$10,000 kickstarts new community fund

A DONATION of $10,000 has kickstarted a new community foundation’s bid to offer financial support to charitable causes through endowment funds.

The Wakatipu Community Foundation, which was launched earlier this year, held a presentation outlining the new project in Queenstown on Thursday.

Attended by lawyers and financial professionals, the event allowed foundation chairman Raymond Key and trustee Jennifer Belmont to explain to guests how accessible the new donation model was, allowing donors to control how part of their wealth or assets were transferred to community groups.

Mr Key said the project relied on ‘‘perpetuity giving’’ from donors to help make improvements in the community and bring people together.

‘‘It’s not just a cheque today, it’s a cheque forever.

‘‘We allow donors to have the fun of giving again and we actually look after all of the infrastructure and the hard work . . . so the money then goes to the right people and the benefit to the community flows.’’

He said it was a ‘‘really competitive area’’ with a limited amount of money to go around to community groups and made clear the model was about ‘‘tapping into a new formula’’ to bridge the funding gap.

Foundation trustee Diana Hubbard, who along with her husband and former Auckland mayor Dick Hubbard have left a bequest in their wills to the Auckland Communities Foundation, announced she would donate $10,000 to the new foundation at the event.

The project gave donors the chance to add an instruction to their will to set up an endowment fund and decide exactly what causes the fund should support and how much they wished to donate. With the donor’s permission, descendants could alter where funds went, or donors could choose to let the foundation decide which causes to support.

The foundation provides everyone with the opportunity to donate, whether that be an individual or family, charitable trusts and foundations, or through collective giving. Donations can be cash, part of an estate, shares and other assets.

The foundation is part of a national network of 16 community foundations.