Momentum Waikato Update - December 2025
Published on 12 December, 2025
A successful year, with much more to come
By David Christiansen, Executive Officer, Momentum Waikato.
With this, our last newsletter for 2025, the team and trustees at Momentum Waikato wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and hope you’re all looking forward to a wonderful and well-earned summer break.
Looking back, it has been a great year for us at Momentum Waikato, with some notable milestones passed and upcoming.
We launched a set of ‘place based’ endowment funds covering the Coromandel, established our Professional Advisors Network (PAN), and had a successful Wills Month in September with some notable bequest pledges coming in.
As you’ll read below, we’re now also launching the first of our special focus funds, the Momentum Waikato Arts, Culture, and Creativity Fund. This is a timely move, with the awesome new Waikato Regional Theatre we initiated about to open in January, and the latest incredible Hamilton Arts Festival also looming in the new year.
New Fund boosts Waikato arts momentum as Theatre opens
With the opening of the Waikato Regional Theatre fast approaching, the project’s initiator and primary fundraiser is introducing a further boost to local arts and culture.
Momentum Waikato is launching the ‘Momentum Waikato Arts, Culture and Creativity Fund’, the first of its planned suite of ‘focus funds’ that will enable everyday people to take advantage of its ‘smart giving’ philanthropic investment model to back their favoured cause.
The MW Arts, Culture and Creativity Fund has been kick-started with opening donations from two local arts supporters who, independent of each other, wanted to celebrate and amplify Momentum’s key role in building the new Theatre, through setting up an endowment to further support the Waikato’s artistic development and cultural activity.
Creative Waikato CEO Dr Jeremy Mayall welcomes the move.
"Creative Waikato is very pleased to support the Momentum Waikato Arts, Culture and Creativity Fund,” says Jeremy.
“This Fund will work towards a Waikato region that thrives through diverse and transformative creativity, which directly aligns with our vision.”
Also, check out our new giving story video...
Featuring Waikato art patron Nancy Caiger.
An Evening of Connection and Conversation
ABOVE: The panel for the event - Ken Stephens, Joan Forret, Margaret Wilson and David Christiansen. PHOTO: KeyImagery.
Huge thanks to everyone who came along to 'An Evening of Connection and Conversation' on Tuesday 18 November 2025 at the Hamilton Gardens' Chartwell Room.
Was great to gather together local lawyers, accountants and financial advisors with the founders and organisers of some of our endowment funds for a lively chat and some good connecting.
The panel discussion traversed the looming inter-generational wealth transfer and how Momentum Waikato is well equipped to harness the resulting opportunities for the benefit of the entire region.
It was explained how professional advisors like those in the room can connect their clients with Momentum Waikato, so we can help them create a local legacy or have their trust's community mission continue. Generosity that delivers!
Read more and see more photos of the event.
Ignite a legacy, as a Momentum Professional Advisor Champion
As a trusted professional advisor, you hold the key to unlocking transformative legacies.
Join Momentum Waikato's Professional Advisor Programme and help us ignite a wave of impactful generosity across the Waikato. Elevate your practice, inspire change, and lead your clients toward enduring community impact.
Aotearoa New Zealand stands at the threshold of a historic inter-generational wealth transition. By channelling just a portion towards strategic charitable giving, especially through Momentum Waikato's endowment model, you can help shape a brighter future for our region.
Unleash Fulfilment: reveal to your clients how a ‘Gift in Will’ can create a legacy that echoes through time, bringing profound and lasting satisfaction.
Craft Strategic Visions: offer expert guidance in aligning clients' generosity with impactful community solutions.
Amplify Lasting Change: demonstrate how even modest gifts, when united, can ignite significant and enduring transformation.
Modest conservation grant fills a gap in big kiwi vision
Moira and Rick Haddrell drive the Benn Road Bee Trust as the means to convert a retired sheep-and-beef hill station near Otorohanga into a manuka-honey apiary, a carbon sink, and a safe bush home for wild kiwi.
The successful couple sold premium manuka honey brand ‘Haddrells of Cambridge’ to Prolife Foods in 2015 and then bought the 470-hectare Mangatiti, which sits amongst a collection of DOC bush reserves.
They’ve spent the decade since planting manuka for the bees, and eliminating predators for the invited kiwi, supported with destocking and fencing by the Waikato River Authority, as their streams run into the Waipa.
The Haddrells recognised they needed to fill a gap in their predator defences along their shared boundary, and it was the 70 traps now installed there that were funded by the Waikato Hauraki Conservation Fund.
“This grant from the Waikato Hauraki Conservation Fund adds to the daisy chain of traps across the area. Those 70 traps can take more than a day to check, but they ensure that the effort on our land is not in vain.”
Read more of this new Recipient Story.
A positive way to serve
Why I have joined the Board of Momentum Waikato - Te Puaawaitanga o Waikato
By Susan Hassall, Momentum Waikato trustee.
I have lived in the Waikato for most of my adult life and I am proud to call this part of the world my home.
For many years I led a secondary school, where I witnessed literally thousands of young men develop and grow and become ready to contribute to our communities and our society as fine Waikato adults.
In those years sharing their journeys, from child to young man, I have learned some valuable truths.
One of these verities which we all need to understand and accept, as a community determined to grow and be strong, is the need and the responsibility to serve.
A willingness to serve makes the ultimate difference to our lives, as individuals and as a community. It brings happiness to those who give; it brings happiness to those who receive.
Most importantly, it strengthens the world we share and makes that world better for us all.
Thank you Neil, and thank you Simon!
Thank you, Neil!
A huge thank you and congratulations to Neil Richardson (above left), as you step down after nearly thirteen years of sterling service on the Momentum Waikato Board.
Neil is the last of the founding Board members who set Momentum in motion back in 2013, subsequently becoming Deputy Chair in 2015 and then Chair in 2020.
He was at the table when Momentum decided to initiate the Waikato Regional Theatre project in 2016, and then as Deputy Chair was charged with leading the organisation’s decision-making when it was time to commit to its construction in 2019.
Neil then became Chair in March 2020, just as the first Covid lockdowns were getting underway. He led the Board through the pandemic crisis, and then a strategic reset that prepared the community foundation well for the opportunities and challenges of the post-Covid environment.
We thank Neil as outgoing Chair for his time, commitment and leadership of the Momentum Waikato community, and look forward to seeing what he does next!
Also, thank you Simon!
A huge thank you also to Simon Rickman (above right), as you end your term as a trustee of Momentum Waikato.
Simon joined the Board in 2017, around the time that Momentum took on the leadership of the Waikato Regional Theatre project.
A steady and considered voice in the governance space, Simon’s years of wise service and astute support for Momentum’s operations have been a valued contribution towards what has been achieved by the Waikato’s community foundation.
We all wish Simon well and thank him as he heads off to new challenges, and know he will always be part of the Momentum whaanau.
