It’s time to acknowledge the incredible contribution of the community and voluntary sector, alongside business and government, in the response and recovery effort.

We’re a diverse bunch of people in the community, volunteer and philanthropic sector. But whatever it is we care about and care for, we have our communities’ collective wellbeing in common. We value generosity of spirit and embody ngākau nui, big heartedness.

This has formed the foundation of our collective contribution to supporting our communities through COVID 19. We’ve been shoring up our communities to meet both big and small challenges, to remain connected and to answer the call to unite and be kind.

This survey allows us to shine a light on this collective contribution.

This is our time to shine, and our time to take stock. COVID 19 has revealed even more starkly the needs of our communities and the cracks in the system. We knew that, before COVID 19, there was a shortfall of $630 million in Government funding to those agencies delivering services on behalf of the Government. We also knew that there was a $200 million shortfall to meet the demand for services. We knew that there were more agencies competing for decreasing pools of funding. We knew there were staffing and salary pressures. And during COVID 19 we might have identified cracks in our own operations and business continuity.

This survey can give us a rich source of data to further test, quantify and collectively communicate these challenges and needs to our supporters and funders. It can help us identify where things may have gotten worse, stayed the same or even improved for the organisations that support community wellbeing.

This survey, combined with data from other surveys, can help us identify in concrete terms what is needed next. It will help us lead confident, collective, well informed discussions around recovery and re-imagining the future state of a community that is well, flourishing and thriving.

We’ll be sharing the results to support the sector to have a louder voice in shaping our future. As community needs to be at the decision making table beside central and local government and business – if we are to build back better.

Click here to complete the survey. 

Please share the survey link in this post so as many community organisations as possible can have their say.