Dr Leonard Randell Scholarship in hands of Acorn Foundation

Western Bay of Plenty District councillor Richard Crawford with Acorn Foundation chief executive Lori Luke. Photo / Stuart Whitaker

The long-standing Dr Leonard Randell Memorial Scholarship has been brought under the wing of the Acorn Foundation.

An annual scholarship is awarded to a leaving Te Puke High School student with the funds, until now, held by a trust.

A panel representing backers Federated Farmers and Rotary, plus the chair of Te Puke Community Board and a member of the school staff, has assessed scholarship applications.

“The cool thing is, all that’s changing is the administration of it,” says Richard Crawford, who sat on the panel when he was community board chairman. He is now a Western Bay of Plenty District councillor. “Everything else will stay the same.”

Acorn Foundation chief executive Lori Luke says the transfer has now gone through.

“It’s really just because, for the trustees, first of all it’s a lot of work and there’s legal requirements that you have to do. We just do all of that as part of our normal business so it’s really easy.

“But the former trustees get to stay involved, so they get to help select the winners, they get to do the fun bit, and we just do the background stuff.”

The funds from the trust will go into the Acorn Foundation investment programme, potentially giving it a boost and opening up the possibility of a second annual scholarship.

“That’s one of the reasons why a lot of trusts do come to Acorn, because many of them will just have their money in a bank or in a term deposit and there’s no way they can access the range of investments that we have,” says Lori. “We have investment professionals that volunteer their time to manage that.”

The foundation now manages a range of scholarships available to Te Puke High School students.

“So it will go into our regular scholarship programme and it will be very easy for the school to manage all of that.”

It will still be possible to add any money coming from fundraising events or bequests, or contributions from the health or other sectors to the fund.

Doing this is less complicated that setting up a new trust.

“The laws don’t make that advantageous – it’s more complicated and it costs more ... so this is a way for people to put their money in and know it will be managed in accordance with their wishes. As long as it’s charitable, we can manage it,” says Lori.

Last year’s Dr Leonard Randell Memorial scholarship was awarded to Hannah Mollier.

The scholarship was established in 1960 in memory of the town’s respected doctor, who came to Te Puke in 1930.