New Zealand Association of Philanthropic Trusts

Mr Chairman (Sir Roy McKenzie), our distinguished visitors from overseas, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for your welcome and for the opportunity to share in the opening of your conference. For the opportunity, too, to increase my knowledge about the people and the organisations that underpin our society. For I am patron of a great many voluntary welfare organisations, and in the course of a year I have the privilege of seeing large numbers of them at work. What they do is simply magnificent, and society would quite simply collapse without them. But although I am, by virtue of my office, involved with one of the trusts represented here today, I did not appreciate the distinction between those organisations and the other charitable trusts, on the one hand, and the philanthropic trusts on the other. Nor did I have any idea of the number of philanthropic trusts that there are in this country. Your membership list is quite an eye-opener.

Many of the philanthropic trusts, and of the charitable trusts, have existed for many years, their role being, perhaps, to supplement the resources of the state - or rather should I say, to meet needs not met by the state - which we New Zealanders had come to regard as the great provider for almost all needs. But there have been quite dramatic changes of late, as we all know. For one thing, the role of the state as provider has considerably diminished, and in consequence, the role and the responsibilities of the charitable trusts at least, have increased. Modern economic thinking puts the responsibility for the provision of community services on the individuals and organisations that make up the community. Tax cuts have put more money in the hands of individuals, on the basis, I assume, that they would employ part of it to support those community services. Generous though a great many New Zealanders are, I very much doubt whether that has actually happened to any appreciable degree. Hedonism and charity are not particularly compatible.

At the same time, there have developed gaps in New Zealand society that seem if anything to be widening. These gaps can be described in many ways: in terms of health, or of educational attainment, or of housing, or of income and of wealth, or of that most vital of all assets, well-founded hope for a better future. Of course, New Zealand is not alone in suffering this trend. All other industrial societies seem to be experiencing the same phenomenon. And many are the remedies proposed, because most realise that nothing so threatens social peace, order and the common good as having great divisions in society; that there are some few who may regularly feast, while others have no choice but to hunger. As an American economist and land reformer, Henry George, observed late last century: "What has destroyed every previous civilisation has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power." Then he went on to say: "This same tendency, operating with increasing force, is observable in our civilisation today, showing itself in every progressive community, and with greater intensity the more progressive the community."

So the existence of divides between rich and poor is nothing new. But what we are seeing in New Zealand today is new to us, and to today's generations. And there have always been efforts to close the gaps, at the national political level as well as at the more personal community level. Yet always and everywhere, their closing is exceptionally difficult. But difficult as it may be, to close these rifts in society remains of immense, even desperate, importance. And so does the need to convince our fellow citizens of that importance, and of the part they must play in doing it.

Private individuals and corporates have their social responsibilities. Governments too have a role, and a very large one. And between these two ends of the organisational scale lie the institutions of civil society, those associations that promote social and economic betterment for the less-fortunate.

Charitable organisations have unique strengths in this endeavour, strengths not forthcoming from either individuals or the state. Being organisations, they are capable of much more than individuals acting alone. Being separate organisations, with different goals, working methods and cultures, they employ a range of means, and experiment with new ones, to achieve or promote social development. This variety of method, that willingness to experiment, is absolutely vital, given how difficult a goal social development is to achieve.

The evidence for this difficulty is plentiful. If the encouragement or facilitation of social and economic development, if helping others, were simply a matter of the transfer of income or wealth, it's arguable that many of our social problems would have been solved years, even decades, ago. International development work, for instance, provides dozens of examples of the frustration of enlightened intent, and of seemingly-sound development strategies, which, when put into action, have for one reason or another, failed. Huge amounts of money have been poured into development projects of one kind or another, in Africa, in Latin and South America, in Eastern Europe, throughout Asia. Yet in spite of billions of dollars of investment, development remains problematic: unexpected difficulties are common, unanticipated side-effects are numerous, all while the human needs that were intended to be met remain as great as ever.

There is a quote from Aristotle that some here are sure to have already heard or read: "To give away money is an easy matter, and in any man's power. But to decide to whom to give it and how large and when, and for what purpose, and how, is neither in every man's power nor an easy matter." So for well over 2,000 years now, there have been those who have recognised that when philanthropic endeavour lacks wisdom, where there is no true understanding between receiver and donor, the best laid plans will go astray.

But when those who seek to improve the circumstances of others, to help others to help themselves, meet to share their experiences, to discuss what might be necessary for them to become more effective, to talk over how they might better serve their partners in philanthropy, then, perhaps, the difficulties of social development can be lessened, charitable goals can be brought nearer to realisation, philanthropic work to more readily achieve its aims.

Which is why, of course, you are here, and why I was pleased to be able to accept your invitation to open your conference this morning. As representatives of the philanthropic front line, you know how pressing it is becoming that we close the gaps in our society; how unhappy is the plight of those who do not have the ability to share in all that life in New Zealand can offer; and how dire the consequences might be if New Zealand society loses its cohesion, that widespread sense of social trust that we must have for our country to truly thrive.

Your Conference theme is Philanthropy in Partnership. It is not just in the coming and working together of philanthropic trusts that partnership is so important. It's very important too in relation to the philanthropic endeavours of business, and of people of goodwill in the community, and also in the activities of the coal-face agencies themselves.

I shan't say anything about partnership with Government, which is understandably a delicate area, but one on which some misunderstanding will surely have to be reached.

It is, of course, a current business philosophy that business exists solely to create value for its shareholders, and that philanthropy is justifiable only if it achieves that end. But the fact is that many businesses are magnificent supporters of community causes and I believe that there is scope for greater co-operation in both the selection of causes and the nature of the assistance that is given.

Then there is surely greater potential for partnership co-operation between donors and donees, and between donee organisations themselves.

There has been a huge increase in the number of voluntary agencies, many of them targeting the same group, such as so-called youth at risk, each pursuing what it sees as its own unique contribution to the problem, all competing for the same limited number of charity dollars. I am sure that there is room here for some rationalisation, if only in administrative and related costs. The last thing one wants is to kill initiative and enthusiasm by imposing constraints, but I often wonder whether there is not greater scope for co-operation and co-ordination. I am not too keen on the use I have sometimes heard of the expression, "our competitors."

Finally, it is surely essential to increase the fund of philanthropy. Most of the large trusts were established many years ago. In one of the publications sent to me by the Association, I saw this question: "Where are the men and women with the wealth and vision from this end of the century who equal those of the early years of the 1900s."

Well, there is certainly the wealth, and there are the great benefactors. And as the article went on to point out, New Zealanders as a people can be very generous, responding particularly to what they consider a real crisis. But the point that was being made was that it's planned giving that is so essential. And so I suggest there is scope for increased partnership between the trusts established in the past, and the community of today, to encourage greater, and planned, giving, by the very large number of our fellow citizens who don't give, or don't give what they could and should.

Perhaps we need to emphasise the original meaning of the idea of philanthropy, which, as a man named Edward Lindsey said, is perhaps not quite the activity that many have come to believe it to be. "Nowadays, we think of a philanthropist as someone who donates big sums of money," he said, "yet the word is derived from two Greek words, philos (loving) and anthropos (man); loving man. All of us are capable of being philanthropists. We can give of ourselves." Which is, of course, the most anyone can ask, as it is and always will be, the greatest gift of all.

Ladies and gentlemen, I now declare the 1998 Conference of the New Zealand Association of Philanthropic Trusts - Philanthropy in Partnership - officially open.