Opening a Gift Account

Individuals, families, companies, trusts, estates, private foundations and not-for-profits are eligible to open a Gift Account in their own name.

The individual who fills out the application form is considered the ‘primary account holder’ (for individual accounts) or ‘primary account manager’ (for accounts in the name of a body corporate, such as a family trust or company).

Your new Gift Account must receive at least $1,000 NZD in donations in its first three months. You can make this initial donation when you open the account, or if your Gift Account is public, your community can donate.

Read more: Keeping your Gift Account active

Additional users

As the primary account holder, you can give other people access to your Gift Account, with different roles:

Role	Example	Can view balance and transactions	Can donate into the Gift Account	Can recommend gifts to charities	Can add/remove othe users
Primary account holder (1 per Gift Account)	You
Joint account holder	A trusted family member
Adviser	A lawyer, accountant, or financial adviser

You can add additional users through My Gift Account, or by contacting us.

Succession

When a primary account holder dies, their Gift Account's funds remain in the ownership of The Gift Trust. By making a succession plan for your Gift Account, you indicate what you'd like us to do with its funds.

Primary account holders may choose one or more of the following succession options:

Nominating one or more individuals as successors

You may nominate successors (friends, family members, or others who know your wishes well) to succeed you. Control of your Gift Account will be transferred to them, but they will not receive any funds or assets personally. (If you also choose one or more additional succession options, the percentage of your account you assign to those options will be deducted from your Gift Account before control is transferred to your successor(s).

If the only remaining contactable successor is under the age of 16 at the time succession is triggered, your Gift Account will be managed without distributions by The Gift Trust until that successor turns 16. If we cannot contact your successors after two years, or if they are unwilling or unable to serve, and if you leave no other instructions with us as to how you wish your Gift Account to be managed, we will transfer your Gift Account assets into The Gift Trust’s General Fund to be held and distributed for charitable purposes, in line with the information we have about you and any causes you may have previously supported.

Nominating one or more charitable causes to receive your Gift Account’s funds

If you choose to nominate one or more charitable cause(s) as successor to your Gift Account, the funds remaining in your Gift Account (or the percentage of those funds you choose to assign) will be transferred to that charitable cause. If the cause(s) you specify are no longer in operation or are no longer charitable, we will endeavour to transfer your funds to causes carrying out similar charitable work.

Transferring your Gift Account’s funds to The Gift Trust’s General Fund for charitable purposes

If no account holder or successor remains, upon notification of the death of the last remaining account holder we will transfer the remaining funds from the Gift Account (or the percentage assigned to us) to The Gift Trust's General Fund to carry out our charitable purposes.

Submitting a separate succession instructions form

If you wish to leave more detailed succession instructions (for example, if your Gift Account is to function as a bequest), you can file these instructions with us. If you indicate this option but do not file a form, we will transfer your Gift Account assets into The Gift Trust’s General Fund to be held and distributed for charitable purposes, in line with the information we have about you and any causes you may have previously supported.

We will ask you for your succession plan when you apply to open your Gift Account. If your wishes change at any time, just let us know.

When succession occurs

Succession for individual Gift Accounts will be triggered upon the death of the primary account holder, unless there is a joint account holder who is the spouse or de-facto partner of the primary account holder, in which case they will become the new primary account holder (and will be asked to indicate their own succession options).

Succession for Gift Accounts in the name of a body corporate will be triggered upon the dissolution of the body corporate, unless the primary account manager (or, in their absence, another senior officer of the body corporate) requests that control of the the Gift Account be reassigned to another body corporate.

For all accounts, succession may also be triggered at the discretion of The Gift Trust in the event that we are unable to contact any of the existing account holders/managers after three years of attempting to do so.