How we give back

To double down on bringing our vision for the future around faster we dedicate 1% of revenue to efforts aimed at actively improving our planet and the lives of people and animals. This can be in the form of charities, scholarships, social enterprise grants, education and awareness initiatives.

After four years of funding charity partners and donating over $1.35 million dollars we decided to step up the way we do things to have a more direct impact on the pillars our investing stands on:

Firstly, to generate strong returns with the aim of avoiding harm and investing positively.

Secondly to support charities, scholarships, social enterprise grants, education and financial awareness initiatives.

Since April 2024, we have been dedicating 1% of revenue from across our whole business (this covers all our retail managed funds as well as our KiwiSaver funds) to support our vision for a better future happening faster. This means that as more members join us, we’ll be able to direct funds towards a range of exciting endeavours in our own backyard.

We’ll continue to support charities whose work actively improves our planet and the lives of people and animals, this will include:

Scholarships: sponsoring underrepresented or under-supported people in their development, including into sectors capable of making systemic societal change (such as finance, business, law and environmental studies).

Social enterprise grants: supporting purpose driven businesses with potential to create positive change (this could include early-stage solutions to pressing challenges faced by our planet or communities.

Education and awareness: supporting initiatives where we see potential to promote positive change. This could, for example, be in the sphere of business or youth development.

To qualify any potential recipient will need to meet two thresholds: "impact" and "connection".

Connection: The proposal must have a sufficiently strong connection to the pillars of our investment approach (being people, planet and animals).

Impact: Supporting the proposal will contribute to measurable improvement either directly (in the form of immediate action), or indirectly (in the form of slower long-term systemic change).

We consider each pillar as follows:

Planet: the protection, or even enhancement, of our ecosystem's climate stability or environmental sustainability.

Animals: greater protections and dignity, prevention of harm, preservation of rights, improved quality of life and/or non-commodification.

People: an improvement in (and/or protection of) human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with a particular focus on dignity, well-being (mental and physical) and social equality.

In simple terms: The proposal must make a measurable impact on one or more of the categories we strive to help improve: people, our planet and animals.

As members of our KiwiSaver or investors of our managed funds, we’ll share with you the projects we undertake. For example, we’ll introduce you to scholarship recipients, keep you up to date with social enterprises we’ve helped fund (so you can check them out in the market) and report on our wider positive impact.

We’ll report on our funding/donating in our annual Sustainability Report. Our 2025 Sustainability Report will include the first review of giving for the year prior.

This is the beginning of us being able to support more great endeavours more directly. Thank you again for picking Pathfinder and for joining a movement that demands we invest in better (for us, for our family and for our collective future).