Our pūtea/endowment and grants budget levels - no change

Peter Tynan, our CEO, today provided assurance to our communities that, in the current (COVID-19) conditions, our pūtea or endowment, and our ability to make grants from the returns on our investments, are resilient to the current situation.

"Our granting depends on our investments, we take expert advice and we have a 'diversified' portfolio," said Peter.  "Fundamentally this means not all our eggs are in one basket.  In current conditions everyone is going to see their investments drop in value, we are no different; but the diversified portfolio should mean our drop in value is less than if we had all our investments in shares (for example).  We are also a “long term” investor, this means we will have good years (like last year) and we will have bad years (like this year), but the portfolio is designed to allow for a fairly constant level of granting over time, at least the next two years.  In the end, the Trustees will make the call but there is no intention at the moment to change overall grants budget levels."

Read more on our Investment Approach page.

Find out how we are working through COVID-19 here.