Many New Zealand businesses want to contribute to social good but face barriers, such as limited time, administrative complexity, or uncertainty about where their money has the most impact. The Gift Trust removes these obstacles. We make corporate giving straightforward, strategic, and effective, helping companies create positive change without the overhead of running their own charitable foundation.
The Corporate Giving Challenge
You want your business to give back to the community. You know corporate social responsibility matters to your employees, customers, and stakeholders. But between managing ad-hoc donation requests, verifying charity credentials, processing multiple payments, and tracking tax deductions, corporate giving becomes a time-consuming administrative burden rather than a rewarding part of your business identity.
Common challenges businesses face:
- Scattered donations to many organisations without strategic focus
- Endless requests from charities, making it difficult to say yes or no
- No clear giving mission or criteria for evaluating requests
- Administrative hassle of processing donations and managing receipts
- Uncertainty about whether donations are creating real impact
- Difficulty engaging employees in corporate giving programs
- The cost and complexity of establishing a formal company foundation
The Gift Trust solves all of these challenges through a single, streamlined platform.
What We Offer Businesses
The Gift Trust enables businesses of any size to give with confidence, purpose, and strategic focus. Through personalised giving plans, we connect your company with charitable organisations that align with your brand values and business goals, providing all the benefits of structured corporate philanthropy without the administrative burden.
Strategic Corporate Giving Made Simple
Think of The Gift Trust as your company’s philanthropic infrastructure. We handle the mechanics of corporate giving – due diligence, payment processing, impact reporting, tax documentation – while you focus on core business operations and enjoy the reputational and employee engagement benefits of strategic charitable giving.
Whether you’re a small business making your first formal charitable commitment or an established company wanting to professionalise your corporate social responsibility program, we provide the expertise, connections, and infrastructure to make your business giving more effective and meaningful.
Growing Your Brand Through Purpose-Driven Giving
Corporate giving isn’t just about writing cheques, it’s about building your brand, engaging your team, and demonstrating your company’s values in action. We help you develop a giving strategy that enhances your brand reputation and creates authentic connections with your community.
Our Business Gift Accounts allow companies to establish a dedicated fund for corporate giving. We take care of all the administrative work, so you can focus on business growth while building a reputation as a company that genuinely cares about community impact.
Learn About Business Gift Accounts
How The Gift Trust Works for Businesses
Opening Your Business Gift Account
Your business can open a Gift Account simply and easily today. Business Accounts start with a minimum $5,000 donation, are eligible for tax credits and can be named by your business. There is no need to specify upfront what causes you want to donate to, so you can support a variety over time.
Growing Your Giving Fund
For accounts with more than $20,000, your donations can be responsibly and ethically invested in a variety of ways to grow, tax-free.
Gift Account Investment Options
Gifting to Causes That Align With Your Business
Your business can decide when and which charitable causes to gift to, in New Zealand or internationally. The Gift Trust checks their credentials and can provide research or guidance for your business giving.
Read More: Making Gifts to Charities
Benefits of Corporate Giving Through The Gift Trust
Expert Advice on Strategic Corporate Philanthropy
We connect your business to causes aligned with your brand values and community goals through customised giving plans. Whether you want to support education, environmental sustainability, health initiatives, youth development, or other causes, we provide expert guidance on which New Zealand and international organisations create the most impact in those areas.
Our recommendations are completely independent – we’re not incentivised to favor particular charities. We simply help you find organisations where your corporate giving will make the greatest difference.
Free Up Valuable Business Resources
Charitable giving should enhance your business, not drain resources. We handle everything: researching organisations, verifying credentials, conducting financial due diligence, processing payments, maintaining donation records, and providing tax documentation. Your team stays focused on core business operations while enjoying the benefits of strategic corporate giving.
Attract and Engage Staff Through Meaningful Giving
Corporate social responsibility programs significantly impact employee attraction, engagement, and retention, especially among younger workers who prioritise working for values-driven companies. When employees see their company’s values reflected in authentic charitable action, satisfaction and loyalty increase measurably.
Receive Tax Deductions Now, Grant Whenever You’re Ready
Donations to The Gift Trust are fully tax-deductible for businesses, reducing your taxable income in the year the gift is made, regardless of when funds are granted to charities. This allows you to optimise tax planning in profitable years while taking time to thoughtfully select organisations creating real impact.
Grow Your Corporate Giving Capacity Tax-Free
Unlike business investments subject to corporate tax, charitable funds in your Business Gift Account grow completely tax-free when invested. This means 100% of returns increase your corporate giving capacity, compounding over time to create even greater community impact without additional contributions from your business.
Non-Profit Partner With Transparent, Low Fees
As a lean non-profit organisation, The Gift Trust operates with minimal overhead. Our fees range from 1% to 4% of your account balance depending on services used and account size. There are no setup fees, hidden charges, or surprise costs, just transparent, reasonable fees supporting our mission of strengthening corporate philanthropy across New Zealand. This means that more of your giving dollars reach the causes you care about, while you still receive professional guidance, administrative support, and strategic advice.
Real Business Partnerships: Companies Giving Through The Gift Trust
Aligning Corporate Giving With Brand Values
“The Gift Trust has supported Restaurant Brands with its donations strategy and the distribution of donations from the Restaurant Brands Charitable Fund. This has enabled us to give back to our community in a way that is aligned with our corporate brand and values. The Gift Trust provided us with expert advice, and has undertaken research on the charitable organisations we could potentially partner with. The Gift Trust has also provided a giving mechanism and structure to manage our donations.”
Restaurant Brands
Making Scholarship Programs Simple
International aerospace company Rocket Lab works with The Gift Trust to manage their annual $20,000 Rocket Lab scholarship. The company donates a university scholarship to a deserving student that covers up to four years of education costs. The scholarship fosters New Zealand’s next generation of science, technology, and engineering leaders. The Gift Trust provides due diligence and administers the payments of the scholarship over four years. This enables Rocket Lab to avoid the hassle of setting up a separate charitable entity to distribute the funds. So far, $80,000 has been committed through the scholarship programme to four promising students to attend university who may not otherwise have been able to.
Rocket Lab
Who Benefits From Business Giving Through The Gift Trust?
Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
Small businesses wanting to formalise corporate giving beyond ad-hoc donations find our Business Gift Accounts provide professional philanthropic infrastructure at an accessible price point. You get the reputational benefits of structured corporate giving without the overhead of a large CSR department.
Family Businesses Building Legacy
Family-owned businesses often want their corporate giving to reflect multigenerational values and build community legacy. We help you develop giving strategies that honor your family’s principles while creating lasting positive impact.
Growing Companies Developing CSR Programs
Businesses expanding rapidly and developing formal corporate social responsibility programs benefit from our strategic guidance. We help you establish giving frameworks that scale with your business growth.
Established Corporations Seeking Better Efficiency
Large companies with existing CSR programs sometimes find internal administration cumbersome and want to streamline operations. We provide professional management that frees your team to focus on strategic decisions rather than administrative tasks.
Companies With Employee Engagement Goals
Businesses prioritising employee satisfaction and retention through values-driven initiatives use our platform to create meaningful staff engagement opportunities around corporate giving.
Purpose-Driven Brands
Companies where social impact is central to brand identity, such as B Corps, social enterprises, or mission-driven businesses, find we provide the infrastructure to make corporate giving a genuine, effective expression of their purpose.
Building a Strategic Corporate Giving Program
Our Business Philanthropy Advice Packages
Beyond providing Gift Account infrastructure, we offer advisory services to help businesses develop strategic, impactful giving programs. Whether you’re clarifying your corporate giving mission, researching credible charities aligned with your values, building a collaborative giving community with stakeholders, or measuring the real-world impact of your philanthropy, our expert team provides tailored guidance at every stage of your journey.
Explore Our Business Advice Packages
Start Your Corporate Giving Journey With The Gift Trust
Whether you’re making your business’s first charitable commitment or looking to professionalise an existing CSR program, The Gift Trust provides the infrastructure, expertise, and support to make your corporate giving strategic, effective, and genuinely impactful.
