Beyond the Funding Game

Community funding often isn’t as transparent as it should be; games get played and thorny issues are sometimes unacknowledged and often unaddressed. I explored some of this recently at a breakfast meeting with the Fundraising Institute in Auckland: – here is my presentation: “Beyond the game, through the thorny issues and towards thriving communities.” The…

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Walk a mile…

I have never had to walk 10 kilometres then catch a train in order to work at a minimum wage job.   I haven’t gone hungry so I can feed my kids like Tina, nor have I been one of a family of eight in a cold, damp, two-bedroom flat like Helen.  Instead I have led…

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Philanthropy on TV

I was part of a story on TV1’s Seven Sharp programme today asking “are kiwis givers?”  See the clip here. Journalist Emma Keeling did a very nice job of talking about philanthropy and the Todd Foundation funded Y-men project, (which gets unemployed young men into work and training as ECE teachers in kindergartens), was inspiring. …

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Musings on Homelessness

When Dave and I moved back on Aotearoa New Zealand in 1990 from the San Fransisco Bay area, one reason for returning was that we felt uncomfortable that the US was so wealthy yet had so many homeless people begging on the streets.  That sort of thing didn’t happen in NZ. That was then. This…

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Philanthropy in the media

Philanthropy and I have been in the media lately:  First out was an article in the April 2014 North and South magazine by Joanna Wane called Does money make you mean.  (I am quoted on page 45, thankfully in a positive light).  This was followed last month with Karle Du Fresne’s “And the Giver is”…

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