The Ākina Foundation

🚀 Ākina is pleased to present you with its’ white paper, titled Developing a successful social investment approach: Supercharging social investment in Aotearoa New Zealand. The white paper provides a detailed analysis of how social investment could work in New Zealand, offering insights into its benefits, challenges, and opportunities, including three recommendations. It is designed to inform political leadership, policymakers, investors, nonprofit organisations, and other stakeholders about the critical role social investment can play in driving sustainable social and economic development. In an increasingly complex global landscape, aligning financial returns with social impact has never been more crucial. Social investment offers significant long-term opportunities while addressing key societal issues such as poverty, education, health, and environmental sustainability. By leveraging capital for social good, we can build resilient communities and a more equitable world. Ākina believes this white paper will foster a better understanding of the dynamics and components of social investment across the board. Through informed dialogue and collaborative action, we can unlock the full potential of social investment to benefit all New Zealanders. Tēnā rawa atu koutou to the expert voices that contributed to the white paper, Jonathan Boston Emeritus Professor of Public Policy, School of Government - Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, Helmut Modlik Tumu Whakarae CEO and Executive Director - Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira Incorporated, Jamie Newth CEO - Soul Capital, Alastair Rhodes Chair - Impact Investing Network as well as Ākina Board chair, Te Pūoho Katene for his foreword to the paper. Thank you to the social investment in action case studies, Acorn Charitable Trust, Manukau Urban Māori Authority for Waka Aronui, Westpac NZ Government Innovation Fund and Ministry for the Environment | Manatū mō te Taiao Jobs for Nature funding programme.

Social Procurement Professionals! A exciting career opportunity has come up at Auckland Council for a Sustainable Procurement Advisor. See more details in the post below, and apply here: https://lnkd.in/g2SfyjZm

🌏 Tomorrow is World Sustainable Procurement Day - a day for celebrating and sharing the progress and learnings from the past 12 months. It aims to empower and equip more procurement professionals from all over the world on their journey toward integrating sustainable sourcing practices into action. The Ākina team and alumni have always found some great inspiration from these free events in the past. 🖇️ Register for the events here: https://lnkd.in/dYrEE7im 🖋️ If you can't attend any of the events, you can sign The Sustainable Procurement Pledge - a global community committed making sustainable procurement the default. The pledge involves making sustainable sourcing decisions that will have multi-generational impact on people and the planet. 1️⃣ Standing up for people and our planet. 2️⃣ Together we will change the world. 3️⃣ Starting with myself 4️⃣ Sharing my knowledge and listening to others 5️⃣ Leaving the right Legacy (full descriptions on their website here: https://spp.earth/)

The Ākina Foundation is thrilled to be partnering with WorldCC Foundation for their fourth annual World Sustainable Contracting Day (WSCD) - a global event dedicated to driving sustainable practices in commerce, contracting, and procurement. Contracts are a powerful way for organisations to deliver on their ESG commitments, and this event is all about practical solutions that turn this ambition into action. There will be expert-led workshops and real-world case studies. WSCD offers valuable insights for anyone looking to integrate sustainability into their contracting strategies. Our friends at Social Traders and Edge Impact will be hosting workshops too!   Register now for this FREE event on 15th May 2025: https://lnkd.in/eYJ_fWEZ #WorldSustainableContractingDay #ESG #WSCD

⭐ Ākina Impact Buyer Masterclass: Bridging Social Values and Procurement 📆 Thursday, 20 March 2025 ⏰ 10:00 – 11:00 am, Online 🎧 We've started the year with some great conversations at our community of Practice events, and are looking forward to our first Masterclass of 2025, on bridging social values and procurement. 📓 Ākina Senior Impact Consultant, Nick Douglas, will join Senior Social Procurement Consultant, Dave Vige, for this Masterclass designed to help procurement professionals and decision-makers integrate social value principles into their procurement processes. 🤔 Whether you're new to the concept or looking to use these principles in the future, this session will provide practical tools and strategies for achieving social outcomes while meeting procurement objectives. This would be a good session to invite people from outside the *organisation's procurement team to attend. 📩 Ākina Impact Buyers have been sent the invitation to RSVP to via email. Will we see you there? *Impact Buyer Masterclasses are available exclusively for Ākina Impact Buyer Members.

Impact Consulting Case Study: AGMARDT (The Agricultural and Marketing Research and Development Trust) In 2021, AGMARDT engaged Ākina to assist in the design of an Impact Strategy. AGMARDT is working to accelerate positive change and ignite a better future for food and fibres in Aotearoa New Zealand. They strategically invest in initiatives to encourage innovative thinking and collaboration, all whilst developing emerging leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand’s primary sector. 🌟 What did we do together? ✨ Together, we developed an impact model that explains what change AGMARDT creates, who they create change for, and how. ✨ We provided practical guidance to help them measure their impact and devised tactics to increase it! ✨ AGMARDT now has an Impact Strategy they can use to articulate, track and grow their impact over time. We backed this up with practical tools AGMARDT can use to choose where to invest their funding. 📩 If you’re struggling to measure and manage the positive impact your organisation creates and want to be more confident that your organisation’s investment decisions are generating positive impact, get in touch with Ākina by emailing info@akina.org.nz

🗞️ The School Lunch programme has been the topic of conversation across Aotearoa - with the latest article from BusinessDesk NZ questioning the procurement process. 🧮 Ākina offered to calculate the SROI for Ka Ora, Ka Ako but was not taken up on this offer. ✨ The KickStart Breakfast serves as a compelling case for continued and expanded social investment in early childhood development and education. Our recent evaluation of the programme found that for every dollar invested in our tamariki and rangatahi returned $4.40 of societal benefits. Some of the impacts included: ⭐ Enhanced physical wellbeing for tamariki and rangatahi, healthier eating habits and improvements to physical wellbeing. ⭐ Tamariki started the day happier, more settled and more able to focus on learning. This leads to increased attendance, improved behaviour, and greater educational outcomes. ⭐ Improved social wellbeing, creating opportunity for connection, social support and skills development. The wellbeing of tamariki and rangatahi is interconnected with their whānau, school, and community. Whānau reported experiencing health benefits and less time and financial stress with more spending available for other necessities. There has been an increased sense of unity and care within the participating schools, as well as stronger connections across schools, whānau, and communities. 🔗 Read the review of the Kickstart Breakfast here: https://lnkd.in/gcb55wmn ⬇️ And check out Nicola's post below for more thoughts on this kaupapa.

📢 Get access to free resources and tools to grow your impact! 📏 🧰 If you are starting out with an idea, Ākina has a bunch of FREE tools and resources that will help you along your way. These tools were developed part of the Impact Initiative - a partnership between the Department of Internal Affairs (NZ) and the Ākina Foundation with support from the Community Enterprise Network Trust (CENT) between April 2018 and March 2021. 💼 Ākina developed these to help entrepreneurs and founders develop to progress their ideas in an financially accessible way. As the tools are still relevant in 2025, we want to re-introduce you to some of them! 💡 First up: A beginners guide to social enterprise and impact-led business in Aotearoa. Social enterprise ideas are born from and typically respond to a combination of: ⏺️ market failures ⏺️ community-identified goals and ⏺️ urgent social and environmental needs. This means that the impact of social enterprises is often closely aligned with Government’s priorities. 📩 Embedding Impact can be done at all types of organisations. Get in touch if you would like to prove and improve the impact your organisation creates. https://lnkd.in/g3TsSMXA

📢 Ākina is hiring! ⭐ Senior Social Procurement Consultant 📍 Based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington or Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland (*Image in post says, based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, but this position can also be based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland). ⏲️ 0.5 FTE Ākina is seeking a Senior Social Procurement Consultant to join our team on a 0.5 FTE basis. This role will be in charge of developing and delivering high quality social procurement services, for clients in the public and private sectors. The role will lead the Ākina social procurement programme to scale and generate revenue through business development and the delivery of support, advice and services to Ākina social procurement buyers and suppliers. We are a small, highly engaged, motivated team, connected by and driven towards our purpose. We work in a highly supportive and flexible way, across projects and clients. The team operates with a high degree of autonomy across Auckland and Wellington, travelling as required. Find the full job listing is on Do Good Jobs (NZ) https://lnkd.in/g9jNMfi8 or SEEK https://lnkd.in/gNyFz6id 📅 Applications close as soon as the right candidate applies, but not later than 24th March 2025. 🫶 Ākina is committed to upholding our values on diversity, equity, and inclusion in our recruitment and workplace culture. We strive to make our roles and workplace accessible, culturally appropriate, and respectful of diverse needs and identities. 🌞 Help us spread the word and share with your networks.

🎧 Ākina Board Chair, Te Pūoho Katene featured on the latest Humans of Purpose podcast wearing one of his many pōtae. ➡️ Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts, if that's on Spotify - here's the link: https://lnkd.in/gHKbYB_N