Kia ora koutou, greetings everyone,

I hope you enjoy this first newsletter in a while. We’ve been busy behind the scenes since our last one but quiet externally, and making this newsletter regular again is an important part of our plans to be more visible.

To recap on some important news from recent times, we’ve now fully completed our name change to ‘Top of the South Community Foundation’ from ‘Nelson Bays Community Foundation’, and have begun to rebrand materials in line with the rebranding of Community Foundations of New Zealand. I formally stepped into the Chair role for the 2019 AGM, and we launched a new strategy soon after.

In January 2020 we took on new office arrangements at the Mahitahi Colab at NMIT, and then the ‘reconnection event’ we’d planned for April 2020 was interrupted by the arrival of Covid-19 on the world scene. We’ve continued to respect social distancing themes since – not least because many of our donors and supporters are in at-risk age groups, and like many other New Zealanders we’ve become very proficient at video conferencing!

We launched a new membership programme mid 2020 (more on that elsewhere in this newsletter), and in August 2020 the Trustees were delighted to appoint Gavin Larsen to the Executive Officer role. Then in early September 2020 we appointed Kim McGettigan to the Admin Officer role, and the strategy to have the two part-time roles separated is already proving very valuable. (More on both Gavin and Kim also elsewhere in this newsletter.)
Throughout all of that we’ve continued to distribute grants to the community, have been working much closer with our national body, and have managed and grown our investment portfolio.

We continue to thank Duncan Cotterill and BNZ as core sponsors providing operational funding, and also Malloch McClean, Avoca Design and Independent Auditors as key ‘in-kind’ supporters.
I’d also like to personally thank my fellow Trustees Bill Agnew, Tim Saunders, Nick Moore and Dene Gavin for being an important part of our latest strategy, and I look forward to very soon welcoming Anissa Bain to the Board table.

As noted above, I hope you enjoy this newsletter, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch if there is anything more you’d like to know.

In closing I’d like to invite all readers of this newsletter to our AGM, on Tuesday 24th November, 5pm, at the BNZ Partner Centre, 226 Trafalgar Street, Nelson. Followed by drinks and nibbles.
RSVP to Kim - [email protected] please.

Ngā mihi, kind regards

Dave Ashcroft, Chair,

[email protected]