Case study: How Te Rourou One Aotearoa Foundation does corporate giving
Juliet Jones, the chair of Te Rourou One Aotearoa Foundation, One New Zealand's registered charity, and a member of the company’s executive team responsible for sustainability, shares how Te Rourou operates within the corporate space, while creating impact for its communities.
“I feel like there’s a massive untapped opportunity between business and philanthropy, and many of us haven’t even begun to explore that. I see huge potential for how business and corporates can support our communities.”
In 2002, Vodafone, as it was then, was the largest mobile telecommunications company in the world. It decided to set up charities within its operating companies around the globe – from Kenya, to Egypt, to Hungary, and yes, New Zealand. The directive was for each company to donate a certain amount of its profits to its local charity.
“Fast forward to today, 21 years later, and we’re still here, which is amazing in itself, given the change this company has been on in New Zealand, and how changed the philanthropic world in New Zealand is,” says Juliet.
Te Rourou is set up as a separate structure, although it sits within the One New Zealand group. It has six trustees, three of whom are executives – including Juliet – while the other three are independent. Juliet says while it’s important that the charity be independent, it’s also important to be part of the business, to be visible and valued. “There’s a really important point around questions around autonomy versus being part of the corporate machine – where do things sit on that spectrum? There is no one answer to that. It evolves as both the company and foundation evolve over time.”
Juliet says there have been two pivotal moments within the foundation’s lifespan so far. “The first was probably between five and 10 years in, when the charity decided to narrow the focus on what we would get behind, to really channel our activity in a much more focused way. To do that we went out to our people – now between 2000 and 3000 employees and partners – and we said, ‘What is it that you think we should focus on? What should we get in behind?’ The resounding feedback was ‘young people’. That’s where our people felt the strongest connection.
“We decided to pivot our funding and our approach, everything, toward supporting youth and rangatahi. We had several different programmes with different ways we could benefit young people, all working through individuals or community partners on the ground. The foundation is a small team, so we chose to support partners or individuals who have a vision or a dream we can get behind.
“The second point was in 2017. We were there, doing this work for young people, but it was a hard problem to tackle for New Zealand – trying to lift young people up and empower them, and give them the opportunities they deserve. So, we thought, ‘How do we do this in a better way?’ We decided we would embark on a place-based approach – we would go to a part of Aotearoa that would be receptive to a corporate like One New Zealand, still then Vodafone, coming in. We decided we would go somewhere that wanted our help, given in the right way. We thought we’d talk to
government, to policy makers. We’d go in and test and learn, and work with community partners. We also used a whole lot of data to inform where we should focus.”
With the “big, hairy, audacious” goal to halve the number of excluded and disadvantaged young people in Aotearoa by 2027, the first place-based focus turned out to be Invercargill – a potentially controversial decision for an Auckland-based company, Juliet says – with plans to expand our learnings to other regions over time.
“We could see there were young people in Invercargill without access to the things they need to thrive, without connectivity, without access to the internet. We wanted to use the business to get in behind to help these young people.
“We've now got three team members working on the ground in Invercargill, plus a large organisation full of really creative people – marketing, sales, designers, brand – and we can tap into that big pool of resources. People from our Auckland office volunteer to go to Invercargill to help us co-create, to find solutions alongside young people, and alongside our community partners. That ‘collaboration’ word comes into play here.”
Te Rourou is now in year two of working on the Invercargill Initiative, which includes a strategic partnership with Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, with the aim of increasing digital connectivity within the iwi, and boosting diversity in the wider technology sector.
“We have a high-trust model, which conflicts with what you might often see in businesses. We try to keep our application process as simple as possible. We do enough due diligence, then we fund, with enough checking in to be comfortable that we have the right principles and ethics attached to that. But we are high trust because we know our community partners know best how to spend that money, how to get the best return from it. That’s their expertise.”
Te Tiriti o Waitangi also figures deeply within the foundation’s model. “We are committed to rangatahi, and therefore there can be nowhere in this space where we’re not committed to Te Tiriti. So, we decided, as a board, to develop a policy outlining our commitment to the treaty. This goes to everything – to our board, how we fund, how we engage with community partners. The wider business really liked what we did with that, so it now has a similar policy, too. One New Zealand has borrowed so much thought leadership from the foundation, and I’m proud of that.”
Another turning point came in 2019. “That’s when Vodafone decided to sell its New Zealand operation. That was a big change for the company, and we wondered what it would be mean for the foundation. Actually, it was a massive opportunity. This year we were bought 100% by Infratil, an iconic New Zealand-based company which sees its role as being good long-term stewards of the businesses, assets, and people that it invests in. We are now fully based in New Zealand. We are wrapping ourselves around young people in New Zealand, and we are here 100%. That was huge for us. It shows how some of the dynamics happening in the corporate and executive world can impact on how charities work.”
Juliet says they have learned a lot over that time, especially around the business-charity relationship. “First of all, you must identify what your shared value is: What does your charity want to achieve? What's its vision, and what does your corporate, your key partner, want to achieve? How do those things connect? If you don't have that clear, and if everyone doesn’t understand that and hold themselves true to that, you will diverge over time. In my experience it’s very hard to come back from that. It requires a lot of pulling.”
That’s why it’s critical to maintain a strong and durable bridge between the business and the charity, maintaining communication, Juliet says, talking about the charity’s work and impacts, storytelling with internal and external audiences.
“We have dedicated a role to being this bridge, leveraging both sides, going both ways. If you don't spend time on maintaining that bridge, investing in someone to fill that role, you risk the business and charity diverging. For us that person’s job is to leverage the power of One New Zealand, and then leverage the work of the foundation going back the other way. And it works. For our business, when we ask, ‘What is the one thing you're most proud of working at One New Zealand?’ without doubt, they say, ‘the foundation’. And that's not by accident – that's because we spend the time to talk about what we do in the right way. We share our case studies, and we share the impact we are having.”
The value of that is particularly essential during times of cost cutting, when tensions can rise between the corporate and the charity. “If you are just a line item on the P&L that says, ‘Foundation, $2 million per year’, which is what we are, it can be questioned.” That’s when charities must have their bridges strong, their people behind them, and their stories ready to demonstrate their impact.
“There’s a short versus long-term way to navigate this. You're lucky if your business is looking out three, four, five, six years and beyond, as most businesses are just focusing on their performance in the year ahead, and meeting whatever targets they’ve got to meet. That short-term view conflicts with what we in the foundation are trying to do, which is to create long-term, enduring social change. So if I get a CFO or a CEO who says, ‘Show me the ROI on that $2 million’, I'm open and I say: ‘I haven't got it for you. Sorry, there is no ROI on that. What I can do is show you the impact we're having through our community partners for New Zealand’. That then plays into how you communicate the work you're doing and what stories you are telling.”
Juliet says she’s been “blessed” that both CEOs during her time at One New Zealand have been “100% behind” the foundation. “They’re personally connected and have been personally involved, and we draw on them as much as we can. You must have processes, systems, policies, funding – everything is set up and enduring beyond whatever changes happen at the top.”
And because the workforce is fully behind the foundation, too, it’s harder for leadership changes to affect the charity. “The work of our foundation is to create long-term, systematic social change. We work hard to ensure that our people are engaged in that, so they understand that, and that they have ways to get practically involved. Our branding and marketing teams also see our value and often help amplify our stories.”
Juliet’s top three tips when setting up a foundation:
Identify your shared values and/or outcomes – hold them publicly and hold them true, otherwise there’s a risk of wandering away from those shared values. “For example, when the business is resetting its ‘plan on a page’ and what its vision is going to be, you must have someone from the charity in that room going, ‘Where do we show up? What's this going to mean for the charity?’ For us, building an ‘awesome Aotearoa’ means our commitment to communities and our commitment to young people.”
Build a bridge and keep it strong – bridges can be built but can also be eroded over time. “Always be thinking, ‘How do we both leverage off each other, leverage off the strengths of each other?’”
Continue to tell the story – in a big corporate a charity can easily get lost in the noise of the business, so keep telling its story, keep it alive. “Invest time in communicating your story, whether that's on your website, through case studies, reports, speaking at conferences, making videos, capturing people’s attention. Check in on your partners and tell their stories – it’s a two-way partnership with them, too.”