October 2017 was not a good month for me. First I dislocated my ankle and broke the surrounding bones in three places. Then the subsequent ankle surgery had major complications, and I ended up in the Intensive Care Unit on a respirator following seizures and fluid on the lungs and brain. Now, thank goodness, I…
Continue reading →One of many useful resources from Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori language week) is this user-friendly online quiz put out by Newshub, described as the “100 words and phrases the Ministry of Culture and Heritage says every New Zealander should know.” Have a go! But let’s not succumb to either shame, if…
Continue reading →When someone, particularly a politician, does something wrong, why is it that we sometimes judge their actions harshly, and sometimes leniently? It seems to me that passing judgement implicitly involves considering questions like “is the action legal?”, “is the action socially acceptable?” and “is the action fair and morally justifiable?” And then we overlay an…
Continue reading →We’re pretty lucky, us funders. We don’t usually pay tax. We can’t easily go broke. We rarely receive public criticism. And, unlike the US, where private foundations are required to give away at least 5% of their investment assets per year, funders in Aotearoa NZ are subject to few legislative requirements. In other words, we…
Continue reading →If philanthropy could be as innovative and impactful as possible, what might our world look like?* Three inspiring speakers at the recent Philanthropy New Zealand biennial conference, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft, Judge Carolyn Henwood and Rangimarie Naida Glavish, presented a clear and inspiring picture of a land without child poverty, without child abuse, and where…
Continue reading →Below are links to a paper I wrote exploring why evaluating impact is so fraught and how communities, NGOs, funders and evaluators can work together better. The paper, entitled Building a better ecosystem for supporting our communities and the role of evaluation, was was written for the journal “Evaluation Matters – He Take Tō Te…
Continue reading →On International Women’s Day I spoke on a panel with Dame Susan Devoy and Melissa Clark-Reynolds on the topic “being the best we can be” at a function hosted by Kapiti Chamber of Commerce and Kapiti Rotary . Here is my speech: Ki ngā maunga, ngā awa, me ngā tāngata whenua hoki o te rohe…
Continue reading →Here are four different perspectives on the characteristics of a good funder: The criteria for “Philanthropy at its best” proposed by the US-based National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy are particularly useful in my opinion; see the one page version or the full paper. They propose a manageable number of holistic but measurable criteria, eg “Invests…
Continue reading →We have all been in meetings dominated by the person who just had to have their say on every topic, or sat round a dinner table where someone never managed to get a word in. There is a simple formula for solving this. If we are in a group of 8 people, we should talk…
Continue reading →What does it mean to be a great nonprofit? How do great nonprofits compare to good nonprofits? And how do we get there? This was the topic I was asked to explore at the Tonic Conference for nonprofits, held in Tauranga, Aotearoa New Zealand and put on by the good folk at Exult. Here are…
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