Charity Funding

I know the thread that spoke directly of Trinian/ACFC has been closed but there was some interesting news yesterday that might have both positive and negative impacts in sports clubs receiving funding from gaming trust organisations.

Internal Affairs [or whatever they're called now] are recommending that either all or a high percentage of gaming funds amassed in a particular area are distributed back to that area. So if a club was getting a huge amount from a trust that was using funds from all over the Country, they might receive lesser funding than they do now. Conversely, clubs in other areas may get an increase because the trust might not be able to fund an organisation that sits in an area with a small income stream.

I haven't been involved in applying for this type of funding for some time and things might have changed but a lot of trusts [were saying anyway] that they only distributed funds to groups from those collected in that particular area. On the other hand I recall things like the Southern Trust funding national competitions and a couple of others as well. Perhaps this Internal Affairs recommendation is targeting the racing industry.

Any thoughts on if changes along these lines were made, if it would have a positive or detrimental effect on clubs/franchises?

Mods, feel free to move this to a more appropriate thread location.

We can't move things around as easily in the new system.

But...on topic...

Ole Academy get the bulk of their funding from Infinity, which is Napier based I think.

In short, the answer is yes, if the DIA actually had the time and resources to enforce the legislation as it was intended then it could shake up the scene quite a bit (which I totally agree with as the money should go back into the community it was taken out of).

What matters is where the venues are and the amount of revenue they are generating. In Ole's case Infinity has a few venues in Porirua and a lot around the Greater Wellington region so you would think they would be OK.

I think the trusts should be required to produce a much higher standard of reporting on this. It should be easy to show how much revenue is being generated by each venue (and venue locations can be geo-coded and then mapped) and also where the grants are going (again, grant recipients can be geo-coded and mapped).

Anyone should be able to go to a trust website, see how much money was generated in a particular area and how much was allocated back to the same area. Or perhaps they should be required to feed that data to DIA who publish a national map.

I've never really understood this requirement.

Government effectively has a tax on pokie machines that allocates to trusts to distribute to fund amateur sport in NZ.  Amateur sport isn't really focussed hyper-locally - Island Bay football club is run for Wellington Footballers, not the people of Island Bay.  If you close off funding to Island bay because their pubs don't have pokies then how is that a good thing?  Should the kids of Porirua be entitled to more funding because their parents gamble?  I've never really understood this argument.

Funding should be distributed on the basis of the good that it will achieve, not hyper-locally (maybe I could understand if you wanted to distribute regionally).  I don't understand why anyone would advocate that?  When it comes down to it if people want to fund their local sports club they should give them the money instead of sticking it in the pokies.  But if they choose to put it in the pokies I don't see why it should then only fund local clubs - it's not as if they're making a donation to local sport!  This smacks of people wanting to put a positive spin or justify gambling by saying well at least it goes to local clubs...

a tad short sighted jd

distribution is slanted in favour of the area it was attained to do more social good in that area and thus indirectly offset the damage that gambling has done (gambling being a social bad)

This is the point - I don't see how the "social good" of funding amateur sport off sets people gambling.  The two are unrelated.  It's an intellectual construct

As long as people are doing good work that benefits the community then I don't see what the problem is?  Tighten up the use of funds by all means byt I don't see how hyper-local distribution is a positive

it's an idealism, but you can't have khandallah residents legislating for cannon's creek gambling proceeds to be distributed to khandallah kids.  surely you can see the lack of natural justice in that

If money was only handed out to kids then I would agree.  If you emotively characterise this as giving money to kids then of course local makes sense

But that actually isn't the way it works.  It funds sport for teenagers, adults too.  And the simple fact is that people in Porirua play sport all over Wellington.  

And I stick by my original point.  When people put money in the pokies they don't do it safe in the knowledge that their local sports club will get some new bibs and cones out of it

but the people who know better, and licence the machines do know this

it doesn't make sense for kids or adults.  i wasn't pulling the 'think of the children' card.  the point is that gambling does social harm. recreational funding does social good. you cannot allow one area to spiral downwards in order to fund another. it smacks of elitism.

The Herald's recent series of articles on this probably deserves some visibility in this thread. I've highlighted the key ones.

Game for a gamble

Cash-strapped club forced to re-think moral stand

Sports clubs feed off gamblers

Gaming pays Baseball's way

Robbing the poor to give to the rich

Pokies lure too strong

Taking the tainted money

Worker spent all he had as machines sucked him in

Love of a punt keeps success coming

Gambling destroyed everything

Bounty from pokies shrinking

Sports moral dilemma will solve itself

This article is about the proposed reforms currently being consulted on by the DIA:

Reforms to return more pokie profits to communities

And this is the consultation document:

Public consultation on Class 4 gambling proposals

So how do you fund amateur sport through clubs that aren't in areas that have pokies?  

I still feel two things are being mixed up here - people don't select pokie bars because of where they "donate" the money they collect, and people playing pokies are not making a donation when they put the money in - they're playing the pokies to try and win.  The funds that are generated are just a tax that for some historical reason are used to fund sports clubs and distributed by charitable trusts rather than the government.

There's also another issue.  Not everyone who plays pokies in a particular area will be from that area, so why is the location of the venue the determinant?  I can understand that Wellington venue should support Wellington sport etc - but I don't see why for example funds from pubs in Porirua should only be used to support Porirua sports teams.

This whole thing is a messy business but as the Herald article illustrates there aren't any real solutions being proposed as to how to fund amateur sport without the pokies.  

There are some great stats at the end of that article.

They reckon all of football got $11m from gaming in 2012. That's more than NZF's own budget (although NZF would have got a small amount of that themselves).

Also, that means that ACFC receive approximately 5% of ALL gaming money going to football per annum.

Not having a dig at ACFC specifically but it really does illustrate how crazy and disconnected and lacking an overall strategy the funding of football in NZ is.

One of the interesting things I read a while ago is that Auckland Rugby gets major grant money (I think the figure is in the region of 2-3 million) and distributes that to the amateur clubs.  Not sure how they allocate that though and then how they track how that is spent downstream