Mary Potter Hospice has been supported by ImpactLab. Photo / ImpactLab
Mary Potter Hospice has been supported by ImpactLab. Photo / ImpactLab
A report has found community groups, iwi and Māori and Pasifika trusts are much better than big government agencies at providing for people with difficult lives and complex needs.
The report by ImpactLab and wealth management company Jarden studied over 100 programmes to give an overview of the impact ofthe charity sector, examining $178 million in charitable donations.
In an interview on Waatea, ImpactLab chairman and former prime minister Bill English said, “There’s a big group of young offenders in our community, a few thousand across the country; kids who don’t really live anywhere, don’t go to school, don’t get a benefit; the homeless pregnant mother; people with chronic illness in and out of the justice system — this report helps shine a light on the needs of those people and shows the charities are actually doing a reasonable job of meeting their needs.”
He said the report made it clear that the Government “is not good at dealing with those people because it’s got these big agencies who are designed to pump out sort of commodity services, average services that suit most people”.
“What the report shows is that often or almost most of the time, community groups, iwi, other Māori and Pacifika trusts are doing a better, much-better job of providing a comprehensive and trusted service for people who’ve got really difficult lives.”
English says ImpactLab’s focus now is on helping those groups do more of the great work and be more effective.
“We started with working with a lot of quite small charities and now we’re starting to work with larger groups, Pacific-owned Māori groups — some small public agencies — who have the firepower to make a difference,” he says.
“Quite a few of our mainstream funders can use these tools to understand better what’s really going on and then being able to direct their funding where it’s going to make the most difference.”
