Past President Pat opened the meeting (standing in for Warren).
Announcements:
- It is Warren Scobie’s third Rotary anniversary
- There has been discussion around cricket rubbish collection (about us doing it again this season) with the sticking point to progress being the gap between what they are willing to pay and what we are willing to accept.
- The Te Papa club have accepted the challenge for the District Governor’s Shield, with a 10-Pin bowling competition coming up on October 16. We will need teams of four to defend the shield.
- Pat visited Barry Vercoe this week and reports that he is looking much improved. Barry sends his thanks for all the visits and contacts and is in ward 3C if anyone else is able to call in. (UPDATE: I called in see Barry after today’s meeting. I can confirm that he is in good spirits BUT would really value more visits from Club members. I can echo this sentiment from when I was in the same ward – Dave)
- Mary reports that Liz Rapson is stable at the moment
- Pat and nine other Rotarians attended the Graeme Dingle Excellence awards evening on Wednesday and Pat says is was a great event.
Greg Brownless, in his Mayoral role (and chain) then conferred New Zealand citizenship on Barry Fredheim, who took the oath to the Queen and was congratulated by the club on this milestone in his life.
Les Geraghty reported that Treasured Art has reached the artwork selection stage, with over 80 pieces to choose from at the selection meeting.
Les also mentioned the ‘This is Us’ initiative, which has a stakeholders meeting on Wednesday of the coming week.
Last from Les, the ‘New to the Bay’ expo is on this coming Saturday, September 28, and members are welcome to attend and support our booth there.
Glenn Dougal warned members to check numbers in the badge box as they may have changed.
Glenn also spoke to the November 1 Breakfast event in the Carris Crystal Palace. The theme is celebrating 30 years of women in Rotary, the venue is outside Baycourt and the door will open at 6:30am for a 7:00am start. Tickets are $55, with a credit for the usual cost of breakfast. It is a normal Club meeting so don't forget to apologize if you aren't going. There are 250 tickets to sell. Flyers will be out next week and the guest speaker is Marilyn Waring.
Dan Allen-Gordon reported that the Graeme Dingle Excellence awards evening on Wednesday went very well. He thanked those Rotarians who were able to attend and the club in general for the support given to this initiative.
The upcoming youth debate that Dan was organising is cancelled and there will be refunds to come. An alternative fundraiser is ‘Ocean to Sky’, the Sir Edmund Hilary story, at the Rialto on October 20, tickets $20.
Pauline Cowens reminded everyone to read and give feedback on the ‘This is Us’ proposal. She will also be sending an email for volunteers to sign up for the ‘New to the Bay’ stand on Saturday.
Speaker
Lisa Phillips introduced our guest speaker, Bill Murphy
from Enterprise Angels. Bill founded Enterprise Angels in 2008 and since then the organisation has grown to over 150 investor members and 16 corporate members, two funds and an online investment platform (Angel Equity). To date, members have invested $9.5 million in 30 companies, with a particular focus on innovative companies in the horticulture, dairy, agriculture, food, and animal productivity industries.
Bill began by outlining his philosophy on investment that makes a difference for community and country. Twelve years ago raising capital for new ventures involved finding and phoning the ‘local rich guy’ and pitching your business. IT innovation was happening and there was a need for a more organised investment approach. Bill facilitated that linking between investors and start up companies.
Recently Bill has looked for a new challenge and has moved into the area of ‘Impact Investment’ – where projects, organisations and companies look not just to succeed but to do so while creating social or environmental change for good. The two fields that Bill gave examples in were farming with better environmental impact and horticulture with social good for those engaging in it. Dairying with better environmental practices and horticulture in partnership with iwi.
Overseas models engage the philanthropic sector to undertake impact investment. In New Zealand there have been a few individuals in this field, Steven Tindall, Graeme Dingle being examples but Bill looked for other philanthropic funding sources. He observed that local regional community trusts hold billions of dollars, existing to benefit local communities.
However, these trusts have traditionally invested, through advisors, across the world and returned only the dividends/ profits to the local community. This meant that 99% of their funds were not available to the community. The paradigm shift Bill has worked to introduce is trusts actually investing 1,2 or 3% of their capital in local communities as well as distributing profits, both in their own and other geographical areas.
Bill gave the examples of TECT and Bay Trust being billion dollar organisations and now, along
with WEL Energy, investing $4 million each into impact investment this year. There is a goal of having $30 million available for investment by January 2020.
Bill has also engaged with the commercial sector and sees impact investment as complementary to government and philanthropic sector work in supporting sustainability and scalability of businesses and the public good they can do.
Individuals can also invest, with a minimum investment of $100,000.
Question time brought two questions:
Specific examples of initiatives? Film studio in Rotorua and Horticulture in the Bay, co-housing development in Christchurch
Timeframe and returns? Bill outlined the annual, 1 to 4 year and 6 to 7 year goals.
Wayne Shadbolt thanked Bill for his talk and for the work done by Enterprise Angels.
Sergeant: Ursula HurnUrsula noted that she was a last minute stand-in for a stand-in (Jane Nees, Bob Sutton) and then read us a list of very strange facts, some of which were:
- An 80 year study of ostriches has not found one that buried its head in the sand
- Donald Duck was once banned in the UK for not wearing pants
- 93,000 litres of beer are lost to facial hair each year in Britain
- 10 times less sharks bite people annually in New York than people do
The raffle was not won by Dave Woodhouse, but by Ron Fyfe (although in the shock of it not being Dave, I may have recorded that wrongly)
.
In closing, Pat reminded us that Friday Fives, despite Ken White being with us this week, will be next week. Also for the diary, the New to the Bay Expo is on 28 September, the Ten Pin bowling shield defence is on October 16 and Crystal Palace tickets for November 1 are out now.
He also acknowledged Barry as a citizen of New Zealand one more time.
And finally...................
A thief stuck a pistol in a man's ribs and said, "Give me your money." The man, shocked by the sudden attack, said, "You can’t do that, I'm a Cabinet Minister. The thief replied, "In that case, give me MY money!"
