For every one of our founder’s dollars Share My Super spends, we aim to raise and distribute at least four. Here’s how.

In an incredible end to our year, Share My Super has been gifted investment that will fund all its future costs to help alleviate child poverty in New Zealand by founder Elizabeth Greive. Liz is not only a generous philanthropist, she’s as innovative as any punky start-up.

Share My Super raises awareness and donations for 11 child poverty charities from superanuants (pensioners) that don’t need some or all of their (un-means tested) pensions. Everyone over 65 here in New Zealand is eligible. Compared to most OECD countries, New Zealand has one of the wealthiest cadres of pensioners but also some of the most poverty stricken children. So Share My Super connects those dots and encourages wealthier older people to help struggling children through existing curated charities already on the ground and making a difference.

In the four years since its inception, Liz has funded all costs and now she will into the future. Her bequest of $10 million will generate investment returns each year to keep the fund raising going. Full story here.

She could of course have just donated that $10 million directly to the charities we support, but we calculate that for every dollar invested through Share My Super to underpin the fundraising and awareness building, that at least four dollars goes to the charities on the ground.

Wealthier, older New Zealanders are generous and fair minded and we have proven that they will respond heartily to her call. But this growing demographic unfairness at the heart of a country that in so many other ways is the epitome of fairness, requires a constant spotlight combined with this novel mechanism to encourage people to help address it.

Innovation and new business models take vision and guts in business, but they require all that and incredible generosity and personal fortitude in emotive areas like child poverty. Not all New Zealanders like being reminded of this dark underbelly!

So thanks to Liz for securing our future; to our new CEO Rachel Scott for driving that future and to my fellow board member Nicola O’Rourke for keeping things on track this year. And thanks to all our brilliant agencies and supporters and of course our community of generous donors.

For more information and, of course, donations, please visit: https://sharemysuper.org.nz/