Charities in New Zealand – A Legal Handbook ParryField Lawyers are active in the non-profit sector and have recently published a legal handbook for charities. The handbook has sections on: Establishing your charity Operating Your charity Other legal issues Appendices on Impact Investing and Social Enterprises The handbook complements other Read more…
Steven Moe of ParryField Lawyers has published an article with the above title. It came out of a presentation he made at a “Religion and the Law” event last year. The article starts: In a gentle way, you can shake the world. – Mahatma Ghandi Governance for faith based organisations Read more…
Q: Our chairman is not transparent and makes decisions without even discussing with the other board members. Is this in line with the role of the chair? A: We cannot comment on specific cases, but the role of the chairman is covered in a number of resources (see, for example Read more…
LEAD – Centre for Not for Profit Governance and Leadership is currently undertaking a survey of NFP and community organisations’ Boards seeking to find out what good governance looks like in Aotearoa New Zealand. Read more about the survey here: https://www.lead.org.nz/news/2020/11/15/non-profit-and-community-governance-survey
We have started a new non-profit group and realise that we need to develop some formal policies. Can you point us towards a resource which may help? Platform | Atamira has published a very useful library of policies templates. While primarily aimed at mental health service providers, many of the Read more…
One-on-one online clinics available Charities Services and Hāpai Hapori Community Operations advise that they are holding online one-on-one clinics for charities every Thursday. “Come and talk to our team to get the answers to your questions about being a registered charity. We have a range of appointments available, depending on Read more…
In the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown, NFP Resource was engaged with the legal department at Companies Office over alternative arrangements for non-profits who were unable to meet. We were primarily concerned over annual accounts and returns but also about the legalities of meetings. We were able to respond with Read more…
Steven Moe and Craig Fisher are leading members of the NFP Community in NZ. They have collaborated on a thoughtful and insightful paper that “looks at challenges faced by the Covid-19 crisis, poses 7 hard questions we need to be asking and examines where the opportunities are.” From the Introduction: “Covid-19 Read more…
Asking “What is the “best” legal structure for a non-profit organisation” may be seen as the ‘how long is a piece of string’ type of question as the answer is far from straightforward and is dependent upon a number of factors. Indeed, in some cases, a not-for-profit organisation doesn’t even need Read more…
Q: Can you define a not for profit organisation? “There is no single agreed term that fully describes the nonprofit sector in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Rather, a number of terms are commonly used that refer to all or part of it. The application of these terms to organizations and to fields Read more…
As we approach (for most charities) the time to prepare annual reports, we felt that this article (first published by NZARCT) would be pertinent. A statement by Dan Dorset sums it up nicely: “I only donate to charities that demonstrate competence in efficiently and effectively pursuing their stated objectives.” This Read more…
We recently came across a thoughtful article onthe Forbes website which, although written from the American perspective, has direct applicability to the NZ situation. The article is by John MacIntosh, and starts: “For many people, the last few weeks have been a time of holidays, getting together with family, New Read more…