Lori talked to an overhead presentation leading with generosity within New Zealand and the passion from New Zealanders.
There are 17 Acorn community groups within New Zealand.
Acorn has $200million invested and managed by Craig’s . This earns 3.5 -5% per annum depending on the risk that donors want. Since 2003 Acorn has been able to distribute over $10M to our community. This year amazingly due to Covid more money has been donated and Acorn will be able to distribute over $2M. The distributions to name a few include Mockingbird , Blind low vision NZ, St John Western BOP, Waipuna Hospice, The Hub Te Puke, Salvation Army, Brave hearts NZ, Phillips surf and rescue Trust, Kati Kati Community Centre, Graeme Dingle Foundation and Tauranga Women's Refuge.
Governance is spread across the community and donations come mainly in three categories – unrestricted, field of interest and donor directed.
One percent of the money that is directly donated goes to scholarships and awards. Regular gifting is also from smaller workplaces and they can be quite specific about where they would like the money to go.
Covid Response has caused Acorn to donate to local funders mainly food ,food, food ! Also work on the recovery accommodation has been needed.
Vote of thanks – Maria Fenton warmly thanked Lori for her informative delivery.
Past Presidents update -Steve Read
Steve Reed- making sure he was getting his allotted ten mins. Spoke about 15 years ago (June 2006 – 2007) as president of Sunrise rotary. This included Vietnam leprosy projects, fundraiser – selling a brand new Generation Homes that $20000 for SR and the start of Sky Diving where several of our members paid good money to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft this resulted in another $7000 for our club. Also there was heavy involvement in a South African project – creating a water pipeline to supply a village and school.
A mix of today in History and personal situations.
rofessor’ Thomas Baldwin landed safely by parachute from a balloon floating high above South Dunedin. The American acrobat had worked up a circus act using a trapeze and a hot-air balloon before making his first parachute jump a few years earlier, and subsequently toured the world as a paid entertainer.