A-Infos (en) NZ, Aotearoa, AWSM: The Polar Blast - A Local Story About Global Money (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

How New Zealand's oldest fossil fuel dynasty plugged into a global 
philanthropy machine and used it to shape democracy while pretending to 
give back ---- PART ONE · THE TEMPLATE ---- In 1996, a senior executive 
at Koch Industries published a short article in an American philanthropy 
magazine that would become one of the most influential documents in the 
history of corporate political strategy. Richard Fink, the company's 
chief lobbyist and political architect, laid out what he called a 
"Structure of Social Change." The idea was elegant and predatory. You 
begin, Fink wrote, by investing in the production of ideas, fund 
universities and research institutes to generate intellectual frameworks 
that serve your interests. Then you invest in think tanks and policy 
organisations to translate those ideas into policy proposals. Finally 
you invest in citizen implementation groups  advocacy organisations that 
take those proposals to politicians and to the public, wearing the 
credible face of civic society rather than the self-interested face of a 
corporation.
Charles and David Koch had inherited a fossil fuel empire built on oil 
refining, pipelines and petrochemicals. Over the following two decades 
they spent hundreds of millions of dollars building Fink's structure, 
funding the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland 
Institute, dozens of university economics departments, and a 
constellation of advocacy groups and political action committees. The 
result was a shadow infrastructure that delayed US climate legislation 
by years, arguably decades, while presenting itself as a network of 
independent thinkers committed to liberty and prosperity.
The Koch model was not unique to America. Variants of it have been 
documented in the United Kingdom, where a cluster of anonymously funded 
organisations on London's Tufton Street, the Global Warming Policy 
Foundation, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the TaxPayers' Alliance, 
have been traced by investigative journalists to fossil fuel donors and 
Koch-linked foundations. In Australia, the resources industry has used 
think tanks and philanthropic vehicles to shape mining and energy policy 
for decades. The pattern is consistent enough to have acquired a name in 
academic literature: "philanthrocapitalism"  the use of charitable 
giving as infrastructure for the maintenance of the conditions that 
produced the donor's wealth.
New Zealand has largely assumed this model operates elsewhere. It is a 
small country, close-knit, relatively transparent, with a political 
culture that tends toward pragmatic consensus rather than ideological 
combat. The brutal infrastructure of American dark money, the super 
PACs, the anonymously funded think tanks, the billionaire-funded 
networks, feels foreign here, a product of a more polarised, more 
corrupted democracy.
It should feel less foreign. Because twelve thousand kilometres from 
Koch Industries' Kansas headquarters, in a glass-and-concrete building 
on Wellington's waterfront, a structurally similar arrangement has been 
quietly operating for more than thirty years, smaller in scale, politer 
in tone, and almost entirely invisible to public scrutiny.
This is the story of the Todd Foundation, Philanthropy New Zealand, and 
the global network that connects them. It is a story about following 
money, from gas wells in Taranaki to community grants in South Auckland 
to policy submissions in Wellington to the G20 in Rio. It is a story 
about what philanthropy actually does, as distinct from what it says it 
does. And it is a story about the specific, measurable ways in which 
private wealth uses the language of generosity to protect itself from 
democratic accountability.

PART TWO · THE DYNASTY

The Todd family story begins in 1885, when a Scottish immigrant named 
Charles Todd opened a wool-scouring business in the Central Otago town 
of Heriot. The business evolved over the following decades into motor 
vehicles, then into oil. In 1955, the family entered a joint venture 
with Shell and BP to explore for petroleum in Taranaki, the venture that 
would discover the Kapuni gas field and transform the Todds from a 
prosperous provincial family into one of New Zealand's wealthiest 
private dynasties.
Today, Todd Corporation is a privately held conglomerate, 100 percent 
owned by approximately 51 shareholders across around 20 family trusts. 
It does not publish accounts. It is not listed on any stock exchange. 
There are no outside institutional shareholders, no annual general 
meetings, no analyst calls, no public disclosure requirements beyond 
what the law strictly demands. The company's core businesses are Todd 
Energy, which explores for and produces oil and natural gas in Taranaki; 
and Nova Energy, which retails electricity and gas to New Zealand homes 
and businesses and owns gas-fired peaking generation. In 2021, the 
Environmental Protection Authority's greenhouse gas emissions data 
listed Todd Corporation among New Zealand's six worst-emitting 
companies, in the same cohort as Fonterra and the country's major fuel 
importers.
In 2023, Todd's subsidiary Nova Energy sought resource consents to build 
a new gas-fired power plant in Southland. The Green Party called on the 
government to exercise its powers to review the project, citing its 
conflict with New Zealand's climate targets. Climate Justice Taranaki, a 
community-based environmental group, has held protests outside Todd 
Energy offices. In submissions to the government's own productivity and 
energy consultations, Todd Corporation has argued that the Emissions 
Trading Scheme settings "should accommodate ongoing natural gas use," 
and has explicitly stated it does not support government recommendations 
to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.
This is the corporation whose profits fund the Todd Foundation.

The Foundation
The Todd Foundation was established in 1972 as an independent charitable 
trust. It describes its mission as working toward "an inclusive Aotearoa 
New Zealand where all families, children and young people can thrive and 
contribute." Its approach, shaped over decades, is relationship-based 
and proactive: it does not run open grant rounds or accept unsolicited 
applications. Instead, it identifies its funding recipients through its 
own environmental scanning, research and community engagement. In 2024, 
it gave approximately $2.5 million to community organisations working on 
housing, child poverty, food security, youth employment and Maori-led 
development.
These are real grants to real organisations doing genuine work. The 
Child Poverty Action Group received $90,000. The community development 
network Inspiring Communities received $300,000. Kootuitui ki Papakura, 
which supports whanau and schools in South Auckland, received $150,000. 
Looking at the Foundation's grant list is, in one sense, 
straightforwardly heartening: this is money going to organisations that 
need it, doing things that matter.
But the Foundation's own disclosures reveal something the heartening 
framing tends to obscure. The Foundation states on its website that 
"Todd and the Todd Family Office generously provide financial and 
in-kind support for our operating expenses, including accommodation, HR, 
IT and investment management." The Foundation is based at Level 15, Todd 
Building, 95 Customhouse Quay  the Todd Corporation headquarters. Its 
Operations Lead most recently worked at Todd Corporation before joining 
the Foundation. Its investments, the assets that generate its income for 
granting, are managed by the same family office that manages the 
corporation's investments.
The Foundation's claim to independence from the corporation that houses 
it, staffs it and manages its money is difficult to sustain. But that 
claim of independence is not merely an awkward PR problem. It is the 
legal and moral foundation on which the Foundation's charitable status 
rests, and on which its Executive Director's role at the peak body for 
New Zealand philanthropy depends.

PART THREE · THE PIPELINE

Seumas Fantham has been Executive Director of the Todd Foundation since 
2015. He is of Ngati Porou and Whakatohea descent, holds a degree in 
Education and Sociology, and has more than twenty years of experience 
working with young people and community groups. He is well-regarded in 
the sector, thoughtful, articulate, and genuinely committed to the 
communities the Foundation funds. Nothing in this investigation suggests 
otherwise.
He is also Chair of Philanthropy New Zealand, the peak body that sets 
standards for, and advocates on behalf of, New Zealand's entire 
grant-making sector. He holds this position while being employed by one 
of PNZ's member organisations. He holds it while his employer funds 
PNZ's programmes. And he holds it while PNZ argues to government, in 
formal submissions, against the regulatory measures that would most 
directly constrain foundations like the one he runs.
This is not accidental. The Todd family's presence at the leadership of 
New Zealand's philanthropic peak body is not a coincidence or a matter 
of individual ambition. It is a pipeline, built over thirty-five years, 
through which the family's interests in the philanthropic sector have 
been consistently represented at the highest level.

The pipeline, traced
Philanthropy New Zealand was established in 1990. Among its founding 
figures was Sir John Todd, the patriarch who had chaired Todd 
Corporation from 1987 until his retirement in 2011, who had been present 
for the joint venture with Shell and BP that made the family's fossil 
fuel fortune, and who was, by the time of PNZ's founding, one of New 
Zealand's most prominent philanthropists. Sir John helped shape PNZ's 
founding culture and direction. He sat on its founding board. The 
organisation's values, its approach to philanthropy, its relationship 
with government, all were formed in an era when the Todd family was 
centrally present.
From 2005 to 2015, the Todd Foundation's Executive Director was Kate 
Frykberg. During her decade at the Foundation, Frykberg held governance 
roles at Philanthropy New Zealand and eventually became its Chair. On 
leaving the Foundation she noted she would continue her PNZ governance 
roles. She is now an Honorary Member of PNZ, a category appointed by 
PNZ's own board. She runs a consultancy called Tumanako Consultants, 
which delivers the Ki te Hoe leadership training programme in 
partnership with PNZ. She is also Chair of Te Muka Rau, a family 
foundation on whose board Fantham also sits.
When Frykberg left the Todd Foundation in 2015, Fantham arrived. He 
joined PNZ's board. He became its Chair. The pipeline from Todd 
Corporation's Taranaki gas fields to PNZ's Wellington boardroom has run, 
without meaningful interruption, for more than three decades: from Sir 
John Todd's founding involvement, through Frykberg's decade of 
leadership and chairmanship, to Fantham's current dual role. Three 
different people. One continuous institutional relationship.
There is nothing illegal about any of this. New Zealand has no law 
preventing a foundation director from chairing the peak body that 
represents his foundation's sector. There is no requirement for a 
conflicts-of-interest register, no mandatory recusal process, no public 
disclosure framework that would make any of these relationships visible 
in one place. The pipeline operates in the open, in the sense that the 
information is technically available to anyone who looks carefully 
enough. But it is not visible in any of the ways that democratic 
accountability requires  no single document, no regulatory disclosure, 
no journalistic or parliamentary scrutiny has yet connected the dots.

PART FOUR · LOBBYING IN PLAIN SIGHT

In January 2026, Philanthropy New Zealand submitted a formal response to 
Inland Revenue's consultation on the taxation of the not-for-profit 
sector. The submission, signed by PNZ's Acting Chief Executive and 
approved by a board chaired by the Todd Foundation's Executive Director, 
opposed three proposed accountability measures for the philanthropic sector.
The first was a proposal to introduce special rules for 
"donor-controlled charities  foundations where a single donor or family 
retains significant influence over governance and operations. The 
proposed rules included arm's-length transaction requirements and caps 
on donation tax credits. The Todd Foundation, funded by Todd family 
donations, housed in the family's corporate building, with operating 
costs paid by the family office, is precisely the type of entity these 
rules target. PNZ's submission argued the rules would "create a 
perception of mistrust toward philanthropists" and that the evidence 
base for intervention was insufficient.
The second measure was a minimum annual distribution requirement of 5 
percent of net assets  a standard already applied to private foundations 
in Australia and Canada, designed to prevent charitable wealth from 
accumulating indefinitely without flowing to the communities it is 
supposed to serve. PNZ's submission stated it "does not support the 
imposition of a minimum distribution requirement," arguing the model was 
"incompatible with local frameworks."
The third was a cap on donation tax credits for large donations to 
donor-controlled charities  the mechanism by which the Todd family's 
donations to the Todd Foundation currently generate tax relief funded by 
ordinary New Zealand taxpayers. PNZ opposed this as well.
The submission acknowledged it was "informed by our funder members", 
meaning the same organisations whose employees and executives approved 
it. It did not disclose that the chairman of the board that approved the 
submission was employed by an organisation that would be directly and 
materially affected by the measures it opposed. PNZ does not publish a 
conflicts-of-interest register. No recusal process is publicly documented.

Manufacturing consensus
The January 2026 submission is not anomalous. PNZ's advocacy pattern is 
consistent across years and policy areas, and the technique it uses to 
amplify that advocacy has attracted little public attention.
During the 2019 review of the Charities Act, the legislation that 
governs all registered charities in New Zealand, PNZ produced not only 
its own formal submission but also a template submission for its members 
to file alongside PNZ's own. The website note accompanying the template 
was explicit, "The more voices on the key issues, the better. Our 
collective voice will then have a bigger impact on government 
decision-makers." The Charities Act submission itself was funded by the 
Combined Community Trusts of New Zealand PNZ's own member organisations.
Government consultation assumes independent voices. What the Department 
of Internal Affairs received during the Charities Act review was a 
coordinated lobbying campaign dressed as public consensus  dozens of 
submissions that appeared to represent diverse independent sector 
opinion, but which were in fact templated outputs of a single peak 
body's advocacy strategy, funded by the peak body's own members. This 
practice, documented extensively in the context of the Koch network's 
'grassroots' campaigns in the United States, has a name in corporate 
political strategy literature  manufactured consensus.
In each instance, the tax submission, the Charities Act review, a 2019 
campaign for imputation credit refunds for charities that invest in New 
Zealand companies, a 2023 submission on emissions reduction that called 
for philanthropic co-design of climate policy, PNZ's advocacy has 
consistently served the financial interests of the large, established 
grant-making organisations whose employees sit on its board. And it has 
done so without any of the transparency mechanisms that would allow the 
public, or Parliament, to see whose interests are actually being served.

PART FIVE · THE GLOBAL NETWORK

PNZ does not operate in isolation. It is formally embedded in the global 
infrastructure of philanthropy through membership of two international 
networks whose ideological orientation, and whose relationship to 
private wealth, deserve attention.
The first is WINGS (Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support ) a 
network of more than 200 philanthropy support organisations across sixty 
countries. WINGS co-chaired the first formal Philanthropy Working Group 
under Civil Society 20 (C20) in 2024, positioning itself as the 
representative of civil society at G20 level. PNZ's membership of WINGS 
means that when the G20 philanthropy working group speaks to the world's 
most powerful governments, PNZ's interests, and by extension, its member 
organisations' interests, are represented in that forum. Civil Society 
20 is supposed to amplify the voices of communities and civil 
organisations that lack the access of governments and corporations. But 
WINGS member organisations are controlled by the same large 
asset-holding foundations whose interests they advocate. When organised 
private wealth speaks at the G20 wearing civil society's clothes, 
something has gone wrong with the concept.
WINGS also coordinates a global #PhilanthropyForClimate movement, 
through which philanthropy bodies have made national climate commitments 
to the C20 process. PNZ is part of this initiative. Its Chair runs a 
foundation whose operating costs are paid by a corporation that is among 
New Zealand's worst greenhouse gas emitters, that sought consent for new 
gas-fired power generation in 2023, and that has explicitly argued 
against government recommendations to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. 
The contradiction has not been acknowledged in any of PNZ's public 
communications.
The second network is AVPN  the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network. AVPN 
explicitly frames philanthropy as "social investment," describes 
grant-makers as "asset managers," and promotes the building of 
"ecosystems" that link policymakers with family offices and private 
foundations. This is not neutral language. Venture philanthropy imports 
the logic of private equity into charitable giving  measuring social 
"return on investment," funding "scalable solutions," identifying 
"social entrepreneurs." The effect, intended or not, is to replace the 
democratic logic of collective need with the market logic of investable 
opportunity, and to position private foundations as more efficient than 
government at identifying and funding social change.
PNZ has imported this framework wholesale into its advocacy to 
government. Its Briefing to the Incoming Government in January 2024, a 
document delivered to ministers before they had formed their own social 
policy, spoke of "leveraging capital funds for co-investment," "regional 
growth," and "a clean economy." This is the language of AVPN, of venture 
philanthropy, of private equity applied to public goods. It is not the 
language of community service. And it was delivered by a peak body whose 
chairman's employer had just given that peak body $205,000.

The Bill English connection
There is one further thread in this network that deserves attention. In 
May 2021, Sir Bill English, former Prime Minister and Minister of 
Finance, and the architect of New Zealand's original social investment 
framework, joined Todd Corporation's board as a director. English's 
social investment framework, developed during the National-led 
governments of 20082017, established the policy infrastructure, the data 
systems, the outcome commissioning models, the language of "investment" 
in social services, that PNZ is now lobbying to expand through the 
Social Investment Fund's co-investment pathway, opening in 2026.
The man who designed the policy door now works for the family whose 
foundation's director chairs the peak body lobbying to walk through it. 
There is, again, nothing illegal about any of this. But it is a 
remarkably complete circuit  the former Prime Minister who created the 
social investment framework sits on the board of the corporation that 
funds the foundation whose director chairs the peak body that is 
actively lobbying to expand that framework in ways that will channel 
public money through private philanthropic structures.

PART SIX · WHAT PHILANTHROPY DOES TO DEMOCRACY

The argument made so far has been primarily structural, here is a 
network of relationships, here are the financial flows, here is the 
advocacy that follows. But the structural argument only answers the 
question of how. The harder question, the one that makes this more than 
a governance story, is why it matters.
Begin with the tax subsidy. Every dollar the Todd family donates to the 
Todd Foundation, and every dollar PNZ's members contribute in 
tax-deductible charitable donations, reduces the revenue available to 
the New Zealand government. The political theorist Robert Reich, whose 
book Just Giving is the most rigorous examination of this problem, 
estimates that a substantial portion of philanthropic wealth, in the 
American context, somewhere between a third and half of all charitable 
giving, depending on tax rates, consists of money that would otherwise 
have flowed to the public treasury, where elected representatives would 
have determined its use. Through the tax deduction mechanism, charitable 
giving is partially funded by the public. And yet the donor, not the 
public, decides what the money does.
This is not a minor accounting issue. It is a structural mechanism by 
which private preferences are substituted for democratic ones, at public 
expense, without public consent. When the Todd family donates to the 
Todd Foundation, and when that donation generates a tax deduction, a 
portion of that philanthropic act has been subsidised by every New 
Zealand taxpayer. Those taxpayers have no say in whether the Foundation 
funds youth employment in Whanganui or child poverty advocacy in 
Auckland or, as it does, the operations of the very peak body that 
lobbies against the regulatory measures that would constrain the 
Foundation's discretion.

The voice problem
Political theorists from John Rawls onward have argued that a 
functioning democracy requires not just formal political equality, one 
person, one vote, but roughly equal political voice, i.e. the capacity 
of citizens to make their interests heard by those who govern. 
Philanthropy, at scale, violates this principle structurally. The Todd 
Foundation's Executive Director can chair Philanthropy New Zealand, fund 
its programmes, shape its advocacy, and appear before government 
officials as the representative of an entire sector, all while being 
employed by a fossil fuel dynasty and funded by that dynasty's corporate 
subsidiary. The community organisations that receive Todd Foundation 
grants, the parents using the food banks, the young people in the 
employment programmes, they have no equivalent access. Their voice in 
the policy process is not amplified by a peak body with a seat at 
government tables. It is, if anything, represented by the same peak 
body, which speaks for the grant-makers rather than the grant recipients.
This asymmetry is not accidental. The anthropologist David Graeber 
observed that the defining feature of power is not that it enables you 
to act, it is that it enables you to define the terms within which 
others must act. PNZ defines what good grant-making looks like in New 
Zealand. It defines the standards, the best practices, the language of 
philanthropy. It shapes what community organisations must demonstrate to 
receive funding. It shapes what government must accept as legitimate 
philanthropic engagement. And it does all of this from a governance 
structure in which the largest and most powerful funders, the 
organisations with the most to gain from weak regulation, are the ones 
setting the terms.

The state substitution problem
In 2024, as the New Zealand government cut funding to community 
organisations and redirected resources toward the Social Investment Fund 
model, PNZ's advocacy intensified. In its Briefing to the Incoming 
Government, it argued for philanthropic organisations to become 
co-investment partners in social service delivery, filling the gaps left 
by government, deploying their capital alongside public money, measuring 
outcomes and directing resources to "what works." The co-investment 
pathway, due to open in 2026, is the policy vehicle for this ambition.
Critics of the social investment model, and there are many, from 
academics to frontline service providers, argue that it privatises 
social decision-making, stigmatises communities as targets of investment 
rather than citizens with rights, and creates a tier of services whose 
existence depends not on democratic need but on philanthropic interest. 
The communities most affected by poverty, housing insecurity and 
unemployment do not get to decide which of their needs are "investable." 
That decision belongs to the foundations.
PNZ's enthusiasm for this framework is not surprising. It is what AVPN 
promotes. It is what venture philanthropy requires. And it is, for the 
Todd Foundation and its peer institutions, an expansion of influence 
from grant-giver to government partner, from sector participant to 
policy co-designer. The Foundation that began as a way for the Todd 
family to give back has become, through thirty years of careful 
positioning, a vehicle for private power over public goods.
The loop Fink described in 1996, from ideas to policy to implementation, 
funded by private wealth and wearing the face of civic virtue, is 
operating in New Zealand. It is less dramatic than its American cousin, 
less ideologically aggressive, less nakedly self-serving in its public 
posture. But the structure is the same. The money flows from fossil 
fuels. It passes through a foundation. It funds a peak body. The peak 
body lobbies against oversight and for expanded influence. The oversight 
stays weak. The influence grows. The loop continues.

PART SEVEN · THE CLIMATE CONTRADICTION

There is one specific contradiction at the heart of this story that is 
worth stating plainly, because it illustrates the whole problem in 
miniature.
In June 2023, Philanthropy New Zealand co-submitted with the Combined 
Community Trusts on the Climate Change Commission's advice to government 
on New Zealand's second emissions reduction plan. The submission called 
for "a just and equitable transition," for "collaboration between the 
government and philanthropic sectors," and for "government leadership in 
system transformation and sustainable finance." PNZ is also a member of 
WINGS's #PhilanthropyForClimate initiative, which has presented 
philanthropy's climate commitments to the G20.
In the same year, Todd Corporation's subsidiary Nova Energy was seeking 
resource consent for a new gas-fired power plant in Southland. In its 
own submissions to government, Todd Corporation has argued for ETS 
settings that "accommodate ongoing natural gas use," has endorsed the 
fossil fuel industry's position on fuel excise rebates, and has opposed 
the recommendation to phase out subsidies supporting fossil fuel production.
The Foundation that chairs PNZ's climate advocacy is funded by a 
corporation that lobbies against effective climate policy. The peak body 
that speaks at the G20 for philanthropic climate commitments is chaired 
by the Executive Director of a foundation whose operating expenses are 
paid by one of New Zealand's six worst greenhouse gas emitters.
No one at PNZ has publicly acknowledged this contradiction. No 
conflicts-of-interest register has been published that would make it 
visible. The Todd Foundation's website describes the family's commitment 
to a thriving, equitable Aotearoa. Todd Corporation's own sustainability 
reports describe its "progress toward a more sustainable future." The 
language of both is sincere-sounding. The structural reality, measured 
in gas-fired power plants and lobbying submissions and G20 philanthropy 
commitments, is something else.

PART EIGHT · THE BUILDING AT THE END OF THE MONEY

Level 15, Todd Building, 95 Customhouse Quay, Wellington. The address 
appears on the Todd Foundation's website, its Charities Services 
registration, and the letterhead of every grant letter it has ever sent. 
Below it, in the same building, is Todd Corporation: the energy and 
investment conglomerate, the oil and gas subsidiary, the electricity 
retailer, the family trusts and the family office. The rent is the same. 
The HR department is the same. The investment manager is the same. The 
letterhead is different.
From the street, the building presents a unified face of corporate 
Wellington, glass and steel, prestige address, the quiet confidence of 
old money. From inside, it is a single institutional organism with two 
public faces, one that extracts and sells fossil fuels, and one that 
gives away a portion of the proceeds to community organisations while 
lobbying government to ensure as little of those proceeds as possible 
are subject to external accountability.
Zoom out from Wellington and the building connects outward through a 
network that most New Zealanders have never heard of. To WINGS in 
Geneva, which speaks for "civil society" at the G20 while representing 
organised private wealth. To AVPN in Singapore, which trains 
philanthropy organisations to think of themselves as social investors 
and government as a co-investment partner. To Philanthropy Australia in 
Melbourne, sharing positions on charity regulation across the Tasman. To 
the Tufton Street think tanks in London, funded by the same global 
network of fossil fuel donors, performing the same function of 
translating private interest into public policy language. To Koch 
Industries in Wichita, where Richard Fink published his architecture for 
the capture of democratic institutions by private capital, and where the 
model was perfected that New Zealand's oldest fossil fuel dynasty has, 
in its own quiet way, been implementing for thirty years.
None of this is a conspiracy. There is no evidence of coordination 
between the Todds and the Kochs, no shared agenda, no secret meetings. 
What there is instead is something more troubling  the independent 
emergence of the same structure, in the same industry, across different 
countries and cultures, because the structure works. Because it is 
rational for those with wealth to protect the conditions that produced 
it. Because philanthropy is a more effective vehicle for that protection 
than direct lobbying, because it is tax-subsidised, because it is 
morally celebrated, and because, in a country without a lobbying 
register, it is nearly invisible.
Somewhere in Wellington right now, a community organisation is doing 
meaningful work, funded by a grant from the Todd Foundation, unaware 
that the corporation whose profits paid for that grant is lobbying, 
through multiple parallel channels, against the climate and regulatory 
policies that would protect the communities it serves. The grant is 
real. The work is real. The people doing the work are real. And the 
money that funds them flows from gas wells, through family trusts, 
through a foundation in a fossil fuel building, through a peak body 
whose chair is the foundation's director, to the government consultation 
rooms where the rules that govern all of it are quietly being written.
The question this investigation has tried to ask is not whether the 
Todds are good people. The question is whether a 140-year-old fossil 
fuel dynasty should be permitted to run the peak body for New Zealand 
philanthropy, fund its programmes, lobby against its regulation, speak 
on behalf of civil society at the G20, and call all of this giving back.

That question has not yet been asked out loud in New Zealand.
This article asks it.

A NOTE ON SOURCES AND METHOD
This investigation is based entirely on publicly available information: 
Philanthropy New Zealand's own website, policy submissions and annual 
reports; the Todd Foundation's website, grant lists and annual reviews; 
Todd Corporation's government consultation submissions, ministerial 
diary appearances (Beehive proactive release), and public company 
records; the WINGS and AVPN member databases; Electoral Commission 
donation records; the Democracy Project's analysis of Todd Corporation; 
and peer-reviewed academic literature on philanthropy and democratic 
theory. All claims are sourced from these materials. No anonymous 
sources have been used.


https://thepolarblast.wordpress.com/2026/03/14/a-local-story-about-global-money//
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