#113 Leading a $100 million spend down mission, Bill Kermode Chairman & CEO of NEXT Foundation

Bill Kermode joins Purposely to share his story as inaugural CEO of the NEXT Foundation. His mission to give away a hundred million dollar fortune on behalf of a family committed to making a positive and lasting difference to the planet and people of New Zealand. NEXT is a privately funded charitable foundation which is relatively unique for New Zealand. Rather than being a long-lasting foundation, set up to exist forever using an endowment model, NEXT has a mandate to ‘spend down’ $100 million over 10 years. The money is committed to environmental and educational projects that will benefit future generations of New Zealanders. Bill has led NEXT’s investments as well as providing guidance to the previous philanthropic commitments made by Neal and Annette Plowman. 'They had an ambition for NEXT to leave a legacy of environmental and Educational Excellence for the benefit of future generations of New Zealanders. They wanted to show a way of giving that they hoped would be a model that some others would choose to follow'. The Plowmans made their fortune from a laundry business, founded in 1910 by George Plowman. They successfully grew the business and listed it on the New Zealand Stock Exchange, before privatising the company in 1986, and selling to US firm Alsco in 1998. Bill was appointed NEXT CEO in 2014 by the NEXT Board chaired by Chris Liddell, a successful businessman and advisor to the Plowmans. Bill spent the previous two decades as a founding Director of Direct Capital, New Zealand’s most experienced private company investor, and Director of a number of private companies, including Ryman Healthcare, PF Olsen, NZ Pharmaceuticals, and EziBuy. We discuss Bills move from the investment sector to philanthropy running a charitable foundation and the differences between the two worlds. ‘The biggest difference is around evaluation and measurement, knowing whether you're contributing and making a difference. In the commercial and financial world, there are well established norms and ways of measuring succ