A different way to give through the Acorn Foundation
Giving through an existing Acorn Fund is simple, flexible, and designed to help your generosity go further.
Rather than creating your own fund, you can contribute to an existing fund that reflects the causes, communities or local organisations you care about. Each fund has a clear purpose, whether it’s supporting a local place, backing a specific cause, or helping respond to the region’s most pressing needs. It’s an easy way to give with intention, knowing your support is part of something meaningful.
When you give, your donation is pooled with others and professionally invested through Acorn. This helps grow the fund over time, while generating annual funding for local organisations and initiatives across the Western Bay of Plenty.
Because the capital is protected and invested for the long term, your gift continues to give back well beyond the initial donation. It becomes part of a sustainable source of funding that supports our region year after year.
Acorn's Local Impact Funds
Local Impact Funds support grassroots projects - the kind of ideas that come from people who live there and see what's needed. Locally-led projects from neighbours, local volunteer groups, and even individuals who want to make their community better.
We have five funds across the Western Bay covering from Waihī Beach through Tauranga, to Pukehina.
How these funds work:
When a donation is made to a community's local impact fund, the Acorn Foundation combines it with other donations, and invests it. The original donation stays protected and untouched. The investment generates a return each year, creating a pool of funding that is granted to local grassroots community projects. That means the gift keeps working for the community it was donated to, year after year, for generations.
Each Local Impact Fund has a Giving Committee made up of volunteers from your community. These local volunteers review applications and decide which projects receive funding. Because they are members of your local community, they bring valuable local knowledge to help guide funding decisions each year.
Local Impact Funds
Support the place you live, work, and care about. Our Local Impact Funds provide funding support for grassroots projects in specific Western Bay of Plenty communities, helping neighbourhoods thrive from a local level.
Support The Western Bay Women's Fund
The Acorn Foundation Women’s Fund brings people together to support local women and girls across the Western Bay of Plenty.
Through collective giving, the fund helps provide grants to organisations working in areas such as safety, wellbeing, education, opportunity and long-term support. Every gift, no matter the size, is pooled and invested so it can continue making a difference for generations to come.
By giving to the Women’s Fund, you’re helping build a stronger, safer and more supportive future for women and girls in our community.
Donate to Acorn's Vital Impact Fund
The Acorn Vital Impact Fund is a simple way to support the Western Bay of Plenty’s greatest needs, without having to choose one specific charity.
Your donation is pooled with gifts from other generous locals and invested for the long term. Each year, the income earned is distributed to local charitable organisations where the need is greatest, guided by Acorn’s community research and volunteer Distributions Committee.
Since 2009, the Vital Impact Fund has supported 45 local charities and community groups across the region. It’s collective giving in action, helping local generosity go further, year after year, forever.