Last year, we ran a series of webinars for our donors, as an opportunity for our community to connect with and learn from each other in a private setting. Covering both personal motivation and global trends, our guest speakers gave plenty of advice, including these ten top tips for great giving:
#1: Feel, think, act.
Our first webinar hosted Kate Frykberg, a community consultant and long-time friend of The Gift Trust. She shared a great way of figuring out what sort of impact you want to have with your giving:
- First, feel: if you could wave a magic wand, what would you do for Aotearoa, or for the world?
- Second, think: how can you be most useful, what is the niche where your giving can make a difference?
- Finally, act: don’t wait until the ‘perfect’ opportunity comes along – as long as you’re not doing any harm, just start trying to do good.
#2: Understand where you, and your money, come from.
Kate also shared an important lesson about restoration: we can only repair the harms our wealth and privilege may have caused, if we understand where they have come from. That’s not a reason to feel guilty – it’s a motivation to make amends, by learning, listening, and doing.
#3: Every donor is different.
Finally, Kate helped our webinar participants think about what kind of donor they wanted to be. There’s a balance between publicity and anonymity, between over-reporting and zero-reporting, and everyone finds that balance differently. We’ve been honoured to help many of our donors find this balance for themselves over the years.
#4: Don’t let the accountant pull you down.
Our Board Chair John Prendergast (who, for the record, is a chartered accountant) urged us in our second webinar not to forget the joy of giving. We can often be tempted to be hyper-rational with our giving – to listen to our ‘internal accountant’, as it were – and forget that generosity is a joyful act. He also urged us not to be cynical about the recipients we work with – the funding relationship is often an unequal one, and we need to actively rebalance it.
#5: Your application, compliance, and accountability requirements need to be proportional to your grant.
John also reminded us of the concept of ‘net grants’ – the amount of a grant actually usable by a recipient after accounting for the time spent applying for it and reporting on it, and the costs incurred in complying with its conditions. Almost every grant we make at The Gift Trust is proactive, and we work with our donors to define reporting requirements that they’re comfortable with, but that minimise unnecessary work for the recipient.
#6: The best thing you can fund is everything.
General operating support or ‘untagged’ grants, John told us, are the best kind of grants you can make. Many funders don’t fund staff costs or administration, seeing them as ‘overheads’, aside from the ‘core work’ of a charity. In fact, the opposite is true – charities can’t achieve their ‘core work’ without paying the staff and administrative costs that make it happen. It’s like ordering a coffee, but only paying for the beans and the milk, and not the wages of the barista or the rent for the shop.
#7: Create space for ideas and solutions to grow.
Our third webinar featured writer and public intellectual Max Rashbrooke, who spoke about wealth inequality in Aotearoa. Alongside raising awareness and building shared wealth, Max said that one of the most important things donors can do to decrease wealth inequality, and to have effects on other societal issues, is to engage with those looking for solutions. Supporting this gradual ‘systems change’ work, by funding think tanks and advocacy organisations, often has a multiplier effect on the impact achieved.
#8: Create space and resources for Indigenous solutions.
Wherever you’re funding, Indigenous people are getting stuff done – why not help them do it? Our second webinar also featured Erin Matariki Carr (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Awa, Pākeha), a constitutional lawyer and Māori environmentalist. Matariki encouraged us, in our context, to support efforts that allow Māori people to restore the Māori world in all its beauty as a most viable strategy to stand up a system that stems from the land and truly supports creative, land-centered efforts to the status quo systems we have of extraction and disposal. This work was coined by Dr Moana Jackson as the ‘ethic of restoration’, acknowledging that any work that restores te ao Māori will in turn create abundance for everyone in Aotearoa. We’re proud to be helping enable this through our facilitation of the Social Cohesion Fund.
#9: Climate funding doesn’t just mean paying people to plant trees.
Our last webinar featured four speakers, and focused on climate funding. Climate policy specialist and Gift Trust alumnus Tessa Vincent facilitated the session, opening with an exploration of four aspects of climate funding:
- Regeneration: Direct projects that regenerate the land and reduce emissions
- Innovation: Spurring innovation through catalytic funding
- Policy: Advocacy for climate policy and long-term change
- Capacity-building: Education to protect future generations
Indigenous climate advocate Kaeden Watts also took this wider view of climate funding, especially with respect to Māori. He explained that Māori-led approaches to climate issues may differ to methods and practices that donors and funders are familiar with, but that they are just as effective, if not more so, not just for Māori but for all peoples.
Our third speaker, Sarah Rodgers from Garden to Table Trust also highlighted a non-traditional form of climate action – empowering tamariki to grow and harvest fresh, seasonal, and affordable kai.
#10: Do good with your whole balance sheet, not just your grants.
Matthew Monahan of Biome Trust was our last webinar’s fourth and final speaker. Alongside telling the story of Mangaroa Farms, the regenerative education centre of which he is co-steward, he spoke about how assets can be used for good. For example, the U.S. portion of Biome’s endowment makes loans for the transition of farmland into regenerative agriculture and organics – still making a return, but also enabling impact.
