It’s time our sector stepped up and spoke out
Too much has happened to our sector without good consultation and involvement with the sector. Budget 2026 reshaped the ground a lot of us are standing on: $410 million in savings out of the Ministry of Social Development over four years, including scaled-back emergency housing support and solo parent employment assistance, alongside a $27 million cut to arts, culture and heritage that's hit RNZ, Creative New Zealand and Heritage New Zealand. There are some genuine wins buried in there, including a much higher tax-free threshold for smaller not-for-profits from 2027, but you don't have to be Gloriavale to feel your charitable or not-for-profit tax treatment has been under threat this year. The overall picture is one of real strain in some parts of the sector and plain relief in others, unevenly spread.
The Community Constellation, a network of 25 sector peak bodies convened by Hui E!, didn't hold back in its response, calling it a Budget that "asks those with the least to sacrifice the most" and warning that "this disinvestment is not abstract; it is deepening poverty, eroding resilience, and fraying the fabric of our communities." Among their calls to government was one that sits right at the heart of this issue: properly resource the public sector to genuinely engage with communities, instead of deciding things and telling us afterwards. Link
That pattern of governments deciding first and explaining later shows up elsewhere too. The Lottery Grants restructure, rolled out from 1 July with a tighter legal entity requirement for eligibility, landed on the organisations it affects most with very little visible consultation beforehand Link. Representatives of our sector had to point out errors in their allocations and while the Minister got an apology, our sector had to ask for acknowledgment that Lottery & DIA had made a mistake and needed to take corrective action.
And that was hot on the heels of the discovery that pokie trusts have been diverting money meant for our sector elsewhere: the Department of Internal Affairs found up to $28 million meant for community grants had been misspent, with about three-quarters of the country's 32 trusts showing some non-compliance and roughly a third engaging in what DIA called "creative accounting," prioritising their own growth over community benefit. One Foundation, the only trust named publicly, had its operator's licence suspended for six days. Trusts have now committed $11.5 million back to community organisations, with DIA saying as much as $20 million more could still be recovered. (RNZ, RNZ follow-up)
This isn't an isolated pattern. Submission fatigue is real right now, with change after change pushed through Parliament at pace and often under urgency, with little pause to test the practical effect on some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. That pattern has already played out in several MSD changes that have stripped benefits from people who needed them to survive. The apologies that followed aren't meaningless, but in the meantime, some people would have gone without food or heating.
Our organisations exist to support wellbeing and citizenship. That's not a side note to our work, it's the point of it. So if we want a future government that actually talks to us and keeps our sector's interests at heart, we need to show up now, while the decisions about who governs are still being made. Three things we're asking every organisation reading this to do before 7 November:
Get your people enrolled. Under the new electoral rules, anyone not enrolled by 25 October won't be able to vote at all, not even on the day. ActionStation's Tāiki ē campaign is the biggest community-led push on this in the country's history, and community organisations are often the most trusted messengers people have for something like this. (Together for the Vote)
Get your communities out voting. Tapasā's recent Haumi Ē hui offered a reframe worth borrowing: voting as an act of service to your whānau, your village, your community, not just a political act. Use the relationships and trust you already have, and help people make an actual plan for where, when and how they'll vote.
Join a regional or national network so our voice carries further than any one organisation can manage alone. Hui E!', CNA, SSPA and NZCCSS are all examples of peak bodies that bring community organisations together to speak with the government as a collective. There are also strong regional networks and sector specific national organisations that speak out too. A joint voice is harder to ignore than a single submission, and it's how the Lotteries pushback above actually happened.
None of this means stepping outside your charitable purpose or risking your registration. Charities Services has just put out fresh guidance on political activity during the election, and the short version is that you can do more than most boards think: forums, surveys, questions to every party, encouraging people to vote, so long as it stays tied to your purpose and doesn't tip into endorsing anyone. The bigger tension, the one the guidance doesn't fully resolve, is the gap between what the law now allows since the Greenpeace decision and what funding contracts and old habits still make people afraid to do. (Charities Services guidance) It's not just that we're allowed to advocate for the people and causes we serve. It's our obligation to speak as clearly as we can about the laws and policies that don't work, or that cause real harm to the people we stand alongside every week of the year.
None of this is easy to lead through, and it asks something extra of the people carrying it. So it's worth asking yourself plainly: who is actually in your corner right now, and when did you last ask them for something?
A fair and functioning democracy needs a sector that's willing to use its voice and confident it's allowed to. Get your people enrolled, get them voting, and get your organisation connected to others doing the same. That's how future governments learn to talk to us properly, and keep our sector's interests at heart.