Small town’s battle: ‘I think we just bought a post office’
Over summer we’ll be telling the stories of how communities come together, when businesses and government agencies pull out of town. Today, Matt Shand tells of close-knit Te Puke, and how their plan to purchase their post office was just one phone call away.
Success hangs on the other end of a phone, but Jenny Wotten doesn’t know it yet. The Te Puke Justice of the Peace lets the phone go to voicemail. She is discussing the devastating effect the closure of the Te Puke post office would have on the town and a last-gasp effort from a social enterprise group, Te Puke Centre, to save it.
The plan involves the community pledging at least $50,000 to effectively purchase the post office, as it is today. With just six days before their PledgeMe deadline they still need about $5000.
The phone buzzes a second time. And a second time, it is sent to voicemail.
Post office closures have caused outrage across the country. In November, New Zealand Post decided to close 79 standalone post offices, citing a lack of mail volume. The catalyst was a split between Kiwibank and NZ Post, which had shared premises. A standalone post office was unprofitable, NZ Post said. Postal services would be wrapped into other businesses as outlets.
It was not taken well: the Blenheim post office is closing after 50 years in the same location; in Henderson, West Auckland, residents expressed outrage that their new post office would close and, in Wellington, locals branded the closures ‘‘awful’’.
Wotten and fellow members of Te Puke Centre believe that although the sun may be setting on post offices, the sun is rising on social enterprises that value purpose over profit. Wotten has lived in Te Puke for 20 years and been pushing for an information centre for 18 months.
‘‘The post office is the centre of Te Puke,’’ Wotten says. ‘‘You can go there any time and see people you know. All the fundraising for town is done outside of it. We have a large population of seasonal workers who rely on it.’’
All day the post office is a hive of activity for the kiwifruit capital of New Zealand, just south of Tauranga. Scores of people file in all day sending parcels and paying bills. At the start of summer, a wheelbarrow was being raffled off by the Lions outside. People stop, chat, while away some time before departing with a raffle ticket. For the 8350 residents, the post office had a purpose beyond bricks and mortar.
And that community ethos is behind the country’s accelerating foray into social enterprise. This way of business has been popular with younger generations more interested in living right than making mega profits. Examples include Pomegranate Kitchen, a group that employs refugees and helps them integrate; Wa¯ Cup, a business that sells menstrual cups and donates products to end period poverty; and Everybody Eats, a group that takes food destined to the dumpster and creates restaurant meals on a pay-asyou-feel basis. Ethique, which aims to ‘‘rid the world of plastic bottles’’ by creating shampoo bars, raised $500,000 in just 90 minutes on crowdfunding website Pledge Me.
Under Te Puke Centre’s management, the postal service will continue to run as is, but profits will fund community projects like an information centre and other community facilities. Staff will be paid the living wage and they hope to create more jobs at the information centre, which will take over the Kiwibank space.
Wotten and her collaborators had been trying to establish an information centre in Te Puke for more than a year but always ran into trouble when they asked the community to fund it. By running the postal service, the information centre can launch without an extensive need for charity.
‘‘The post office was a perfect fit for us,’’ Wotten says. ‘‘We could fund our own enterprise using a commercial model. I do not think any other business would have worked for us so we out the word out to the community and they supported it.’’
Fundraising started with chairperson Karen Summerhays establishing a Pledge Me page and initial capital of $50,000 put the plan in action. On top of this Wotten sent out thousands of leaflets all over Te Puke asking for paper pledges which proved popular with the older generation.
‘‘We had an old lady, about 80 years old, who said going to the post office was her big outing,’’ Summerhays said. ‘‘She would head out, pay her bills, and catch up with her friends down at the post office.’’
Summerhays says it is about more than money. ‘‘It shows the community has endorsed the idea and valued the post office. We feel empowered by the support of the community.’’
As Wotten tells the story of the Pledge Me campaign, a motorhome pulls into Carterton, in the Wairarapa. Leo and Diane Whittle sold their Te Puke property a few
‘‘It shows the community has endorsed the idea and valued the post office. We feel empowered by the support of the community.’’
Karen Summerhays
years ago to become ‘‘grey nomads’’ roaming around the country.
After hours of driving, Leo has finally found a place with reception. He tries to call Wotten, again . . . Te Puke post office’s campaign had been gaining momentum. It even sparked the interest of PledgeMe founder Anna Guenther. Their website had never been used to purchase a post office before but PledgeMe has been pivotal in launching social enterprise businesses.
‘‘Social enterprises are what the world needs right now,’’ Guenther says. ‘‘We need more focus on our environmental and social benefit. It has been largely bought into by the younger generation.’’
Guenther says Te Puke Centre is a positive example of how social enterprises can affect the community:
‘‘I love that there is a clear focus on what they want and that they wanted to keep funds local,’’ she says. ‘‘I thought it was a very exciting vision.’’
NZ Post head of retail Mark Yagmich says he can’t comment on potential partners until due diligence is completed and contracts are signed. ‘‘We do already work with a variety of different local agencies across the country who partner with us to deliver postal services.’’
There are several other companies bidding to take over the postal service in town but none are quite like the tender from Te Puke Centre. While the majority of tenders are from local businesses, there are some outliers including the Fox Glacier Community Centre, Arrowtown Post Office (operated by the Lakes District Museum) and Ophir Post Office (hosted by Heritage New Zealand).
‘‘Working with local agencies is NZ Post’s preferred model to help deliver postal services to communities across New Zealand,’’ Yagmich explains.
‘‘This enables NZ Post to continue to serve communities and to meet our obligation to provide 880 outlets across the country. This model works well for us, and for our customers, who often enjoy longer opening hours and more convenient access to postal services.’’
Wotten’s phone rings again. Four times from the same number is too much to ignore. It has been a stressful week of helping raise pledges, and reinforcing the benefits of having the community capitalise on the closing post office instead of lamenting it – only to fall just $5000 short as the deadline approaches.
Finally she answers. Her eyes widen for a flash as she listens to the caller.
It is Leo, calling from Carterton, wanting to pledge $5000 to the campaign.
Wotten regains her composure, calculates the maths in her head, then checks it again. Finally a smile frames her face.
They’ve hit $50,000.
‘‘I think . . . I think we just bought a post office,’’ she says.