Community foundations in New Zealand urged to trade network growth for a shared movement
Georgia Mathews, Co-CEO of Community Foundations Australia, argues that New Zealand's community foundation network, just twenty foundations and around seventy staff, should evolve from a network into a movement built around community power. Writing for Alliance Magazine after the two-day Community Foundations of Aotearoa New Zealand conference, held in Hamilton from Monday, 14 September 2026, she places grant-making as one tool among several.
The argument turns on where the money is meant to end up. A network measured by its own strength can keep growing grants without changing who owns assets or makes local decisions. Mathews frames the alternative as a defined end point: communities holding more power over their futures in forty years, with foundations' permanence as the lever. Grant volume alone answers the loudest need rather than the chosen destination.
Source: Alliance Magazine · October 6, 2026