Kiwiblog

The NZ Herald talks charity:

At the heart of John Key’s approach are the concepts that the Government should not be providing everything in social welfare, that, indeed, it may not be the best judge of what is needed, and that charity is a good thing. He has sought to further these ideas by building on work done by the previous Government, most notably in abolishing the $1890 cap on rebates for charitable donations.

Most recently, legislation has provided for that rebate to be received automatically by wage and salary earners who donate directly to an approved charity from their pay cheque.

Yet such measures amount only to tinkering when compared with the extremely enticing tax breaks that underpin the strong tradition of private charity in the US.

The Dominion Post weighs in to the sterilisation debate:

ACT list MP David Garrett should know by now that, when he thinks aloud, he will almost certainly find himself in trouble.

Like Maori Party bad boy Hone Harawira, he shoots from the lip, and his homespun philosophy is rarely politically correct.

But despite both MPs’ comments ritually provoking outrage, a kernel of truth is often found therein.

Last week, Mr Garrett was in hot water again, this time for daring to suggest that parents who have abused their children be offered $5000 to get themselves sterilised. …

Predictably, Mr Garrett’s comments were compared with the excesses of Nazi Germany. Mr Kahui’s lawyer, Lorraine Smith, called them “outrageous and a disgrace”.

Karl du Fresne blogs on how hysterical some of the reaction was, with the Nazi comparisons.

Back to the Dom Post:

But those who lambast Mr Garrett for initiating an idea that at least attempts to confront the issue need to face an unpalatable fact: programmes in place now to protect vulnerable children are failing. Sixteen children died last year as a result of family violence.

Delcelia Witika, Lillybing, James Whakaruru, Nia Glassie, Chris and Cru Kahui comprise just a handful of the names on New Zealand’s roll of shame, each one killed by people whose responsibility it was to care for them.

And people who knew these little ones were being abused did not intervene. It is not good enough.

There is no doubt that the Garrett proposal is a step too far. However, even his most vehement critics should find an initiative instigated by Social Development Minister Paula Bennett more acceptable.

Last week, an Experts Forum on Child Abuse recommended that state agencies be able to keep track of parents whose children had died, or been taken off them.

The problem is that, at present, files are closed when a child dies, and social workers don’t know another child has been born to the same mother until that child, too, comes to their notice through abuse or, worse, because he or she has died.

I’m amazed we do not already do this.

It is no wonder Mr Garrett is casting around for new ideas. The old ones aren’t working.

And that is why his comments, on this blog, sparked a national conversation.

And the ODT looks at government spending restraint:

It makes sense for governments to regularly review the costs of administration and services and, especially, to look for efficiencies in operating and technology costs.

Some $2 billion is required to be found in the next two years for the latter, which in turn it is hoped should lead to less duplication of office support functions and services.

It is telling that Mr Key has cited last year’s health sector reforms, which pooled district health board payroll and procurement, with estimated savings over five years of $700 million – and the loss of 500 jobs.

The Government does not consider what is planned to be on the scale of the radical reforms of the Rogernomics era, yet it has declined to make public estimates of potential job losses, which rather implies that the reforms will be sufficiently substantial to be job-costly, and the public service unions have not been slow to express their anguish.

The recession knocked $50 billion out of the economy – the public sector can’t be immune from that.

Incredible. The bidding for the John Key flag doodle has reached $19,238. Now I suspect the bidding is more for the morning tea with John (and Pippa) than the artwork itself – I certainly hope so!

As at 6 am:

• Top Bid $19,238
• 188 bids
• Approx 250 questions and answers – many of these are hilarious. Well done to the TVNZ staffer answering them.
• 73,622 page views

The Cure Kids charity will be pleased, especially with five days left in the auction.

One of the minor law changes made last year, is to enable payroll giving. This allows you to make a donation to charity through your employer (if they choose to participate) and you automatically get the tax rebate.

In other words if you donate $6 a week to a charity through payroll giving, then your net pay only drops by $4 a week, as the $2 a week rebate is automatically claimed back for you.

This scheme goes operative on Thursday 7 January 2010, for those who file electronically with the IRD. I’m certainly going to offer it to my employees, as it involves miniscule admin work for employers – it is all done automatically.

Also an an employee, I’d find it great. I always find it a hassle keeping all my donation receipts and then having to file for a rebate/refund from IRD. To have it happen automatically will be a real time saver.

There is a short IRD guidebook on it, plus an employee FAQ and employer FAQ.

Almost 800 people voted in the year end poll to select a charity for 2010. The results were:

1. Fred Hollows Foundation 46%
2. CanTeen 18%
3. SPCA 14%
4. Alzheimers New Zealand Incorporated 13%
5. New Zealand Red Cross 9%

Now all five finalists are very worth charities, and over time I hope we can support them all, but for 2010 the Fred Hollows Foundation was the clear favourite with over two and a half times the support of the next charity.

Later in January I’ll detail some of the fund-raising ides for how we can support the Fred Hollows Foundation.

In early November I blogged calling for nominations from readers for the Kiwiblog 2010 charity. There were roughly about 80 nominations which makes me think this is something really positive to fuel some great offline events and fundraising. More about these plans in the New Year, but basically there will be four components:

1. 10% of gross advertising revenues to go to the charity
2. Online link to dedicated donation page, and updates on charity’s work
3. A number of fun offline events as fundraisers
4. Seeking businesses interesting in doing matching donations

I narrowed the nominations down to a five organisation short-list based on the original criteria I stated:

1. Charity must be based in NZ (but can have international focus)
2. Should have broad appeal, and be relatively apolitical
3. Should have national relevance, not local only, and be topical
4. Should actually deliver services of some kind, not just advocacy
5. Should be reportable – as in the ability to keep people interested in the work they do with regular updates

Those that did not make this year’s shortlist are not necessarily out of contention for future years.

It is now time to put this short-list to a public poll.

Please use the poll in the blog sidebar to indicate your choice for the 2010 charity. Voting closes at midnight on New Years Eve.  2010 candidates in alphabetical order are:

• Alzheimers New Zealand Incorporated
• CanTeen
• Fred Hollows Foundation
• New Zealand Red Cross
• SPCA

Please remember that this process is designed to select a charitable beneficiary by majority vote from the community here. It is pointless for the vote to be skewed by what we can only call “campaigning” as the cause needs to be one that feels right for the people who naturally assemble here!

All five charities are great causes, and I expect over time many of them, if not all of them, will get to be Charity of the Year at some stage – if the concept proves worthwhile by having people get behind it.

Happy Voting!

Good to see National MPs starting to get their private members bills in the ballot, with the result being two of them got drawn this week.

The first is the Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill by Selwyn MP Amy Adams. The notes explain what it will do:

The Bill requires professional third party collectors to disclose to potential donators that a portion of the donation will be retained by the collector.

This only applies if the proportion retained is more than 20 percent.

If the proportion retained is between 20 and 50 percent of the total donation then the collector must simply disclose that a portion is being withheld by them, but does not have to disclose the amount.

If the proportion retained is more than 50 percent then the collector must disclose the percentage being retained, to the nearest percentage point.

Transparency is a good thing. There have been a lot of horror stories about people donating money to what they think is a charity but finding out less than half gets to the charity. I can’t imagine anyone will vote against this bill going to select committee. WIll be interesting to hear what the charities say about it.

Rotorua MP Todd McClay had his Shop Trading Hours Act 1990 Repeal (Easter Sunday Local Choice) Amendment Bill also drawn. I can’t find a copy of it online, so this is based on reports.

This is a minor liberalisation, which will allow each local Council to decide whether or not shops are allowed to open on Easter Sunday.

This will be lots of fun because you get the unholy coalition of the union left and religious right joining forces to stop even the remotest sanity occurring over Easter Trading. Hopefully Todd’s bill will make it to select committee – the challenge will be getting it back out.

I find it hilarious that the actual public holiday is Easter Monday while the day retail shops can’t open is Easter Sunday. And that Easter Saturday has no significance at all, so people can’t even get a guaranteed long weekend off. The current law really is a dogs breakfast.

As I blogged previously, in 2010, Kiwiblog is going to sponsor a charity, and I hope that the community that reads and comments here, will also get in behind a good cause. I see it as part of translating an online community into having a real world effect – like with the campaign against the Electoral Finance Act, but this time in a non political sphere.

Kiwiblog will be donating 10% of its advertising income to the charity, and we had a great brain storming session this week about possible fun events we could put on such as celebrity debates, political trivia quiz nights, sporting event sponsorship, celebrity dares, bingo nights etc etc. We’ll chat about these some other time.

For now, I’d like readers to nominate charities for consideration. I’ll then select a short-list, and we’ll put the short-list to a public vote amongst the readers.

The criteria we’ll apply in selecting a short-list are:

1. Charity must be based in NZ (but can have international focus)
2. Should have broad appeal, and be relatively apolitical
3. Should have national relevance, not local only, and be topical
4. Should actually deliver services of some kind, not just advocacy
5. Should be reportable – as in the ability to keep people interested in the work they do with regular updates

So nominate away. I’ll keep nominations open for a couple of weeks and then we’ll run a poll to pick the 2009 charity.

I blogged back in April on an idea:

I’m a big believer in helping charities. Hell, I worked for the Red Cross for four years and it is amazing at how much can be done for sometimes not a lot of money. One or two staff can get water supplied to camps of thousands etc. Kiwis are great at giving up so much time and money to help others.

There are many great charities. SPCA, Women’s Refuge are a couple I always donate to. And all the cancer ones. Plus of course you get phoned all the time now asking for donations to other charities and you give a bit more often than not.

Anyway what I have been thinking is it would be great if the community that forms around a blog, can be used to support one particular charity in a really significant way.

I proposed five steps:

1. See if people think the idea has merit
2. Try and get a small number of volunteers on board to help organise things
3. Ask people to nominate various charities for inclusion in a poll, to be Kiwiblog Charity for 2009. Probably have some criteria for shortlisting.
4. Have readers vote on preferred charity from the short list. We’ll rotate it every year, so missing out is not permanent.
5. Then over a year, undertake a range of activities for the charity, with some possibilities below:

There was excellent feedback, so No 1 is done. I now want to move to Step 2.

The organisational side is going to be a lot simpler than I feared, due to the kind offer of partnership by Give A Little. They have all the tools and widgets to make it really easy.

What I want to do now is have a get together on Monday (after work) with people who are keen to form a sort of organising committee for the initiative. Basically to discuss:

1. Shortlist criteria
2. Possible events/ideas as fundraisers
3. Potential partners

If you are interested in helping out, let me know. At this stage the time commitment is very modest, but as we progress into next year there might be a reasonable amount of organising to be done – possibly quiz nights, celebrity debates, sponsoring a Kiwiblog team (including me) for a half marathon etc etc.

We’ll probably get together at 5.30 pm Monday (at the Backbencher) for an initial chat.

Big Kiwi Give are trying to raise $100,000 for 4 charities by selling 400 sponsor spaces. If interested check their site out. You can also vote there for your favourite charities.

I praised Labour yesterday for their campaign of insulating houses as being a good issue to campaign on. I thought it showed a sign of getting more clever about opposition.

But then Phil Goff attacks John Key for saying those who can afford to do so, should donate their tax cuts to charity, spewing forward class hatred:

“It smacks of the old aristocracy to say ‘we will make things worse for the low-income people and then, out of the generosity of my heart, I will call on other well-heeled people to donate theirs to charity’.”

First of all Goff is factually wrong. No one is worse off due to the 1 April tax cuts. A worker (without kids) on $20,000 gets $10 a week more. A worker on just above the average wage gets $18 a week more. Even pensioners get an increase.

But this is not a debate about tax cuts. It is about perceptions. 90% of NZers will cheer the PM saying donate more to charity if you can afford to do so. And Goff attacks the idea as “old aristocracy” or no doubt Tory charity. Stupid stupid stupid.

What Goff should have done is something like:

“I absolutely support the call for New Zealanders who can do so, to donate more to charity to help those who are struggling. But we should not just rely on philanthropic individuals, and the Givernment needs to be doing more to help those struggling such as adopting our plan to insulate every household in NZ to lower power bills and reduce ill health”.

This would have meant Goff doesn’t look to be sneering at those who do donate. It would have not looked like a petty swipe at a hugely popular PM (you do those when he is less popular!) and it would have looked constructive.

Most of all it would have reinforced the insulation campaign. You need to do more than just have a website. If Labour want it to be effective, they have to repeat it as often as possible so every NZer knows Labour wants to insulate every home in NZ. People only remember something after they have heard it close to a dozen times.

I wish I could invoice someone for this free advice

A nice story in the Herald:

People who still have jobs are reaching deeper into their pockets to help those who are being made redundant.

Churches and social agencies say individual giving is rising in the recession, even though some trusts have been forced to cut back donations.

Auckland City Mission fundraiser Alexis Sawyers said more people were giving to the mission, and some long-term donors who normally gave $50 were now giving $100.

It is going to be very tough for a lot of the families over the next couple of years at least.  Nice to see people stepping up to the challenge.

Bidding for the cast, with a week to go, has already broken the $3,000 mark after settling at $1,300 overnight.

Great to see so many people willing to donate to charity.

Some of the questions to date have been amusing, such as whether one can use Winston’s car to pick the cast up.

TVNZ report that 20 year old Emma Daken has finished her walk from Cape Reinga to Bluff, to raise funds for cystic fibrosis research.

Emma is now the youngest person to ever walk the length of New Zealand.

Emma Daken is the youngest person to have walked the length of New Zealand after finishing her marathon effort in Bluff.

Daken has worn through four pairs of shoes in her epic journey.

“You can feel the gravel with every step,” the 20-year-old says.

“Shin splints, I’ve had a quadricep strain, blisters, black toenails, but overall I’ve held up pretty well.”

Nothing could distract Daken from her focus – raising awareness of cystic fibrosis.

“I’ve got a very good friend with CF so I suppose she was the catalyst for embarking on something like this, but in saying that, throughout the trip I’ve met so many wonderful people who have CF so it’s no longer solely for my friend. It’s for everyone I’ve met along the way as well.”

Bluff is 1,475 kms away from Cape Reinga. Walking it would have been even further. It’s a great achievement for a great cause.

A nifty we website to make it easy to donate and fundraise for charitable projects is givealittle.

The Evile family are the Mangere family that lost four children in a house fire.  Words can’t describe how difficult it must be to lose your house and four children.

You can donate through givealittle to help the Evile family rebuild their home.