The grift of good intentions
Is Mike King just another one cashing in on the charity gravy train?
When it comes to New Zealand charities, we have seen the same story play out again and again. Big promises, bigger pay packets, and little accountability. The latest example is Mike King’s I Am Hope Foundation, which somehow managed to boost executive pay by 80 percent while claiming to fight for struggling young people.
After pocketing $24 million in public funding over four years, a deal that even the Auditor-General said sidestepped proper process, the charity’s executive salaries ballooned from $290,000 to more than half a million dollars. All this while the number of counselling sessions fell.
King’s defenders say he works long hours, but that does not justify a charity becoming a personal payday. Real community organisations, the small grassroots ones that actually see the pain and desperation up close, are shutting their doors because they cannot get a fraction of that funding. Yet I Am Hope cannot even spend all the money it has been handed.
It is a familiar pattern. The government signs over millions with little scrutiny, a famous face fronts it, and when the numbers do not add up we are told to look the other way because it is “for the kids”. Meanwhile, the executives walk away well paid, and the mental health crisis stays exactly where it has always been.
If I Am Hope truly wants to restore public trust, it should open its books, cap executive salaries, and prove every dollar goes where it is supposed to. That means to the young people it claims to serve, not to the people cashing in on their pain.
Thank you for writing about "The Grift of Good Intentions", Matua Kahurangi. We - the tax paying public of New Zealand - know so very little about the cash delivery carriages that are pulled behind the charity gravy train in this country. In fact I believe few are aware that charities and not-for-profits are very lucrative businesses in New Zealand, and have been since 1940 when income they derive became tax-exempt. Examples are churches e.g. Seventh-day Adventist and Christian Community (formerly Open Brethren) and trusts e.g. Queenstown’s Shotover Jet, Taupō’s Hukafalls Jet and Rotorua’s Agrodome. Then there is Ngāi Tahu Holdings who are Sealord's biggest shareholders, and, Kellogg's and Hubbards who pay tax on their profits and fringe benefits while their competitor, Sanitarium, does not because it is part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Makes no sense, and is definitely not fair. Little wonder that registering a charity or not-for-profit attracts some uncharitable people.
It's actually obscene that charities pay any of their staff that much. Agree there needs to be more scrutiny and tighter controls around spending in any organisation that's registered as a charity and receives large sums of taxpayer funding. In recent years I've started looking into any organisation I'm thinking of providing a donation too, so I understand what portion of every dollar actually ends up being spent on the target. Surprising just how much many of them spend on salaries and administration.