How Generous are Kiwi Businesses?
When businesses thrive, communities should benefit - that’s the idea behind corporate philanthropy. Strong communities mean strong businesses, loyal customers, engaged employees, and sustainable growth. But how generous is the business community in Aotearoa?
Alanna and Lani - two of Fundsorters co-founders, and also co-founders of Share Collective.
Treasury data shows that in FY24, Treasury accounted for an estimated $23 million in tax-deductible charitable donations from companies. That’s the same as FY23 and down from $41 million in FY22*.
Set against the reported $112 billion in pre-tax surplus, monetary donations work out to less than 0.1% of profits – well short of the often-quoted 1% benchmark.
These figures, however, don’t capture non-financial giving - skilled volunteering, donations of goods and services, and support through networks and relationships. They also don’t account for businesses wholly owned by charities (see Thankyou Payroll/Generous Ventures and TSB Bank/Toi Foundation).
There are some incredibly generous corporates and SMEs out there - One New Zealand, MAS, Harcourts and Zespri to name a few. Nevertheless, this data shows us that more is possible - a possibility feels particularly pointed when we compare our data to other countries. International benchmarking reports (e.g. Bertelsmann Stiftung, CECP’s Giving Around the Globe) suggest German companies give 2% of profits, US companies 0.8%, and in the UK it’s 0.5%, all significantly higher than our less than 0.1%.
For start-ups, generosity can be hard. Early-stage companies (like Fundsorter) often run on sweat equity and tight margins, with every dollar going into product and growth. One way to front-foot generosity without cash is to gift shares to Share Collective, a non-profit platform that encourages founders to donate shares. They then then holds those shares in a charitable portfolio and donate any funds generated through dividends or liquidation events to charity (and they’re just about to donate their second round of grants).
At Fundsorter, we believe that generosity should be built in from the start. We’ve donated shares to Share Collective, and each of our seven team members has the opportunity to give away one annual subscription every year. That means seven community organisations get access to our service for free - and that number will grow as our team does. This is probably indicative of the ways kiwi businesses express their generosity - in ways that suit their unique circumstances and don’t show up in data.
So if you own a business, what can you do? Maybe it’s setting team volunteering, offering a community discount, or gifting surplus stock. Maybe it’s partnering with a local charity or donating shares to Share Collective. Or maybe it’s as simple as starting a kōrero with your team about what generosity could look like for you.
Times are tough right now. But if we all find creative ways to give – together – we’ll come out stronger. Generosity isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s how we build a better Aotearoa, for everyone.
*Based on our interpretations - and noting that we aren’t tax specialists