The income stream 76% of NZ charities are chasing (and the one they haven't considered)

Ask New Zealand charities if they're thinking about diversifying their income, and most say yes. Ask them how, and the answers cluster around the same handful of familiar options. One genuinely legitimate category doesn't show up at all.

Three-quarters of NZ charities are actively looking for new income. Here's where they're looking.

Grant Thornton's 2026 survey asked 205 New Zealand charities which alternative income sources they'd consider. 76% said applying for new grants or contracts. 61% said expanding sponsorship or corporate partnerships. 59% said increasing fundraising activity. Smaller numbers pointed to social enterprise or trading activity, new fee-for-service offerings, and endowment funds.

What's notable isn't what's on that list. It's what isn't.

Licensed charity lotteries weren't even offered as an option.

Running a Class 3 lottery, of the kind Coastguard, the Heart Foundation and other established NZ charities already operate, doesn't appear anywhere in the report's diversification question. Not as a small percentage. Not at all. For a funding model that's fully legal, has been running successfully in New Zealand for decades, and generates genuinely significant, recurring income for the organisations that do it well, that's a real gap in how the sector is thinking about its own options.

Why the gap probably isn't about the model. It's about visibility.

It's a reasonable guess that lotteries aren't underused because charities have weighed them up and decided against them. They're underused because most charities have never actually looked at how one works, who's allowed to run one, or what it takes to do it properly. That's less a rejection of the model and more a case of it simply not being part of the conversation charities are already having about income.

We've written a full, plain-English breakdown of exactly how NZ charity lotteries actually work, who can run one, and what a licence involves, if you want the real mechanics rather than the summary.

Worth a second look, not a hard sell.

Nobody should run a lottery because it's trendy, or because a report pointed out a gap. It's a genuine funding model with genuine requirements: DIA licensing, an authorised purpose, independent draw supervision, ongoing compliance. But for a sector where 76% of organisations are actively hunting for new income and coming back to the same three or four familiar options, it's worth at least knowing this one exists as a real, legal, workable category, rather than something that simply never made it onto the list.