Greenpeace NZ ups campaign spending, pays more to head office as fundraising improves

Tuesday 16th July 2013

Greenpeace New Zealand, the local arm of the global environmental lobby group, spent more on national campaigns and lifted its contribution to head office after a jump in its fundraising surplus.

The group's 2012 annual report shows the net fund raising surplus rose to $5.4 million in calendar 2012, from $4.87 million a year earlier. That's the second-best year for fund raising in at least a decade after the group raised $5.76 million in 2010.

New Zealanders dug deeper into their pockets in 2012 as the group campaigned against deep-sea oil drilling of the nation's coast, unsustainable tuna fishing in the Pacific and drilling for oil in the Arctic.

In February 2012, actress Lucy Lawless and six Greenpeace activists were arrested after climbing the Shell-chartered Noble Discoverer drilling rig at Port Taranaki in an Arctic drilling protest. Also last year, Greenpeace and Te Whanau a Apanui organised a protest flotilla against Brazilian oil company Petrobras's plans to explore in the Raukumara Basin, off East Cape. In the event, Petrobras handed back its exploration licences, though that had more to do with the oil giant's global financial losses.

"We're pretty sure that Kiwis back our work when they see that we're being effective, and we'd like to think that was certainly the case last year, across our campaigns against deep sea oil drilling right here in New Zealand and in the Arctic, protecting rainforests and looking after our wonderful oceans," Bunny McDiarmid, executive director of Greenpeace NZ, said in an emailed statement.

""We don't take money from government or from companies, so the funds we get from individuals are hugely important," she said.

Net profit slipped to $541,094 from $549,009 as Greenpeace NZ lifted campaign spending by 5.7 percent to $1.78 million and raised its contribution to Greenpeace International by 12 percent to $2.15 million. The group is an incorporated society and prefers to call the profit a surplus.

It also reaped $92,281 I interest income from investments. It has $920,649 invested with Prometheus Finance, which touts itself as an ethical investor and counts Greenpeace NZ board member Noel Josephson as one of its directors, notes to its accounts show.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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