July 25, 2025
At Fairground, we’ve always believed in doing business differently. As a small B Corp accounting firm, we’re deeply committed to sustainability, equity, and supporting a thriving impact sector in Aotearoa. For a long time, our focus has been on walking alongside our clients offering guidance, listening deeply, and helping create meaningful change from the ground up.
But over the past year, something shifted.
We started to see just how much pain was being felt across the communities and organisations we support. Long standing kaupapa Māori groups, not-for-profits, and social enterprises were facing funding cuts, and finally the closure of support structures like the Ākina Foundation led to increasing uncertainty. We realised that our work couldn’t stop at the spreadsheet. If we wanted to live our values as Te Tiriti partners and as part of a regenerative economy, we had to raise our voice beyond our bubble.
So we’ve started writing submissions.
In the past year, we’ve contributed to Government consultations on the Treaty Principles Bill, IRD’s Taxation and the Not-for-Profit Sector paper, and the Regulatory Standards Bill. These are complex issues, but they’re not abstract to us, as they directly affect the people and kaupapa we care about.
We don’t see ourselves as experts in public policy, and we know we won’t always get the language perfect. However we believe that silence, especially when decisions risk undoing decades of progress, isn’t an option. We’ve created space inside our team to engage with these challenges, and to learn. Now we’re beginning to speak up in the public domain as well.
It’s uncomfortable. It’s imperfect. And it’s necessary.
