Give and you will receive

Giving away money is not as easy as it sounds. Charities have a lot to think about before they sign their cheques. Robyn Scott, CEO of Philanthropy New Zealand, has been helping it make its decisions for nearly eight years.
She says New Zealand has its own pattern of public giving, and no other country does it quite the same.
The most remarkable difference is that 84 per cent of New Zealand's official giving is done by statutory trusts, most of them set up in the 1980s.
Their investment funds started with money from the sale of local banks and energy trusts; a portion of money that was deemed to be community-owned.
The trusts are required to give in terms of public policy. Their trustees have to balance the need to grow that initial investment, while still meeting the needs of their regions and recipients.
Mrs Scott says the trusts have been enormously beneficial. "There has been some very good public policy decision making in years gone by."
Trustees have to decide which needs in their region are the most important and will not be met from other sources.
They are becoming more strategic, says Mrs Scott, and now decide what they want to achieve and how to measure whether it happens.
There is always tension around their decisions. "Everybody thinks they have the best programme in creation and your trust must support it.
"Decision making is always a really difficult thing for trusts. Good decisions are not always obvious to the community.
"There will always be people who are terribly disappointed," she says.
Often there is more than one group doing the same work - New Zealand has 30-odd breast cancer charities. People worry about duplication but Mrs Scott says merging groups isn't always the answer.
"Every person that feels strongly about something tends to start their own something. That's not very sustainable.
"But each brings its own group of supporters, and they can be lost with a merger."
Some say the proliferation of public trusts has prevented private charitable trusts from developing, but Mrs Scott isn't convinced of that.
She said there was a new trend toward community foundations, bodies people can give money to, targeting particular causes.
About eight of these exist, with Tauranga's Acorn Foundation being the most advanced.
New Zealand also has large, private, family trusts that exist to give away money.
Among the biggest are the Tindall and Todd foundations. Twenty years ago the biggest would have been the Roy McKenzie Trust, set up by the owners of the McKenzies department stores.
Corporates also give sponsorships and make donations, although the amounts can be hard to measure.
The amounts may be small, but that's not surprising because 90 per cent of businesses in New Zealand are small or medium sized. They often give a lot away, in money and in kind.
Butchers give meat packs to the local kindergarten raffle, printers print brochures and flyers and newspapers provide free advertising.
Such giving is hard to quantify.
"People don't always remember what they have given. Often they haven't written it down," says Mrs Scott.
Then there are the gaming trusts.
Mrs Scott says there has been a series of prosecutions recently over rorts in their grant giving, and people were getting tired of it.
Few people, including herself, even knew how to go about becoming a trustee on a gaming trust.
"The public have a right to expect probity and good accountability with community money, and that's what's being demanded."
Maori Party MP Te Ururoa Flavell has a private member's bill before Parliament which is intended to improve the situation.
However, the work of gaming trusts had a good side. They often funded a lot of sport.
"I would contend that a lot of our children's sport in New Zealand costs us very little for that reason."
A new avenue for individual generosity is payroll giving. It has the advantage that the giver gets the tax benefit immediately, rather than having to save receipts and calculate it at the end of the financial year.
Yet another popular form of giving in New Zealand is volunteering. Its monetary worth is hard to quantify, but Mrs Scott said it could be satisfying and make people feel connected to their communities.
"Giving is viral and contagious. The more it's spoken about, the more it will happen. It's normal behaviour, not abnormal behaviour."