Ka mahuta a Matariki i te pae, ka mahuta ō tātou tūmanako ki te tau
When Matariki rises above the horizon, our aspirations rise to the year ahead
Tēnā koutou katoa,
Matariki. A time for the past, present, and future to exist in the forefront of our minds.
Guiding me into the new year is the kōrero our associate Tuihana Ohia shared in her recent webinar. Tuihana explored different ways of supporting community hauora in the transition out of Ngahuru (autumn) and into Matariki…
“If you think about it, when the rakau (trees) have been shedding their leaves, you know it’s a time for us to shed whatever hasn’t served us also.”
So, regardless of what this time of year looks like for you, I hope you can join me in embracing the opportunity to release that which no longer serves, to make space for something new.
In this edition of The Dial, we share an exciting new opportunity, upcoming offerings from the Centre and wider sector, and two new resources recently launched in our knowledge hub, Te Pūaha o Te Ako.
Ngā mihi nui
Karinia Lee, Head of Centre | Kaihautu
Centre for Social Impact
Future Search facilitation training
August 15-17, 2025 | Te Manawa, Westgate, West Auckland
A limited number of places are still available on the first training course offered in New Zealand in Future Search facilitation.
We are delighted to be able to offer, in partnership with the global Future Search Network (FSN), a unique opportunity to learn how to use this globally renowned process for principles-based action planning. If your impact work produces social, environmental, and cultural outcomes, Future Search is an effective tool to bring together people who share an interest in a particular issue or challenge, to collaborate to find and act on solutions.
For more information, and how to register for this unique opportunity, click here.
A 2023 three-day wānanga of 88 people, initiated by the Te Oneroa-a-Tōhe Beach Board and co-facilitated by CSI associate Miranda Cassidy-O'Connell and Lisa McNab, used the Future Search method to address how to restore the health of Te Oneroa-a-Tōhe, Ninety Mile Beach. In this video, Miranda and Lisa talk about the steps involved in planning and running a wānanga. This recent Northern Advocate article provides an update on progress.
Te Pūaha Talks - what's next on the calendar
Our 2025 programme of Te Pūaha Talks continues, with two more free online webinars available over the coming months.
Hauora by the Seasons: Takurua to Kōanga – Winter to Spring
Tuesday 26 August 10.00am – 11.30am
Temperatures start to rise, and the days become longer as the Takurua moves into Kōanga. As we come out of the darker months and the world awakens, it is time to nourish yourself, see what is asking to grow within you, and nurture this.
This programme of quarterly wellbeing webinars has been created by Tuihana Ohia to support community hauora. Each workshop draws on mātauranga Māori to acknowledge the changing seasons and how each season brings new opportunities to nurture our wellbeing. Time is included in the workshops for reflection and learning from our shared hauora experiences.
Exploring the Core Skills Toolkit: Communicating your work
Wednesday 9 July 12pm - 12.40pm
In Communicating your Work, CSI associates Kathryn Nemec and Robin Hickman will talk about why communicating your work matters and offer some practical tips on how to engage your audience and tell your story.
The Core Skills Toolkit is a collection of practical, easy-to-use resources and insights curated by CSI to help new and small community groups and not-for-profit organisations thrive. Communicating your Work is the second in a series of webinars being offered during 2025 to explore each element of the toolkit in more detail.
Latest resources in Te Pūaha o te Ako
Leadership Hub - a new resource for community leaders
Our new online leadership hub is launched and will be progressively stocked with tools, resources and reading to support community leaders. The hub features interviews with leaders talking about their own leadership experiences. Interviews available now include Dan Te Whenua Walker, Eliana Gray, Irirangi Te Kani, Kate Cherrington and Manawa Udy.
The hub was created in response to feedback from the sector that community leaders find it hard to see themselves reflected in conventional and corporate leadership spaces and places. The hub aims to fill that gap.
Better funding
People across the community sector in Aotearoa are doing amazing work, often in challenging contexts. Funders can make this work easier or harder through their own processes. Through years of supporting diverse community kaupapa, we have seen clear themes as to how funders can make life better for applicants.
Our new online guide outlines seven ways in which funders can make life better for community partners. To get the conversation started with your staff, board and community partners, the guide includes a one-page self-assessment tool to help you see where you are sitting now and identify priorities for strengthening your funding practice.
Participatory grantmaking - a guide for funders
Participatory grantmaking enables funders to rebalance power between those who give and those who receive funding, and to draw on the insights and expertise of their communities to make more informed funding decisions.
An example of this type of funding is the Asian Artists' Fund, a co-investment partnership between Foundation North, Creative New Zealand, and Auckland Council developed in collaboration with key stakeholders from the Asian artist community. Funding recommendations are made by Asian artists, with final decisions by the Foundation North CEO.
Our new Participatory Grantmaking Guide provides an introduction for funders to this approach to grantmaking.
The guide includes case studies which illustrate how different participatory practices can be incorporated into the funding process and builds on a CSI report for Foundation North, a funder increasingly using participatory grantmaking as a high-trust, community-led approach to advance impact across its strategic focus areas.
Included in the resource are examples of participation approaches, key considerations, practical insights to support your journey, and links to further reading and resources.
The guide is online in Te Pūaha o Te Ako.
Further reading:
Participatory Grantmaking - Building the Evidence research, undertaken by the Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI) and commissioned by Australia’s Paul Ramsay Foundation.
Community-led philanthropy in Aotearoa – a post by Lani Evans on a survey, conducted in partnership with Philanthropy New Zealand, to understand what participatory practice looks like in Aotearoa.
Note: The Asian Artists' Fund is now open for applications until 16 July.
TenforTen
Over the ten years since CSI was founded, we have been privileged to work with many of the people who are making a difference in Aotearoa – and to kōrero with many more. To celebrate our tenth birthday, we created TenforTen, a podcast series of ten conversations that capture some of their wisdom, their perspective on our society, their mahi, and their hopes for the future.
Shaneel Lal and Amita Kala are the last two interviewees in our tenth birthday celebration TenForTen podcast series.
Shaneel, who was Kiwibank Young New Zealander of the Year in 2023, is an LGBTQIA+ activist, a writer and journalist, a political commentator and a university student.’ Shaneel founded the Conversion Therapy Action Group and spearheaded the movement to end conversion therapy in Aotearoa New Zealand.
A five-year campaign saw the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act passed in 2022. Shaneel’s autobiography, One of Them is “a story of one person's fight for the right to live their life as they deserved — and their extraordinary work to protect other young New Zealanders.”
Amita Kala is the founder of South Asian cultural collective Aunty’s House, ‘a community movement' that connects, uplifts and empowers the South Asian diaspora of Aotearoa. Through Chai Sessions, Aunty’s House brings people together to celebrate the music and cultures of Auckland’s South Asian diaspora.
Amita’s career experience in marketing and communications, and her social media skills, help drive her connections across Auckland’s communities.
Listen to Shaneel and Amita's interviews here, or follow us on Spotify, for more inspiring interviews and insightful, easy listening.
Commentary from our associates
Our network of CSI associates bring insights from a variety of fields to our thinking. This year, we have asked associates to share their insights on topics of interest to our social impact community. Our first two insights are a written piece by Kat Dawnier on sustainability, and a recording of the 2025 Skoll Foundation annual world forum in Oxford, where CSI associate Louise Marra was a panellist. Louise brought her extensive international experience in the healing and integration of collective and intergenerational trauma to the panel discussion, The Power of Healing in Systems Change.
Louise's academic and practical knowledge in this area helped inform the development of CSI's Haumanu framework to support restorative systems change.
Busting the myth of financial sustainability for charities What does financial sustainability look like for non-profits?
Managing financial sustainability is a critical challenge for not-for-profits in Aotearoa and worldwide. In Busting the myth of financial sustainability for charities, CSI associate Kat Dawnier considers the financial pressures on charities, how they are responding, the implications for philanthropy, and considerations for funders looking to support organisations to strengthen organisational sustainability and resilience.
From Inner Work to Global Impact: The Power of Healing in Systems Change
This panel discussion explores "how tending to individual and collective healing can nurture systems change" with "leaders who bridge ancient traditions with contemporary frameworks to cultivate awareness, resilience, and compassion in ways that ripple outward to transform societies and systems."
Webinar and workshop recordings and resources
Missed out on some of our Te Pūaha Talks online webinars and workshops? We’ve got you covered. Recordings of this year’s webinars are now available in Te Pūaha o te Ako.
Finding the Fun in Facilitation with Miranda Cassidy-O’Connell brings ideas and practices to add to your facilitation basket drawn from Miranda’s observations from years of experience as a facilitator, that when people get together with a shared kaupapa, things go better when there is some fun involved.
Exploring the Core Skills Toolkit: Community Engagement is the first of a series of webinars that explores the toolkit resources. In this webinar Kathryn Nemec and Miranda Cassidy-O’Connell share more in-depth information on community engagement, and explore practical applications and examples of this core skill in action.
Whai Wāhitangi looked at how to create positive, mana-enhancing collaboration with young people and Māori to fulfil shared aspirations for the future. Over two webinars, Climate Action Aotearoa co-lead Arohanui West (Te Arawa whānui, Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Tūwharetoa) looked at how to enable authentic participation. Session 1 focused on engaging rangatahi. Session 2 addressed working collaboratively with hapu and whanau, and creating mana-enhancing collaboration with iwi and hapori Māori.
Hauora by the Seasons: Ngahuru to Takurua – Autumn to Winter was the first of our series of quarterly wellbeing webinars created by Tuihana Ohia to support community hauora. This workshop draws on mātauranga Māori to acknowledge the changing seasons and how each season brings new opportunities to nurture our wellbeing.
Creative Communications with Te Taumata Toi-a-Iwi reviewed how Te Taumata, the regional arts trust for Tāmaki Makaurau, has developed its communications over the last five years. Jane Yonge and Jennifer Cheuk from Te Taumata, discussed with CSI communications advisor Robin Hickman how the trust has built relationships with key sector stakeholders, created a strong social media presence on platforms, and developed a web hub, Arts Action Now, to anchor key sector advocacy initiatives.
Upcoming sector events
Community Governance Aotearoa Board Talks – Digital Governance and Data Sovereignty.
Friday 27 June from 12:00pm. This conversation, led by CGA Chief Executive Rose Hiha-Agnew, will explore digital governance, policies, and data sovereignty. Panel guests to be announced soon.
Register here