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Nau mai haere mai ki tā mātou pānui.
2026 has been a year of growth and change at For Purpose. In this pānui we farewell old friends, introduce you to our new hoa mahi and share some of the things that are inspiring us right now.
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This week is Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. It also marks the 7th year in a row that For Purpose has partnered with Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission, to deliver fresh and innovative ways to motivate people to sign up and participate in Te Wā Tuku Reo Māori.
This year we helped them create digital Te Reo Towns, with local events, local merch, and more ways to celebrate te reo Māori every day of the week in your community. Search your town to find out what’s on and get involved. You can see more of our work with the Commission over the years on our Instagram and LinkedIn.
We couldn’t be more proud of this mahi; it's core to our For Purpose kaupapa, honouring Te Tiriti, fostering connection, and celebrating te reo Māori. Kia kaha te Reo Māori!
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Sharing our knowledge
Having been around for eleven (nearly twelve) years, we’ve learned a lot from working with organisations and groups that are working together to create change through advocacy, organising and movement building, and we love sharing what we’ve learned.
We kicked off 2026 with a 5-part election readiness guide. We created this resource to help organisations to reflect on their advocacy approach in the lead up to the general election, but it was also a way for us to share some practical insights. Each resource guide contains a set of reflective questions to help you assess how you’re working and the tools you’re using, so while the election is just around the corner it’s not too late to download the resources and put them to work.
In March we led a workshop at Progress 2026 in Naarm, where a bunch of intrepid change makers were the first testers of a tarot/D&D inspired world-building game that developed as an extension of this resource. We were delighted that participants really enjoyed the playful, hands-on experience, and the opportunity to reflect on their practice in a collaborative, non-judgemental setting. As one participant shared,
“The game was fun, but the real winner was how incisive and insightful the cards / questions / characters were. I think teams could spend days trying to work out how to say some of these things tactfully so it's really helpful to have it put to you in a playful way”.
We’re still working on a way to share the game, but you can find more information here. Thanks to Progress Aus for an incredible event, and to everyone who came to play and learn with us.
Progress Aus was also our last adventure with Zenaida Beatson and Anna Jackson, who have moved on to new mahi. Ngā mihi nui to Anna and Zenaida for everything they've brought to For Purpose - friendship, wisdom, and mahi.
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Our new people
We’re very pleased to welcome three new team members who bring a new set of skills and interests to For Purpose.
Nau mai, haere mai to Anna Rawhiti-Connell, our audience, social media and communications strategist. Anna's job is to understand who you're trying to reach, the right way to reach and engage them, what you're asking of them, and the results you want to drive. An award-winning writer with decades of experience in media, marketing, content and fundraising, she has deep, sophisticated knowledge of social media platforms and audience behaviour and insights. Most recently, she was head of audience and off-platform strategy at The Spinoff, where she served as the executive producer of the hit rangatahi-focused video series Now You Know.
Follow Anna on LinkedIn, where she regularly writes about audience behaviour, social media, and emerging media trends.
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Mary Spacapan joins For Purpose as our new Creative Director. Mary works across client creative direction, brand and UX/UI design — helping organisations tell meaningful stories, deepen connection and move people toward action. Her work spans social impact, environmental reform and humanitarian initiatives, including campaigns focused on ocean conservation, renewable energy access and community development. She has collaborated with scientists, academics, advocacy organisations and global nonprofits, bringing together complex ideas, strategy and storytelling to create work that resonates with people and inspires change.
Mary is passionate about kai sovereignty, humanitarian work and the arts, and brings a deeply human-centred approach to every project she works on.
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A warm welcome to Ella Nugraha, our Melbourne-based team member, joining For Purpose with a focus on Strategic Growth.
Ella's journey spans continents and causes, from the corridors of Amnesty International Indonesia to the wilds of Tasmania with the Bob Brown Foundation. With deep roots in international development and the not-for-profit sector across Australia and Indonesia, she's built her career at the heart of what matters most: people, purpose, and the technology that connects them. Ella doesn't just talk strategy — she's been in the trenches. She knows what it takes to build a movement, rally supporters around a cause, and grow a mission-driven organisation from the inside out. That rare blend of hands-on experience and big-picture thinking is something clients feel from day one.
As a NationBuilder certified expert and product trainer, Ella has partnered with advocacy and political organisations across Australia and New Zealand to help them get more out of the platform - whether that's cleaning up a database, boosting email deliverability, or driving real fundraising results that make a difference.
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Getting the most out of NationBuilder
We use Nationbuilder for a lot of the work we do with organisations that run campaigns or build, manage and mobilise communities. Nationbuilder is a platform that provides all in one integration for tools such as a website builder, a voter/supporter/member database (CRM), forms, actions (such as petitions), mass email and text messaging, donation processing and event capability.
Recent NationBuilder work show the platform’s range, from community mobilisation to campaign microsites:
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WA Landcare: a network hub connecting agencies, organisations and projects across Western Australia.
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Access Matters Aotearoa: a rebuild to the highest Accessibility standards, alongside a new campaign narrative and visual identity shaped with the disability community.
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The Green Party: a website refresh by our development team alongside a social media audit from our audience strategist, Anna.
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Opportunity: a new website build featuring volunteer mobilisation tools, with sign-up management and local organiser assignment, plus map-based event search.
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Vote for Health: NZNO's Maranga Mai campaign microsite, a clear one-pager for asks, messages and action
Our Nationbuilder expert Ella can provide a comprehensive audit to review your database, communication (email) performance, website set up, workflows, automations and fundraising performance. She can run training to get your team up to speed and work with groups that are new to Nationbuilder to create a custom solution that fits your needs.
Get in touch for a chat with Ella directly via email, or book a time here.
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But wait, there’s more
We’re firm believers in using the right tools to fit the needs of the people we’re working with. For organisations and groups with less complex needs we often use CloudCannon, a CMS developed by a company based in Ōtepoti. Sometimes people come to us with an existing platform that they want to keep and we work on refreshing, optimising and improving on what’s already there.
Kaitiaki Kindergartens is a North Auckland Kindergarten Association that needed a website that reflects their unique identity and values, with space for stories and testimonials. A location-based directory now lets parents find a nearby kindergarten and enrol directly online. We built it in CloudCannon for its user-friendly CMS and scalability, making it easy for staff to update.
Ecpat International is the world’s largest influencing network fully dedicated to ending the sexual exploitation of children. We worked with them on a content audit and strategy, and a website redesign using their existing Wordpress site and integrated it with Nationbuilder to give them the organising tools they needed to drive their mission. The result is user-friendly, action-focused, and has made an extensive library of resources easier to access.
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We’re admiring
The ResistAI List site. It showcases movements and different approaches to resisting “AI empires” and illustrates how anyone can help shape the future of AI development.
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We’re learning from
Messaging Guide to Counter Far Right Narratives. Our friends at Aus Progress recently hosted an online workshop with strategist and messaging consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio on responding to far-right populist messaging. While this resource is focused on the tactics of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) party in Australia, unfortunately it’s all too relevant to our political context here in Aotearoa.
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“We write history with our feet and with our presence and our collective voice and vision… We can change the world because we have many times before.”
— Rebecca Solnit, writer and activist, Hope in the Dark
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Want help to make the world a better place?
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