This article featured in the Stuff weekly newspapers around the Waikato during July 2022.
New Zealanders are remarkably generous people, especially in times of crisis and immediate need.
Most of us readily donate our time and/or money in our community and will readily provide ongoing support to charities or causes dear to us, especially if we can help create a lasting benefit for future generations.
Perhaps the most significant charitable decision you will make in your lifetime is whether to leave a bequest in your Will to support a charity and/or your community - to create a legacy, for the aid you believe in or the place where you’ve prospered.
Getting this right can be a challenge, you want to be confident you’re making the best call. How to balance a meaningful bequest with supporting your family? How to choose from all those worthy charities and causes out there? How to ensure your support will grow and always sustain, after you’re gone?
An ideal solution to these dilemmas is a bequest to your local community foundation, which guarantees perpetual income for what you care about, distributed according to your Deed of Gift.
Community foundations have been around internationally for about a century but are relatively new in Aotearoa. The first here was Tauranga’s Acorn Foundation set up in 2003, today there are 17 around the country.
All community foundations are the guardian of a place-based endowment fund – an investment fund that gathers the capital and donations of local individuals, families, trusts and businesses and then pays out the resulting income to local charities and changemakers based on their wishes.
Momentum Waikato is your local community foundation, established in 2013 and covering from the Bombays and the Coromandel in the north, down to Te Kuiti and Tokoroa in the south.
Our vision - a Better Waikato for everyone, forever. To significantly contribute to the development of the whole Waikato, to make it an even more desirable place to live, for generations to come.
We are achieving this via our dual missions - building that regional endowment fund, and driving transformational projects, such as the new Waikato Regional Theatre in Hamilton’s CBD.
Whether it’s via donations now or a bequest in the future, Momentum Waikato will help you make informed decisions for achieving meaningful social and environmental impact. We ‘connect and convene’ across the Waikato, so we can offer you the tools to give wisely.
Tim Macindoe, Momentum Waikato’s Ambassador, is available to present to group meetings anywhere in the Waikato about Momentum’s range of activities, or to meet one-on-one on how we can help you create a meaningful legacy, with no obligation.
Find out more at momentumwaikato.nz and/or contact Tim via 07 834 0404 or tim@momentumwaikato.nz.