The Philanthropic Landscape Volume II
Report: Shifting culture and power through mana-enhancing partnerships
The Philanthropic Landscape Volume II – Shifting Culture and Power through Mana-Enhancing Partnerships explores what matters most in partnerships for purpose between funders and ngā kaikōkiri (communities, funded groups, grantees).
The paper is published in partnership with the J R McKenzie Trust. Volume II explores how funders are incorporating the key philanthropic practices identified in The Philanthropic Landscape Volume I, published in 2019. Ten trusts and foundations from across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia share stories of their experience of centering their practice around impactful, mana-enhancing funding partnerships. Four representatives of ngā kaikōkiri also offer insights from their experiences of working in partnership with some of the funders featured.
Each story draws on the reflections of staff and trustees of their challenges, successes and learnings as they looked to centre equity, share power, enable meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities, support rangatiratanga/community self-determination and make progress towards systems change outcomes.
The full report is downloadable below, and a shorter insights summary can be read here. Watch a 20min conversation below about how the reports came into being and some of the key learnings. Individual case studies, as well as video extracts from interviews with staff and trustees from participating organisations can be accessed via the links below.
Case studies and kōrero with funders about their experiences shifting culture and power through mana-enhancing partnerships.
Dusseldorp Forum
Deep, long-term relationships that support community-led systems change agendas
Dusseldorp Forum is a family philanthropic foundation, established in 1989. The Forum’s focus is on improving education, health, and social outcomes for children, their families, and communities across Australia, by bringing people together to develop shared solutions to complex challenges. Today, Dusseldorp Forum works proactively with a select number of lighthouse partners to support place-based, community-led initiatives that transform the life opportunities of children and their families. The Dusseldorp Forum team focuses on building trusted, long-term partnerships to contribute to a range of intended system-level outcomes that include equipping communities to lead change, cultural regeneration, and funding policy/system reform for greater equity. Read the Dusseldorp Forum story below.
In the video below, Executive Director, Teya Dusseldorp, reflects on Dusseldorp Forum’s investment in empowering community storytelling, challenging norms in philanthropy about what counts as evidence, whilst also helping to shift wider narratives and mindsets as a tool for systems change.
Eastern and Central Community Trust (ECCT)
Sharing Power with Young People through TiraRangatahi
Eastern and Central Community Trust (ECCT) is one of twelve community trusts in Aotearoa New Zealand, providing grant funding and support to community organisations operating in the Gisborne Tairāwhiti, Hawke’s Bay, Tararua, Manawatū, Horowhenua, and Wairarapa. Their story focuses on sharing power with young people through TiraRangatahi, an independent rōpū that works in partnership with ECCT. The rōpū has facilitated the creation of a rangatahi action plan informed by rangatahi aspirations. ECCT has committed $4 million over four years to fund initiatives designed, curated, and developed by TiraRangatahi. Read the Eastern and Central Community Trust story below.
Watch here to learn more about TiraRangatahi.
Fay Fuller Foundation
Co-designing structures for community-led decision-making
Fay Fuller Foundation is a private philanthropic organisation in South Australia, founded in 2003 by Margaret ‘Fay’ Fuller. The foundation’s purpose, to “resource community determined responses to complex challenges”, is underpinned by principles of being community-centred and enabling communities to be self-determining; building trust-based partnerships that go beyond financial resourcing; and seeking to influence the wider determinants and inter-connected systems that impact the focus areas in which the foundation seeks to achieve impact. Through its First Nations Health Funding initiative, Fay Fuller Foundation has moved into a space of overt power-sharing, enabling Indigenous self-determination through models of decision-making and priority setting that are actively designed by and for Aboriginal communities. Read the Fay Fuller Foundation story below.
In the video below, Trustee, Carolyn Curtis, describes the journey that Fay Fuller Foundation’s board went on towards community-led decision-making, which was a process of trustees letting go of ego and questioning who the holds power to decide.
Foundation North
Centering Indigenous concepts and building cultural capability
Foundation North is one of twelve community trusts in Aotearoa New Zealand, providing grant funding and other support to community organisations operating in the Auckland and Northland regions. This story focuses on Foundation North’s Gulf Innovation Fund Together (GIFT) initiative, developed in 2016 in response to increasing evidence that the health of Tīkapa Moana Te Moananui-ā-Toi (Hauraki Gulf) was in decline. Research and kōrero with iwi, Māori, and other stakeholders supported the idea of a bold, sustained, and innovative approach, and those designing the new fund saw an opportunity to place the Māori concept of mauri at the centre. Read the Foundation North story below.
In the video below, Engagement Advisor, Rosie Nathan, reflects on how the Foundation developed new ways of being in relationship with Māori, underpinned by clear values that enabled dialogue to happen about what innovation might look like for the Foundation and for tangata whenua.
J R McKenzie Trust
Intersectionality and building capacity for systems change
The J R McKenzie Trust is a philanthropic family trust that has been grantmaking in Aotearoa New Zealand since 1940. The trust has a long history of funding strategically to address social challenges, and funding groups and issues that often struggle to get funding elsewhere. In 2020, the trust launched its current ten-year strategy, Te Anga Rautaki, with a vision for a “socially just and inclusive Aotearoa New Zealand”. The overall priority is “advancing equity” by addressing the underlying causes of inequity and exclusion. The J R McKenzie Trust’s Intersectionality Project sees the trust working proactively with a cohort of organisations working on systems change in relation to belonging and inclusion, across a range of spaces including rangatahi, rainbow communities, and migrant/refugee background communities. Read the J R McKenzie Trust story below.
In the video below, J R McKenzie Trust collaborator, Eileen Kelly, describes how the intersectionality project has led the trust to explore its role in disrupting the funding system to better enable the collective goals of ngā kaikōkiri working to shift systems for communities experiencing exclusion.
Peter McKenzie Project
Evolving a participatory approach
The Peter McKenzie Project (PMP) is a key programme of family foundation, J R McKenzie Trust. It supports a small group or ‘flotilla’ of initiatives tackling the root causes of child and whānau poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand. The PMP has a long-term, experimental approach to systems change. Its participatory model allows ngā kaikōkiri and a supporting committee and team to jointly make decisions about strategy, resourcing, and grantmaking. PMP is an expression of J R McKenzie Trust’s three change strategies: strengthen collaboration and support collective action; support community innovation, voice, and leadership; and grow capacity to progress system-focused solutions. Read the Peter McKenzie Project story below.
In the video below, PMP Director, Lili Tuioti reflects on some of the challenging practicalities of ngā kaikōkiri engaging in participatory philanthropy alongside leading work in their own communities, and the need to for funders to balance taking a lead and stepping aside to enable communities to make decisions.
Tapuwae Roa
An Indigenous, intergenerational lens to investing in impact
The Tapuwae Roa trust was established in 2004 through the Māori Fisheries Act. The trust’s purpose is to “promote the sustenance of Māori identity; supporting and accelerating Māori social and economic development by providing strategic leadership in education, skills, and workforce development”. Tapuwae Roa has an Indigenous and intergenerational lens to enabling impact, developing both philanthropic and impact investing tools in order to generate impact from all of its funding under management. The trust makes ‘mokupuna decisions’, investing now for impact that trustees now may never see but that will continue to benefit future generations. Read the Tapuwae Roa story below.
In the first video below, Tapuwae Roa Kaihautū, Te Pūoho Kātene, reflects on the funders’ role to amplify the impact of others, by empowering communities that hold mātauranga or knowledge and learning about what is needed to make impact for their people and in their place. In the second video, Te Pūohō talks about investment decisions as a fund manager being driven by the trust’s imperative to be good ancestors and ensure impact for future generations.
Toi Foundation
A commitment to rangatiratanga and growing reciprocal and enduring partnerships with iwi
The Toi Foundation (formerly TSB Community Trust) is one of twelve community trusts in Aotearoa New Zealand. It provides grant funding, impact investment, and other non-financial support to community organisations operating in the Taranaki region. Over the last five years, Toi Foundation has shifted its approach from being a “post-box” funder towards a strategic focus on equity, partnerships with tangata whenua, and more impactful models of investment into community outcomes. An intergenerational mindset has meant that Toi Foundation’s practice has an increased focus on community inter-dependence, working in relationship with community organisations, and iwi to affect systems change and achieve community aspirations. Read the Toi Foundation story below.
In the video below, Chair, Chris Ussher and Chief Executive, Maria Ramsay, describe how the trust has worked towards developing trusting, reciprocal relationships with iwi in Taranaki that are founded on purpose over funding.
Trust Waikato
Prioritising community self-determination
Trust Waikato is one of twelve community trusts in Aotearoa New Zealand, providing grant funding and impact investment to community organisations operating in the Waikato region. The trust’s vision, “vibrant and resilient Waikato communities”, is supported by a strategic intent with ten-year goals designed to achieve “transformational change for people, families, communities, and places where the need is greatest”. Trust Waikato’s team sees empowering community self-determination as the trust’s primary tool for working in an equity and Te Tiriti o Waitangi space. Read the Trust Waikato story below.
In the video below, Chief Executive, Dennis Turton, reflects on the belief that communities hold the solutions, knowledge and connections to make change happen, and can achieve their aspirations if supported through strength-based philanthropy.
Wayne Francis Charitable Trust and Leadership Lab
An ecosystem approach and ‘showing up differently’
The Wayne Francis Charitable Trust is a family foundation based in Ōtautahi Christchurch focused on youth health and wellbeing through positive youth development. The trust work in partnership with Leadership Lab, a network of people that work collectively on projects across Aotearoa New Zealand. Together they created LinC Puāwai, a youth leadership development programme that is co-designed with rangatahi, rooted in a kaupapa Māori framework and centres equity and inclusion. The trust and Leadership Lab reflect on the value of collaboration and collective decision-making with an ecosystem of stakeholders that share a vision for youth wellbeing, enabled through cultural and practice shifts post-earthquake and the trust’s practice of centring partnership and community self-determination. Read the Wayne Francis Charitable Trust story below.
In the video below, Wayne Francis Charitable Trust General Manager, Jenn Chowaniec reflects that funders and community need to be seen as one connected system, with deeper engagement by funders to understand what they can bring and how else they can support a kaupapa by leveraging their relationships and other non-financial resources.
Case studies and kōrero with ngā kaikōkiri (communities, funded groups, grantees).
First Nations Philanthropic Funders Working Group
The First Nations Philanthropic Funders Working Group (FNPFWG) is a collective of six Aboriginal-controlled community health and wellbeing providers that was established to oversee the creation of a community-led model that could direct philanthropic funding to First Nations communities across South Australia. The FNPFWG is focused on creating pathways for First Nations people to access resources and shape how and in what ways they interact with philanthropy. The FNPFWG has a partnership relationship with the Fay Fuller Foundation, which provides ongoing resourcing to develop the structure and governance model that oversees the distribution of funding from other investors, including the Paul Ramsay Foundation. As part of its relationship with the FNPFWG, Fay Fuller Foundation has seconded Warren Miller from his role with group member Yadu Health Aboriginal Corporation, to act as strategic advisor supporting the Foundation with its First Nations philanthropy.
In the video below, Warren Miller talks about the importance of hosting funders out on country, so that they feel the community, place their feet on the land and nurture high trust connection.
Wesley Community Action
Ground-up innovation enabled through trusted philanthropic partnership
Wesley Community Action was established in 1952 by Te Haahi Wēteriana (Methodist Church) to serve communities throughout the Wellington region, supporting people to create better lives for themselves and their whānau. This paper centres on a specific project that Lizzie Makalio and her son have created, which is supported by a partnership with the J R McKenzie Trust. Lizzie is deeply embedded in the community and with the support of the Trust is working with club members and their whānau to enable access to learning and tools for whānau wellbeing. A key initiative is Whanaufluence, where an online community of whānau from across different club patches are supported to access and share tools, discuss moments of change, watch online workshops and learn from each other’s life experiences.
In the video below, Lizzie reflects on her relationship with the J R McKenzie Trust - the opportunity to host trustees in the community as a critical step in building understanding and connection, and the value of face-to-face reporting.
Te Whānau o Waipareira Trust
Long-term partnerships to realise intergenerational change
Te Whānau o Waipareira Trust was established over 30 years ago in West Auckland, and provides free services and support for whānau of all ages across spaces including health, legal, housing and education. The Trust is also a Whānau Ora commissioning agency contracted to fund and support initiatives that deliver Whānau Ora outcomes. Te Whānau o Waipareira Trust has a five year partnership with Tapuwae Roa, which invests in Te Kete Aronui, a targeted literacy and numeracy initiative designed to accelerate the learning and achievement of ākonga Māori (learners). The programme pairs existing teaching tools with a tikanga-centred, whānau ora approach, fostering a supportive classroom environment for Māori learners with wrap-around support for whānau.
In the video below, Director of Whānau Ora, Jacqui Harema, reflects on the importance of funders providing space, freedom and long-term support to ngā kaikōkiri working on systemic issues that took generations to develop and will take generations to fully shift.
Why ORA
Why ORA is a not-for-profit community organisation established in 2010 and based in Taranaki. They work across the community to empower Māori career and employment aspirations, grow the Māori workforce and improve whānau income, so that whānau can flourish. This involves working with taiohi and whānau to identify their aspirations and turn them into meaningful career paths.
Why ORA have a long-term funding relationship with Toi Foundation. They are also part of a ‘flotilla’ or cohort of ngā kaikōkiri funded by the Peter McKenzie Project (PMP). PMP invests in their transformative plan to shift the way that the health and education systems work for Māori by facilitating and creating new pathways for rangatahi and whānau Māori into careers and changemaking roles in those systems.
In the video below, Pou Whakahaere, Tanya Anaha, emphasises the need for long-term relationships for organisations working to drive intergenerational change.
