain third sector areas. Above we have Air Rescue, which at the start of this year has 16% of Greater Chch’s machines, and whose distributions are skewed towards Canterbury West Coast Air Rescue Trust, Mainland Foundation (with 8% of machines) to Rugby, and Youthtown (4% of machines) to, oddly enough, Youthtown.
What’s also really interesting is the growth of Kiwi Gaming Foundation (formerly Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Trust). Since 2013 their number of machines has grown by around 400%. This growth I think has come at the expense of a few of the national players. These guys do well on disclosure, and they do fund a wide range of NGOs. Click here for more about that. If I were looking for funding I’d try these guys: with this growth and their lack of brand awareness there is less competition for grant funding I reckon.
What’s also interesting is some different players active in the Canterbury market. Trust Aoraki has now exited the Canterbury market. No more funding there I’m afraid. We have The Trust Community Trust Foundation, which basically runs the West Auckland Licensing Trust, and has now gone national. I’ve looked at them in the past. We have the Trillian Trust, and a new entrant just last year, Rano Community Foundation. They have picked up one venue: after a query from me to DIA on why they don't publish their grants now they do: they look super interesting so I might do that next time. They are operating in Canterbury now and can be applied to.
I don’t know anything about the business model around venues. It must be fairly competitive out there as venues do chop and change. That said returns are all regulated. Given the number of players and some new entrants I suspect that those regulated returns still leave a fair bit of money floating around the players.
It is within the legislation that venues don’t get any say in where grants go. From the DIA’s website:
Venues: Formerly 'Sites', these are the pubs and other venues where gaming machines are located. They do not own the machines and must not be involved in decisions about who can apply for grants, who receives them or how much the grant should be.
That said, I’ve never seen any repercussions of late for infringements on this rule. So it must be all are playing by the rules.
How the decisions are made is pretty interesting. Now, I get nervous talking about diversity in decision making. To me diversity in thought is far more important than in physical attributes. However, what I’ve done is to look at all the grant decision makers within the Greater Canterbury network. And it looks like this. Around 20% of those making allocating grants to our communities are women. 6 of the 15 organisations giving money have no female decision makers. These organisations account for around 42% of machines under analysis. I don’t want to get into ethnicity, namely because it would require a few assumptions based on a photo and a name.
However, on the surface, this attribute is not something that any organisation could shout from the rooftops.
Its pretty important to get these decisions right. My previous work shows that gaming trusts account for around 50% of the contestable funding into the region: that’s $30million for third sector organisations. I’m not sure that other methods are that great either: elected officials in local government (subject to political pressures), or government appointees in the cases of community trusts or Lotteries. Check out my manifesto for a better fairly wacky idea (which just might work!). It probably wouldn’t be worse than what we have at the moment.
I’ve also looked at where the machines are located. In Christchurch we have a sinking lid on machines, so over time we expect them to reduce. And of course post earthquake we have seen huge population growth in Waimakariri and Selwyn. I’ve got the DIA data from 2013 and compared that to 2021. Christchurch has seen a reduction of around 2% of machines. Hurunui’s have dropped by 16 machines, a 23% drop. Waimakariri’s have surprisingly dropped by 9, down 5%. Selwyn has bucked the trend, increasing the number of machines by 39, a 47% increase in numbers. I had thought Christchurch’s reduction would be more profound, and am really surprised that Waimakariri’s numbers have reduced. I haven’t looked at a system level where that money goes, but on the face of it, that’s more grant funding available in Selwyn.
What does worry me is the future of this model. While, surprisingly, COVID hasn’t impacted the take too much, you can see the day when the party is over. There are plenty of other gaming options, particularly offshore. Gamblers will move to other platforms. Due to the source of the grant this sort of grant model sits fairly uncomfortably with Governments. From a grant view, sport will be hugely impacted, and there are a number of families who are dependent on that grant money to pay the mortgage.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
What does worry me is the future of this model. While, surprisingly, COVID hasn’t impacted the take too much, you can see the day when the party is over. There are plenty of other gaming options, particularly offshore. Gamblers will move to other platforms. Due to the source of the grant this sort of grant model sits fairly uncomfortably with Governments. From a grant view, sport will be hugely impacted, and there are a number of families who are dependent on that grant money to pay the mortgage.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
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I’ve had a few fun conversations of late. This has sparked up fun time data analysis.
Last month I had a look at Lion Foundation, a grant maker who run a national Class 4 gaming trust. They changed the way they report, bunching all the South Island grants under one banner about three years ago, moving from a far easier regional analysis. So that was scary, but I’ve jumped in and done the work. They have a financial year ending 31 March.
This is one of New Zealand’s largest gaming trusts, giving away over $35m in the last financial year. Their Authorised Purpose seems to be very wide, indeed looking at the Trust Deed from some time ago it almost mirrors the definition of Charity. I have used all the information I have dating back to 2014, because, well, why not.
Let’s see where the money goes. I’ve put the various grants against their March financial year. Using the magic of excel and my pretty weak data cleansing skills we can see that Lion really do have a wide approach to granting funds. We have a couple of outliers from post earthquake days where large licks of capital went into various projects. I suspect back in those days Canterbury may have got more than our fair share, but lets keep that between us shall we.
Last month I had a look at Lion Foundation, a grant maker who run a national Class 4 gaming trust. They changed the way they report, bunching all the South Island grants under one banner about three years ago, moving from a far easier regional analysis. So that was scary, but I’ve jumped in and done the work. They have a financial year ending 31 March.
This is one of New Zealand’s largest gaming trusts, giving away over $35m in the last financial year. Their Authorised Purpose seems to be very wide, indeed looking at the Trust Deed from some time ago it almost mirrors the definition of Charity. I have used all the information I have dating back to 2014, because, well, why not.
Let’s see where the money goes. I’ve put the various grants against their March financial year. Using the magic of excel and my pretty weak data cleansing skills we can see that Lion really do have a wide approach to granting funds. We have a couple of outliers from post earthquake days where large licks of capital went into various projects. I suspect back in those days Canterbury may have got more than our fair share, but lets keep that between us shall we.
There are some other interesting facts about this chart. The numbers of gaming machines that are a part of Lion’s network in Greater Christchurch have swung up and down a bit too. You can see that with the line which tracks the numbers of machines at 31 December of each year. Canterbury has a pretty small share of Lion’s machines: at the end of last year they had 1600 in the country all up, only 99 of which were in Canterbury. This leads to a relatively small amount given to Canterbury, around $1.6m last financial year.
The chart below looks at the amounts given in 2021, by segment. You can see the average grant given by sector, the total amount given and the number of grants given in 2021 by sector. You may be surprised by Education as the number is quite high. Unlike some other gaming trusts Lion don’t disclose what the money goes to. I’ve just had a look at the organisations who received support in 2021, and not all of this will be for sport! Indeed they cover a range of schools and early learning centres, including The Canterbury Mathematical Association. Stoked to see this.
The chart below looks at the amounts given in 2021, by segment. You can see the average grant given by sector, the total amount given and the number of grants given in 2021 by sector. You may be surprised by Education as the number is quite high. Unlike some other gaming trusts Lion don’t disclose what the money goes to. I’ve just had a look at the organisations who received support in 2021, and not all of this will be for sport! Indeed they cover a range of schools and early learning centres, including The Canterbury Mathematical Association. Stoked to see this.
The most popular sector to give money to is sport. This chart shows the 2021 granting profile for Lion: Rugby number one! Super surprised to see Gymnastics up so high. I suspect that could be a small capex amount, but they don’t disclose this so I’m unsure. Under Other there are about 24 different codes of sport which get a average of $6,600. This is around the average dollar value of grants given to sporting organisations.
The next most popular category is the catch all Community and Economic Development. This is driven by a substantial donation to St Johns which accounts for around 60% of the total amount given to this category.
The next most popular category is the catch all Community and Economic Development. This is driven by a substantial donation to St Johns which accounts for around 60% of the total amount given to this category.
I mentioned before that Lion put all their South Island data in one spreadsheet. To get the Canterbury material I had to categorise the whole South Island. So here it is. You can see from here that, as expected, the amount given to Canterbury is lower than other regions, due to the location of the pokies. You can also see the amounts given to sport across the island. And it doesn’t look like any other region got an ambulance this year: although there was a generous gift for a rescue helicopter in Nelson. Lion is very strong in Otago, and in Ashburton.
So who makes decisions? Lion have a regional grants committee. There are three on this, including a woman. That seems so 1970’s to write that, but some gaming trusts seem to be there in terms of diversity, so snaps to Lion for making sure different voices are heard. I imagine that ideally there would be a preference for more diversity, but I also suspect the financial model for Class 4 gaming trusts won’t allow that.
I’m quite impressed with the range that The Lion Foundation give to. That said they tend to give small amounts of money to lots of organisations, all adding costs to both the grant maker and those receiving the money. While they are fairly small within the Canterbury context, they certainly are very important within the New Zealand grant making ecosystem.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/
I’m quite impressed with the range that The Lion Foundation give to. That said they tend to give small amounts of money to lots of organisations, all adding costs to both the grant maker and those receiving the money. While they are fairly small within the Canterbury context, they certainly are very important within the New Zealand grant making ecosystem.
I write about this stuff as believe that as need to understand where funding comes from, where it goes, and how it gets there. As a citizenry we allow both those supplying money and those asking for money to operate, and as a community we need to ensure we have oversight over the organisations they choose to fund. Love to talk with you if you think this is at all interesting, and if you want to dive into the data a bit more than happy to do so. Check out my website http://www.delfi.co.nz/