J R McKenzie Trust: Intersectionality and building capacity for systems change

The J R McKenzie Trust is a philanthropic family trust that has been grantmaking in Aotearoa New Zealand since 1940. The trust has a long history of funding strategically to address social challenges, and funding groups and issues that often struggle to get funding elsewhere. In 2020, the trust launched its current ten-year strategy, Te Anga Rautaki, with a vision for a “socially just and inclusive Aotearoa New Zealand”. The overall priority is “advancing equity” by addressing the underlying causes of inequity and exclusion. The J R McKenzie Trust’s Intersectionality Project sees the trust working proactively with a cohort of organisations working on systems change in relation to belonging and inclusion, across a range of spaces including rangatahi, rainbow communities, and migrant/refugee background communities. Read the J R McKenzie Trust story below.

In the video below, J R McKenzie Trust collaborator, Eileen Kelly, describes how the intersectionality project has led the trust to explore its role in disrupting the funding system to better enable the collective goals of ngā kaikōkiri working to shift systems for communities experiencing exclusion.

NB: This is a case study from The Philanthropic Landscape Volume II: Shifting Culture and Power through Mana-Enhancing Partnerships. Read the full report here.