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SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

National Council of Women (NCWNZ) wins back charitable status

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NCWNZ Media Release (19 April 2013)

“The National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) is absolutely delighted that it has
regained its rightful place on the charities register,” National Council of Women of New Zealand
(NCWNZ) President Barbara Arnold said today.

Barbara Arnold was commenting on the decision of the Board of the Charities Commission to
reinstate NCWNZ as a registered charity, after deregistering it in August 2010.

“It has taken 32 months of hard work and considerable anxiety to have the 2010 decision
reversed. We are especially grateful to Sue Barker Charities Law, without whose hard work we
simply would not have been able to achieve this outcome,” Barbara Arnold said.

“We always knew the Commission’s original decision was wrong. The fact that NCWNZ was alone

among other national councils of women throughout the world in being a non registered charity

was a telling factor in itself.

“However the work involved in overturning the decision has been significant. We feel for other
charities which may be forced to accept an adverse decision because they do not have the
resources to challenge it. We need to ask as a community whether the system we have in place for
challenging decisions of the charities regulator is working for us as a country.

“In the 117 years since its establishment, NCWNZ has worked tirelessly for the betterment of
women, the family and the community. This decision puts NCWNZ back where it belongs as a
registered charitable entity and allows us to get on with what we have been doing for over a
hundred years and what we aim to continue doing for many more,” Barbara Arnold said.

ENDS

For more information contact:
Elizabeth Bang
Immediate Past President NCWNZ

http://www.ncwnz.org.nz/assets/Uploads/NCWNZ-wins-back-charitable-status.pdf

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1304/S00239/ncwnz-wins-back-charitable-status.htm

NZ Charities Commission – to be disestablished

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The imminent disestablishment of the New Zealand Charities Commission, scheduled to occur on 1 July 2012, if the Government achieves its legislative plans, has caused some serious concerns among those involved in organisations working in the charities sector. However, some are welcoming the move, in particular some of those who have experienced the downside of the “egregious inner machinations of the complaint-driven deregistration process”, as one aggrieved charity CEO expressed it, with its unreasonable and seemingly blind adherence to an out-dated 400-year old Victorian definition of “charitable purpose”.

A number of influencial media commentators have sounded alarm bells over the last few years as groups such as the highly regarded National Council of Women of New Zealand, Business in the Community Limited (Business Mentors NZ – the nation’s number one not-for-profit mentoring organisation), The Business in the Community Trust,  the Liberty Trust, and many other charities serving the public good; were systematically ‘picked-off’ by the Commission and deregistered. Liberty Trust has been the only deregistered charity to have successfully challenged the Commission’s deregistration decision in the High Court. The Trust was reinstated as a charity on 15 April 2010. [Read more…]