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Sports funding and charitable status

The relationship between charitable status and funding for sports and recreation organisations has been clarified in an information sheet now available on the Charities Commission’s website: www.charities.govt.nz

It explains that sports and recreation groups do not have to register as charities to be eligible for grant funding from Class 4 gambling operators.

Most gaming machine societies are able to make grants to non-commercial purposes that are beneficial to the community, which will generally include amateur sports’ purposes.

See Funding for Community Groups for more gambling funding-specific information for interested sports groups.

The Department worked with the Charities Commission, Sparc (Sport and Recreation New Zealand), the Companies Office and Inland Revenue after some sports and recreation groups became concerned that gambling funding was restricted to charitable purposes and that sports were not eligible for this funding. This seemed to be because some gaming machine societies had provided incorrect advice to grant applicants.

The Department encourages grant makers to read the information sheet and make it available to their grant applicants (perhaps by linking to the advice from their own websites).

See also: Information on Charitable Purposes for Operators and Grant Applicants