The ASB Community Trust recently provided $1 million in funding to local arts projects, including Black Grace, The Moving Image Centre and The Big Idea online community. We asked CEO Jenny Gill what was behind the Trust's generosity, and whether their major support of the arts is a trend for the future.

Image: Black Grace was recently granted $132,000.The ASB Community Trust recently provided $1 million in funding to local arts projects, including Black Grace, The Moving Image Centre and The Big Idea online community. We asked CEO Jenny Gill what was behind the Trust's generosity, and whether their major support of the arts is a trend for the future.

Image: Black Grace was recently granted $132,000.Isaac Davison: What drives ASB Community Trust to give money away?
Jenny Gill: The Trust is the pool of money from the sale of the Auckland Savings Bank to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. ASB Bank was started by a group of citizens who wanted to see Auckland develop in the 1860s. They had a passion for making Auckland a dynamic place to live.

Although the Trust is no longer part of the bank, this passion remains. The history and consequent sale of ASB Bank has lead to this extraordinary asset which we hold for the people of the region. The philosophy of the current trustees is that a dynamic arts and cultural centre is an important part of any developed, Western, democratic society.

Does the $1m injection of funding into the arts from the ASB Community Trust reflect a greater interest in the arts world?
Yes, it does. The recent arts grants reflect the strategic plan which the Trust adopted two years ago, which highlighted arts as an important area of focus. We also changed one of our policies, so that we were prepared to provide running costs for an organisation. Before this policy change, many arts groups were ineligible to apply for ASB Community Trust funding because running costs were the thing they needed the most.

What sort of applications do you favour?
In the last two and a half years, we have been the major non-governmental funder of the Auckland Museum renovations ($12.5m) and the development of the Auckland Art Gallery ($6.4m). Those are two examples of capital injections. But because of our size we are privileged to be able to provide funding for not only facilities but also operational funding. We do not have to trade off, say, a grant to the New Theatre Initiative against a salary for Black Grace. Operational grants are key in the creative sector because arts organisations often cannot pay their employees.

The Big Idea benefited from your latest funding round. Have any other media received grants?
No. However the ASB Community Trust is increasingly recognising that the web is one of the primary sources of communication for people under 40. It would have been slightly churlish of us not to fund The Big Idea, because its whole package made perfect sense to us. We will not send talented individuals to New York to learn to be opera singers, because it is simply too expensive. The Big Idea, on the other hand, fulfils the Trust's mission statement, which emphasises community access and focus. We are about getting people to engage with each other. We have a fundamental belief that we have a healthier society when people engage in whatever it is that is their passion.

What is your background in philanthropy?
In 1986 I began working for Roy McKenzie, who is arguably New Zealand's greatest philanthropist. He set up the Roy McKenzie Foundation, which was to run for ten years. At the end of ten years all the money - interest and capital - would be distributed. This is unusual in philanthropy, because usually people set up foundations in perpetuity.

I was employed to run the foundation. So for ten years I worked alongside a great philanthropic thinker. We basically encouraged people to come and bring us their dreams. I think that is what philanthropy is about. ASB Community Trust is not tied to government policy, and unlike corporates, we are not worried about the bottom line and return to shareholders. It is just an extraordinary community asset that you can be flexible and innovative with.

Should the government be giving more? Or is philanthropy a good role for private enterprise?
Philanthropy is an important part of a democratic society. Especially important is the idea of social capital and having a piece of your society which is the not-for-profit sector.

Peter Dunne has a very significant piece of legislation before parliament to increase the government's levels of charitable giving. I hope the current government is persuaded to pass this legislation, because New Zealand is way behind other comparable countries like Australia. New Zealand lost Jan Cameron, the founder of Kathmandu, to Australia, simply because she can be more philanthropic there.

Do you think there has been a cultural shift to increased giving?
In terms of philanthropy, there has been an increase. Take Jan Cameron, or Gareth Morgan, for example. They are two high-profile individual New Zealanders saying "I've got more than I need". Gareth Morgan talks about living in a house-truck with his kids, and has given away $47m. Jan Cameron is giving away $24m. So we are seeing a groundswell around philanthropy that we have not seen for a long time.

Do you feel your contributions are a drop in the bucket, or major changes? Do you think your grants are too scattered?
If you are a private philanthropist, you can channel your funds into one field. The Stephen Tindall foundation, for example, has identified five areas of funding he is interested in, and turns all other applications away. When I worked with Roy McKenzie he focused on children, people with disabilities, and the deaf. ASB Community Trust, on the other hand, has a broad mandate.

My grandmother and great-grandmother's savings were in ASB Bank - the people of Auckland had contributed to the bank for over a hundred years until it was sold. So we have a different obligation to be much more widespread than a family philanthropist.

The 12 regional Community Trusts are almost unique in the world. There is no other country which has chosen to sell assets and put them into this kind of ownership. We are forging a really interesting path -

Your website frequently refers to 'equity'. Is complete equity a reachable goal? Is this the Trust's absolute vision?
That is a big question. The vision of the Trust will change over time, shifting with the trustees. What we are saying with equity is that we have a responsibility to the whole region. If we were only thinking about equality, we might not fund the so-called elite arts. We recognise that some groups have a lot more access to resources than others, so it is important that those people that enjoy the opera and ballet get access to it. But it is also important that we inject funding at a grass roots level as well.

We were at the recent launch of the Refugees and Migrant strategy, and witnessed the changing face of Auckland: Somalians, Ethiopians, Pacific Islanders, black and white South Africans, people from Asia, Tanzania. New Zealand looks very different when standing in the main street of Invercargill to the main street of Auckland. We have to ask what this means for us as a country. These people have not just an economic need but something bigger - so the Trust might need to provide programmes which allow integration into the local community. Until there is equal opportunity for everyone our Trust is needed.

Check out ASB Trusts at www.ASBCommunityTrust.org.nz