June 2022

Kia ora koutou, greetings everyone.

Recently the national conference of Community Foundations of New Zealand was held in Wellington, and what a great group of people to spend time with!   The passion and dedication for improving local outcomes via Community Foundations was crystal clear to see and hear.  The skills and experience within the national network are phenomenal, which provides an obvious benefit to us at the Top of the South, as we continue to drive for our own success, with ‘the wheel having already been invented’ for much of what we do.

The CF network continues to grow its local impacts, with $230m+ funds now under management across 17 Foundations, and $50m granted to NZ communities in the past five years.  What a fabulous initiative to be a part of.

In our newsletter this month we’ll showcase Craigs Investment Partners, who continue to support us locally as well as CFNZ nationwide, and we’ll go on to showcase all our partners in future newsletters.  These partner organisations provide us critical operations funding and support, and we encourage you to use their services wherever and whenever you can.  Signature Homes, Pitt & Moore, Craigs Investment Partners, Avoca Design, NBS, Malloch McClean, and Quay Cars.  (If you’d like to become an ops funding partner please get directly in touch.  We have semi-formal bronze-silver-gold-platinum programmes in place for organisations and individuals, though any support is welcome.)

Our 2022 grants application round is now open.  We have a good long lead time for this process and will make grant decisions in August.  The process reinforces the incredible role that charities across our region play in our communities, and of course we’ll continue our own work to attract the donors whose support help great charities have an impact, forever.

As always, I look forward to sharing more of our story with you as the year progresses.

Ngā mihi, kind regards

Dave Ashcroft, Chair, [email protected]