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Te Awa Community Foundation
About Te Awa Community Foundation
Established in late 2018, our Foundation is a registered charitable organisation (CC56373). We exist to give our community a trusted, collaborative way to get bigger outcomes than they would working alone. It’s open to anyone and everyone who wants to support our region.
Te Awa means ‘the river’. The Manawatū, Rangitīkei and Whanganui rivers shape our landscape and connect our communities. Giving through Te Awa works in much the same way. It starts small, gathers strength as more people add to it, and can reach every corner of the region.
Our trustees are all volunteers, a cornerstone of how community foundations work.
The strength of a national network
We’re fully independent and locally run, but proud to be part of the Community Foundations of Aotearoa NZ network, drawing on the advice and lessons learnt from other community funds.
Community foundations are a proven model, with 18 foundations set up across Aotearoa New Zealand. They’re already looking after their patch, and it’s time we did the same.
Pooling and investing charitable donations for the good of a local area has been a growing global movement for more than a hundred years – which is why we want to build on this successful model. It’s about sustainable, intergenerational support for local communities. Through New Zealand’s Community Foundations, over $50 million has been granted to NZ communities in the past five years and today, over $240 million has been invested in endowment funds for the future.
“Community Foundations enable people to give back to their own communities and support local projects.” — Sir Stephen Tindall, Founder of the Tindall Foundation.