Bashford Nicholls Trust – a changemaker story
About This Project
Two south Taranaki farmers – Claude William Nicholls and James Dawson Bashford – were changemakers who left legacies that continue to help agricultural and veterinary students follow their dreams. But both men, each born in 1880, lived just 5 kilometres apart in the close-knit rural communities of Otakeho and Kaupokonui and formed trusts prior to their deaths to enable their farms to provide an ongoing legacy.
The trusts were administered by a succession of trust boards over the decades with support of local advisory trustees, the most recent being Donald Hastie and Dean Pratt. However, in 2008 The Bishop’s Action Foundation was approached to take over running the trusts along with reviewing how the trusts could better align with changing educational and social needs. Donald Hastie commented that:
“Given the community focus of the Bashford and Nicholls Trusts it was felt, following discussions, that the Bishop’s Action Foundation would be the most appropriate trustee for the future.”
Under BAF’s leadership and management the separate Bashford and Nicholls trusts were combined in a single new entity – The Bashford-Nicholls Trust. This recognised the similar aspirations of both founders and enabled running costs to be reduced allowing more of the trusts surplus funds to be directed to their charitable outcomes.
BAF also undertook research with High Schools and Universities to identify how the new trust could be more relevant and increase its impact. The outcome of this process was a radical overhaul of the scholarships offered by the trust to include vocational, undergraduate Masters and PhD scholarship awards and a focus on developing partnerships that would allow the funds of the trust to leverage much wider impacts than if they only worked in isolation.
The first exciting partnership to emerge form this new focus was with Massey University. Together we created the PIVOT Award which is a changemaker award offering up to $100,000 per year to innovation initiatives that have the potential to re-shape agriculture for the future. As the word “pivot” suggests, the award creates turning points in Taranaki’s new food and fibre producing capability by connecting agricultural innovators with world class science research teams at Massey University. The first PIVOT award was made in 2019 and to date PIVOT has made three exciting awards.
Dean Pratt, formerly an Advisory Trustee to the Bashford and Nicholls trusts and now a trustee of both The Bishop’s Action Foundation and the single Bashford-Nicholls Trust commented:
“BAF’s leadership enabled the Bashford-Nicholls Trust to be a co-founder for the Pivot Award which is about creating more diverse and resilient futures for the region — and potentially the whole country. It’s a changemaker award that has potential to impact how we practice agriculture going into the future, so it’s really exciting!”
BAF has also supported the Bashford-Nicholls Trust to take its scholarship offerings online through a new website https://bashford-nicholls.org.nz/ and by developing Taranaki Scholarships https://taranakischolarships.communityforce.com/Login.aspx as an online application platform. Taranaki Scholarships was developed in partnership with Parininihi ki Waitotara (PKW) and now includes a growing number of Taranaki based scholarship providers.
The Bashford-Nicholls Trust is now contributing around $250,000 each year through scholarships and awards.
