How New Zealand's oldest fossil fuel dynasty plugged into a global philanthropy machine and used it to shape democracy while pretending to give back ---- PART ONE · THE TEMPLATE ---- In 1996, a senior executive at Koch Industries published a short article in an American philanthropy magazine that would become one of the most influential documents in the history of corporate political strategy. Richard Fink, the company's chief lobbyist and political architect, laid out what he called a "Structure of Social Change." The idea was elegant and predatory. You begin, Fink wrote, by investing in the production of ideas, fund universities and research institutes to generate intellectual frameworks that serve your interests. Then you invest in think tanks and policy organisations to translate those ideas into policy proposals. Finally you invest in citizen implementation groups advocacy organisations that take those proposals to politicians and to the public, wearing the credible face of civic society rather than the self-interested face of a corporation.
Charles and David Koch had inherited a fossil fuel empire built on oil refining, pipelines and petrochemicals. Over the following two decades they spent hundreds of millions of dollars building Fink's structure, funding the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, dozens of university economics departments, and a constellation of advocacy groups and political action committees. The result was a shadow infrastructure that delayed US climate legislation by years, arguably decades, while presenting itself as a network of independent thinkers committed to liberty and prosperity.The Koch model was not unique to America. Variants of it have been documented in the United Kingdom, where a cluster of anonymously funded organisations on London's Tufton Street, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the TaxPayers' Alliance, have been traced by investigative journalists to fossil fuel donors and Koch-linked foundations. In Australia, the resources industry has used think tanks and philanthropic vehicles to shape mining and energy policy for decades. The pattern is consistent enough to have acquired a name in academic literature: "philanthrocapitalism" the use of charitable giving as infrastructure for the maintenance of the conditions that produced the donor's wealth.
New Zealand has largely assumed this model operates elsewhere. It is a small country, close-knit, relatively transparent, with a political culture that tends toward pragmatic consensus rather than ideological combat. The brutal infrastructure of American dark money, the super PACs, the anonymously funded think tanks, the billionaire-funded networks, feels foreign here, a product of a more polarised, more corrupted democracy.
It should feel less foreign. Because twelve thousand kilometres from Koch Industries' Kansas headquarters, in a glass-and-concrete building on Wellington's waterfront, a structurally similar arrangement has been quietly operating for more than thirty years, smaller in scale, politer in tone, and almost entirely invisible to public scrutiny.
This is the story of the Todd Foundation, Philanthropy New Zealand, and the global network that connects them. It is a story about following money, from gas wells in Taranaki to community grants in South Auckland to policy submissions in Wellington to the G20 in Rio. It is a story about what philanthropy actually does, as distinct from what it says it does. And it is a story about the specific, measurable ways in which private wealth uses the language of generosity to protect itself from democratic accountability.
PART TWO · THE DYNASTY
The Todd family story begins in 1885, when a Scottish immigrant named Charles Todd opened a wool-scouring business in the Central Otago town of Heriot. The business evolved over the following decades into motor vehicles, then into oil. In 1955, the family entered a joint venture with Shell and BP to explore for petroleum in Taranaki, the venture that would discover the Kapuni gas field and transform the Todds from a prosperous provincial family into one of New Zealand's wealthiest private dynasties.
Today, Todd Corporation is a privately held conglomerate, 100 percent owned by approximately 51 shareholders across around 20 family trusts. It does not publish accounts. It is not listed on any stock exchange. There are no outside institutional shareholders, no annual general meetings, no analyst calls, no public disclosure requirements beyond what the law strictly demands. The company's core businesses are Todd Energy, which explores for and produces oil and natural gas in Taranaki; and Nova Energy, which retails electricity and gas to New Zealand homes and businesses and owns gas-fired peaking generation. In 2021, the Environmental Protection Authority's greenhouse gas emissions data listed Todd Corporation among New Zealand's six worst-emitting companies, in the same cohort as Fonterra and the country's major fuel importers.
In 2023, Todd's subsidiary Nova Energy sought resource consents to build a new gas-fired power plant in Southland. The Green Party called on the government to exercise its powers to review the project, citing its conflict with New Zealand's climate targets. Climate Justice Taranaki, a community-based environmental group, has held protests outside Todd Energy offices. In submissions to the government's own productivity and energy consultations, Todd Corporation has argued that the Emissions Trading Scheme settings "should accommodate ongoing natural gas use," and has explicitly stated it does not support government recommendations to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.
This is the corporation whose profits fund the Todd Foundation.
The Foundation
The Todd Foundation was established in 1972 as an independent charitable trust. It describes its mission as working toward "an inclusive Aotearoa New Zealand where all families, children and young people can thrive and contribute." Its approach, shaped over decades, is relationship-based and proactive: it does not run open grant rounds or accept unsolicited applications. Instead, it identifies its funding recipients through its own environmental scanning, research and community engagement. In 2024, it gave approximately $2.5 million to community organisations working on housing, child poverty, food security, youth employment and Maori-led development.
These are real grants to real organisations doing genuine work. The Child Poverty Action Group received $90,000. The community development network Inspiring Communities received $300,000. Kootuitui ki Papakura, which supports whanau and schools in South Auckland, received $150,000. Looking at the Foundation's grant list is, in one sense, straightforwardly heartening: this is money going to organisations that need it, doing things that matter.
But the Foundation's own disclosures reveal something the heartening framing tends to obscure. The Foundation states on its website that "Todd and the Todd Family Office generously provide financial and in-kind support for our operating expenses, including accommodation, HR, IT and investment management." The Foundation is based at Level 15, Todd Building, 95 Customhouse Quay the Todd Corporation headquarters. Its Operations Lead most recently worked at Todd Corporation before joining the Foundation. Its investments, the assets that generate its income for granting, are managed by the same family office that manages the corporation's investments.
The Foundation's claim to independence from the corporation that houses it, staffs it and manages its money is difficult to sustain. But that claim of independence is not merely an awkward PR problem. It is the legal and moral foundation on which the Foundation's charitable status rests, and on which its Executive Director's role at the peak body for New Zealand philanthropy depends.
PART THREE · THE PIPELINE
Seumas Fantham has been Executive Director of the Todd Foundation since 2015. He is of Ngati Porou and Whakatohea descent, holds a degree in Education and Sociology, and has more than twenty years of experience working with young people and community groups. He is well-regarded in the sector, thoughtful, articulate, and genuinely committed to the communities the Foundation funds. Nothing in this investigation suggests otherwise.
He is also Chair of Philanthropy New Zealand, the peak body that sets standards for, and advocates on behalf of, New Zealand's entire grant-making sector. He holds this position while being employed by one of PNZ's member organisations. He holds it while his employer funds PNZ's programmes. And he holds it while PNZ argues to government, in formal submissions, against the regulatory measures that would most directly constrain foundations like the one he runs.
This is not accidental. The Todd family's presence at the leadership of New Zealand's philanthropic peak body is not a coincidence or a matter of individual ambition. It is a pipeline, built over thirty-five years, through which the family's interests in the philanthropic sector have been consistently represented at the highest level.
The pipeline, traced
Philanthropy New Zealand was established in 1990. Among its founding figures was Sir John Todd, the patriarch who had chaired Todd Corporation from 1987 until his retirement in 2011, who had been present for the joint venture with Shell and BP that made the family's fossil fuel fortune, and who was, by the time of PNZ's founding, one of New Zealand's most prominent philanthropists. Sir John helped shape PNZ's founding culture and direction. He sat on its founding board. The organisation's values, its approach to philanthropy, its relationship with government, all were formed in an era when the Todd family was centrally present.
From 2005 to 2015, the Todd Foundation's Executive Director was Kate Frykberg. During her decade at the Foundation, Frykberg held governance roles at Philanthropy New Zealand and eventually became its Chair. On leaving the Foundation she noted she would continue her PNZ governance roles. She is now an Honorary Member of PNZ, a category appointed by PNZ's own board. She runs a consultancy called Tumanako Consultants, which delivers the Ki te Hoe leadership training programme in partnership with PNZ. She is also Chair of Te Muka Rau, a family foundation on whose board Fantham also sits.
When Frykberg left the Todd Foundation in 2015, Fantham arrived. He joined PNZ's board. He became its Chair. The pipeline from Todd Corporation's Taranaki gas fields to PNZ's Wellington boardroom has run, without meaningful interruption, for more than three decades: from Sir John Todd's founding involvement, through Frykberg's decade of leadership and chairmanship, to Fantham's current dual role. Three different people. One continuous institutional relationship.
There is nothing illegal about any of this. New Zealand has no law preventing a foundation director from chairing the peak body that represents his foundation's sector. There is no requirement for a conflicts-of-interest register, no mandatory recusal process, no public disclosure framework that would make any of these relationships visible in one place. The pipeline operates in the open, in the sense that the information is technically available to anyone who looks carefully enough. But it is not visible in any of the ways that democratic accountability requires no single document, no regulatory disclosure, no journalistic or parliamentary scrutiny has yet connected the dots.
PART FOUR · LOBBYING IN PLAIN SIGHT
In January 2026, Philanthropy New Zealand submitted a formal response to Inland Revenue's consultation on the taxation of the not-for-profit sector. The submission, signed by PNZ's Acting Chief Executive and approved by a board chaired by the Todd Foundation's Executive Director, opposed three proposed accountability measures for the philanthropic sector.
The first was a proposal to introduce special rules for "donor-controlled charities foundations where a single donor or family retains significant influence over governance and operations. The proposed rules included arm's-length transaction requirements and caps on donation tax credits. The Todd Foundation, funded by Todd family donations, housed in the family's corporate building, with operating costs paid by the family office, is precisely the type of entity these rules target. PNZ's submission argued the rules would "create a perception of mistrust toward philanthropists" and that the evidence base for intervention was insufficient.
The second measure was a minimum annual distribution requirement of 5 percent of net assets a standard already applied to private foundations in Australia and Canada, designed to prevent charitable wealth from accumulating indefinitely without flowing to the communities it is supposed to serve. PNZ's submission stated it "does not support the imposition of a minimum distribution requirement," arguing the model was "incompatible with local frameworks."
The third was a cap on donation tax credits for large donations to donor-controlled charities the mechanism by which the Todd family's donations to the Todd Foundation currently generate tax relief funded by ordinary New Zealand taxpayers. PNZ opposed this as well.
The submission acknowledged it was "informed by our funder members", meaning the same organisations whose employees and executives approved it. It did not disclose that the chairman of the board that approved the submission was employed by an organisation that would be directly and materially affected by the measures it opposed. PNZ does not publish a conflicts-of-interest register. No recusal process is publicly documented.
Manufacturing consensus
The January 2026 submission is not anomalous. PNZ's advocacy pattern is consistent across years and policy areas, and the technique it uses to amplify that advocacy has attracted little public attention.
During the 2019 review of the Charities Act, the legislation that governs all registered charities in New Zealand, PNZ produced not only its own formal submission but also a template submission for its members to file alongside PNZ's own. The website note accompanying the template was explicit, "The more voices on the key issues, the better. Our collective voice will then have a bigger impact on government decision-makers." The Charities Act submission itself was funded by the Combined Community Trusts of New Zealand PNZ's own member organisations.
Government consultation assumes independent voices. What the Department of Internal Affairs received during the Charities Act review was a coordinated lobbying campaign dressed as public consensus dozens of submissions that appeared to represent diverse independent sector opinion, but which were in fact templated outputs of a single peak body's advocacy strategy, funded by the peak body's own members. This practice, documented extensively in the context of the Koch network's 'grassroots' campaigns in the United States, has a name in corporate political strategy literature manufactured consensus.
In each instance, the tax submission, the Charities Act review, a 2019 campaign for imputation credit refunds for charities that invest in New Zealand companies, a 2023 submission on emissions reduction that called for philanthropic co-design of climate policy, PNZ's advocacy has consistently served the financial interests of the large, established grant-making organisations whose employees sit on its board. And it has done so without any of the transparency mechanisms that would allow the public, or Parliament, to see whose interests are actually being served.
PART FIVE · THE GLOBAL NETWORK
PNZ does not operate in isolation. It is formally embedded in the global infrastructure of philanthropy through membership of two international networks whose ideological orientation, and whose relationship to private wealth, deserve attention.
The first is WINGS (Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support ) a network of more than 200 philanthropy support organisations across sixty countries. WINGS co-chaired the first formal Philanthropy Working Group under Civil Society 20 (C20) in 2024, positioning itself as the representative of civil society at G20 level. PNZ's membership of WINGS means that when the G20 philanthropy working group speaks to the world's most powerful governments, PNZ's interests, and by extension, its member organisations' interests, are represented in that forum. Civil Society 20 is supposed to amplify the voices of communities and civil organisations that lack the access of governments and corporations. But WINGS member organisations are controlled by the same large asset-holding foundations whose interests they advocate. When organised private wealth speaks at the G20 wearing civil society's clothes, something has gone wrong with the concept.
WINGS also coordinates a global #PhilanthropyForClimate movement, through which philanthropy bodies have made national climate commitments to the C20 process. PNZ is part of this initiative. Its Chair runs a foundation whose operating costs are paid by a corporation that is among New Zealand's worst greenhouse gas emitters, that sought consent for new gas-fired power generation in 2023, and that has explicitly argued against government recommendations to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. The contradiction has not been acknowledged in any of PNZ's public communications.
The second network is AVPN the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network. AVPN explicitly frames philanthropy as "social investment," describes grant-makers as "asset managers," and promotes the building of "ecosystems" that link policymakers with family offices and private foundations. This is not neutral language. Venture philanthropy imports the logic of private equity into charitable giving measuring social "return on investment," funding "scalable solutions," identifying "social entrepreneurs." The effect, intended or not, is to replace the democratic logic of collective need with the market logic of investable opportunity, and to position private foundations as more efficient than government at identifying and funding social change.
PNZ has imported this framework wholesale into its advocacy to government. Its Briefing to the Incoming Government in January 2024, a document delivered to ministers before they had formed their own social policy, spoke of "leveraging capital funds for co-investment," "regional growth," and "a clean economy." This is the language of AVPN, of venture philanthropy, of private equity applied to public goods. It is not the language of community service. And it was delivered by a peak body whose chairman's employer had just given that peak body $205,000.
The Bill English connection
There is one further thread in this network that deserves attention. In May 2021, Sir Bill English, former Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, and the architect of New Zealand's original social investment framework, joined Todd Corporation's board as a director. English's social investment framework, developed during the National-led governments of 20082017, established the policy infrastructure, the data systems, the outcome commissioning models, the language of "investment" in social services, that PNZ is now lobbying to expand through the Social Investment Fund's co-investment pathway, opening in 2026.
The man who designed the policy door now works for the family whose foundation's director chairs the peak body lobbying to walk through it. There is, again, nothing illegal about any of this. But it is a remarkably complete circuit the former Prime Minister who created the social investment framework sits on the board of the corporation that funds the foundation whose director chairs the peak body that is actively lobbying to expand that framework in ways that will channel public money through private philanthropic structures.
PART SIX · WHAT PHILANTHROPY DOES TO DEMOCRACY
The argument made so far has been primarily structural, here is a network of relationships, here are the financial flows, here is the advocacy that follows. But the structural argument only answers the question of how. The harder question, the one that makes this more than a governance story, is why it matters.
Begin with the tax subsidy. Every dollar the Todd family donates to the Todd Foundation, and every dollar PNZ's members contribute in tax-deductible charitable donations, reduces the revenue available to the New Zealand government. The political theorist Robert Reich, whose book Just Giving is the most rigorous examination of this problem, estimates that a substantial portion of philanthropic wealth, in the American context, somewhere between a third and half of all charitable giving, depending on tax rates, consists of money that would otherwise have flowed to the public treasury, where elected representatives would have determined its use. Through the tax deduction mechanism, charitable giving is partially funded by the public. And yet the donor, not the public, decides what the money does.
This is not a minor accounting issue. It is a structural mechanism by which private preferences are substituted for democratic ones, at public expense, without public consent. When the Todd family donates to the Todd Foundation, and when that donation generates a tax deduction, a portion of that philanthropic act has been subsidised by every New Zealand taxpayer. Those taxpayers have no say in whether the Foundation funds youth employment in Whanganui or child poverty advocacy in Auckland or, as it does, the operations of the very peak body that lobbies against the regulatory measures that would constrain the Foundation's discretion.
The voice problem
Political theorists from John Rawls onward have argued that a functioning democracy requires not just formal political equality, one person, one vote, but roughly equal political voice, i.e. the capacity of citizens to make their interests heard by those who govern. Philanthropy, at scale, violates this principle structurally. The Todd Foundation's Executive Director can chair Philanthropy New Zealand, fund its programmes, shape its advocacy, and appear before government officials as the representative of an entire sector, all while being employed by a fossil fuel dynasty and funded by that dynasty's corporate subsidiary. The community organisations that receive Todd Foundation grants, the parents using the food banks, the young people in the employment programmes, they have no equivalent access. Their voice in the policy process is not amplified by a peak body with a seat at government tables. It is, if anything, represented by the same peak body, which speaks for the grant-makers rather than the grant recipients.
This asymmetry is not accidental. The anthropologist David Graeber observed that the defining feature of power is not that it enables you to act, it is that it enables you to define the terms within which others must act. PNZ defines what good grant-making looks like in New Zealand. It defines the standards, the best practices, the language of philanthropy. It shapes what community organisations must demonstrate to receive funding. It shapes what government must accept as legitimate philanthropic engagement. And it does all of this from a governance structure in which the largest and most powerful funders, the organisations with the most to gain from weak regulation, are the ones setting the terms.
The state substitution problem
In 2024, as the New Zealand government cut funding to community organisations and redirected resources toward the Social Investment Fund model, PNZ's advocacy intensified. In its Briefing to the Incoming Government, it argued for philanthropic organisations to become co-investment partners in social service delivery, filling the gaps left by government, deploying their capital alongside public money, measuring outcomes and directing resources to "what works." The co-investment pathway, due to open in 2026, is the policy vehicle for this ambition.
Critics of the social investment model, and there are many, from academics to frontline service providers, argue that it privatises social decision-making, stigmatises communities as targets of investment rather than citizens with rights, and creates a tier of services whose existence depends not on democratic need but on philanthropic interest. The communities most affected by poverty, housing insecurity and unemployment do not get to decide which of their needs are "investable." That decision belongs to the foundations.
PNZ's enthusiasm for this framework is not surprising. It is what AVPN promotes. It is what venture philanthropy requires. And it is, for the Todd Foundation and its peer institutions, an expansion of influence from grant-giver to government partner, from sector participant to policy co-designer. The Foundation that began as a way for the Todd family to give back has become, through thirty years of careful positioning, a vehicle for private power over public goods.
The loop Fink described in 1996, from ideas to policy to implementation, funded by private wealth and wearing the face of civic virtue, is operating in New Zealand. It is less dramatic than its American cousin, less ideologically aggressive, less nakedly self-serving in its public posture. But the structure is the same. The money flows from fossil fuels. It passes through a foundation. It funds a peak body. The peak body lobbies against oversight and for expanded influence. The oversight stays weak. The influence grows. The loop continues.
PART SEVEN · THE CLIMATE CONTRADICTION
There is one specific contradiction at the heart of this story that is worth stating plainly, because it illustrates the whole problem in miniature.
In June 2023, Philanthropy New Zealand co-submitted with the Combined Community Trusts on the Climate Change Commission's advice to government on New Zealand's second emissions reduction plan. The submission called for "a just and equitable transition," for "collaboration between the government and philanthropic sectors," and for "government leadership in system transformation and sustainable finance." PNZ is also a member of WINGS's #PhilanthropyForClimate initiative, which has presented philanthropy's climate commitments to the G20.
In the same year, Todd Corporation's subsidiary Nova Energy was seeking resource consent for a new gas-fired power plant in Southland. In its own submissions to government, Todd Corporation has argued for ETS settings that "accommodate ongoing natural gas use," has endorsed the fossil fuel industry's position on fuel excise rebates, and has opposed the recommendation to phase out subsidies supporting fossil fuel production.
The Foundation that chairs PNZ's climate advocacy is funded by a corporation that lobbies against effective climate policy. The peak body that speaks at the G20 for philanthropic climate commitments is chaired by the Executive Director of a foundation whose operating expenses are paid by one of New Zealand's six worst greenhouse gas emitters.
No one at PNZ has publicly acknowledged this contradiction. No conflicts-of-interest register has been published that would make it visible. The Todd Foundation's website describes the family's commitment to a thriving, equitable Aotearoa. Todd Corporation's own sustainability reports describe its "progress toward a more sustainable future." The language of both is sincere-sounding. The structural reality, measured in gas-fired power plants and lobbying submissions and G20 philanthropy commitments, is something else.
PART EIGHT · THE BUILDING AT THE END OF THE MONEY
Level 15, Todd Building, 95 Customhouse Quay, Wellington. The address appears on the Todd Foundation's website, its Charities Services registration, and the letterhead of every grant letter it has ever sent. Below it, in the same building, is Todd Corporation: the energy and investment conglomerate, the oil and gas subsidiary, the electricity retailer, the family trusts and the family office. The rent is the same. The HR department is the same. The investment manager is the same. The letterhead is different.
From the street, the building presents a unified face of corporate Wellington, glass and steel, prestige address, the quiet confidence of old money. From inside, it is a single institutional organism with two public faces, one that extracts and sells fossil fuels, and one that gives away a portion of the proceeds to community organisations while lobbying government to ensure as little of those proceeds as possible are subject to external accountability.
Zoom out from Wellington and the building connects outward through a network that most New Zealanders have never heard of. To WINGS in Geneva, which speaks for "civil society" at the G20 while representing organised private wealth. To AVPN in Singapore, which trains philanthropy organisations to think of themselves as social investors and government as a co-investment partner. To Philanthropy Australia in Melbourne, sharing positions on charity regulation across the Tasman. To the Tufton Street think tanks in London, funded by the same global network of fossil fuel donors, performing the same function of translating private interest into public policy language. To Koch Industries in Wichita, where Richard Fink published his architecture for the capture of democratic institutions by private capital, and where the model was perfected that New Zealand's oldest fossil fuel dynasty has, in its own quiet way, been implementing for thirty years.
None of this is a conspiracy. There is no evidence of coordination between the Todds and the Kochs, no shared agenda, no secret meetings. What there is instead is something more troubling the independent emergence of the same structure, in the same industry, across different countries and cultures, because the structure works. Because it is rational for those with wealth to protect the conditions that produced it. Because philanthropy is a more effective vehicle for that protection than direct lobbying, because it is tax-subsidised, because it is morally celebrated, and because, in a country without a lobbying register, it is nearly invisible.
Somewhere in Wellington right now, a community organisation is doing meaningful work, funded by a grant from the Todd Foundation, unaware that the corporation whose profits paid for that grant is lobbying, through multiple parallel channels, against the climate and regulatory policies that would protect the communities it serves. The grant is real. The work is real. The people doing the work are real. And the money that funds them flows from gas wells, through family trusts, through a foundation in a fossil fuel building, through a peak body whose chair is the foundation's director, to the government consultation rooms where the rules that govern all of it are quietly being written.
The question this investigation has tried to ask is not whether the Todds are good people. The question is whether a 140-year-old fossil fuel dynasty should be permitted to run the peak body for New Zealand philanthropy, fund its programmes, lobby against its regulation, speak on behalf of civil society at the G20, and call all of this giving back.
That question has not yet been asked out loud in New Zealand.
This article asks it.
A NOTE ON SOURCES AND METHOD
This investigation is based entirely on publicly available information: Philanthropy New Zealand's own website, policy submissions and annual reports; the Todd Foundation's website, grant lists and annual reviews; Todd Corporation's government consultation submissions, ministerial diary appearances (Beehive proactive release), and public company records; the WINGS and AVPN member databases; Electoral Commission donation records; the Democracy Project's analysis of Todd Corporation; and peer-reviewed academic literature on philanthropy and democratic theory. All claims are sourced from these materials. No anonymous sources have been used.
https://thepolarblast.wordpress.com/2026/03/14/a-local-story-about-global-money//
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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