Ideas Shop, is currently involved in a couple of projects around giving and generosity and have been talking about the topic in the office quite a bit.

Why do we give to charities and non profits? And how do we work out who to give to and how?

It’s raised some interesting questions about our giving behaviour as individuals. As a company we have a strong commitment to the sustainability of our community. We give up to 10% of revenue in pro bono and have a range of giving options for staff, including payroll giving and volunteer/ pro bono time for issues and causes that individual staff feel passionate about. But most of our giving, to this point, has been ad hoc, rather than planned.

The recent tax incentives introduced in the country around giving have increased the benefits of giving. These changes include:

• The introduction of payroll giving - where employees donate each payday and receive an immediate 33 percent tax credit through PAYE. (See www.payrollgivinginfo.org.nz for more information)
• The clarification of the tax treatment of reimbursement payments and honoraria to volunteers (reimbursement is tax-free)
• The removal of caps on the donations tax credit (individuals and companies can now claim tax credits on all donations).

Giving is not something for the rich alone – and in fact the stats show that it’s often those on lower incomes that give the most. Giving is actually part of sustaining our social and economic environment.

Whether we like it or not, we all benefit from the community and voluntary sector organisations delivering core services every day – sports clubs, recreation, social services, arts and culture all rely on donations and volunteers to deliver.

In fact, New Zealand is somewhat unique in that respect. Our government has devolved a huge number of services and operations to NGOs. Just think, there’s not many other countries in the world where the ambulance service is delivered by an NGO.

In turn, those community and voluntary organisations rely on multiple funding streams – donations, grants and government contracts to sustain themselves and their services. And even where they do get government funding, a report shows that for every $1 of taxpayer money, they are returning $5 - $7 of value. That’s a better return on investment than you get on most things at the moment.

I am looking forward to the time in New Zealand where planning our giving is just something we all do and are expected to do – as individuals and businesses. And the premise that ‘those who can give, should’ is ordinary, rather than extraordinary.