Why this information has been requested

The Veterans Advisory Board (VAB) exists to provide independent advice on matters affecting the wellbeing of New Zealand veterans and their families.

Many veterans rely not only on statutory entitlements, but also on charitable and community organisations for support such as wellbeing, peer support, advocacy, hardship assistance, housing, or family support. For that support to be effective, it must be visible, navigable, and understood by those advising government.

This request seeks to understand what visibility the VAB has of the veteran charity landscape, and whether issues of signposting, navigation, or gaps in non-statutory support have been considered or raised in the Board’s advice.

What this request is asking

The request asks whether the VAB:

holds or has been provided with any lists, directories, or briefing material identifying charities or community organisations that support veterans and their families;

has provided advice or recommendations on charitable or community support for veterans, including any identified gaps outside statutory entitlements;

has considered whether veterans can readily identify and access support, or whether a central signposting or “front door” mechanism is needed;

has discussed comparisons with overseas approaches (such as Defence or Armed Forces Covenant models).

The request also allows for confirmation where such information is not held, as that is relevant to understanding how veterans’ needs are considered at a governance level.

Why this matters

Effective advice depends on situational awareness. If advisory bodies do not have visibility of the full support ecosystem available to veterans, it is difficult to assess whether veterans are being adequately supported in practice, or whether gaps in access and navigation exist.

Understanding the VAB’s visibility of charitable and community support helps inform constructive discussion about:

how veterans experience the system in reality;

whether non-statutory support is being factored into advice; and

whether improvements to signposting or coordination could improve outcomes.

Public interest

There is a clear public interest in transparency about:

the information available to bodies advising on veterans’ wellbeing;

whether gaps in access to support have been identified at a governance level; and

how veterans can be better supported through clearer visibility and navigation of available assistance.

This request is intended to support evidence-based discussion and does not prejudge the outcome.

Closing annotation — What this OIA establishes

This request has now received a final response from the New Zealand Defence Force (OIA 2025-5626, dated 10 February 2026). While no documents were released, the response is substantively significant and should not be read as a routine or uninformative refusal.

The Veterans’ Advisory Board (VAB) has formally confirmed that it does not hold:
• any list, directory, register, or briefing material identifying veteran charities or community organisations;
• any advice, reports, or briefings (since at least 2019) addressing non-statutory support, navigation gaps, or signposting mechanisms for veterans and their families; or
• any internal papers, minutes, or records identifying lack of visibility of charitable or community support as an issue requiring attention.

The NZDF response relies on section 18(e) of the Official Information Act (“information does not exist”) for all core parts of the request. This is not a partial withholding or a collation refusal. It is a clear institutional admission that such information has not been created, maintained, or considered in recorded form.

The only material referenced by the agency consists of already-public Veterans’ Advisory Board reports and articles (largely from 2021–2022) focused on a proposed Kawenata / Defence Covenant framework. These documents do not address the practical questions raised in this request: how veterans identify charitable or community support, whether gaps exist outside statutory entitlements, or whether a central navigation or signposting mechanism is needed.

As a result, this OIA successfully establishes a governance and visibility gap rather than uncovering hidden documents. It confirms that, at an advisory-board level, there is currently no structured oversight, mapping, or analysis of the non-statutory veteran support landscape.

This outcome is relevant to public understanding of how veterans are expected to navigate support systems, and where responsibility currently does—and does not—sit within New Zealand’s veteran governance framework

### Public-facing annotation: *What we can now quantify (Charities Register), and why it matters for veteran navigation*

This thread is about a **structural visibility gap**: when an agency (here, NZDF/VAB) says it holds **no list, directory, or briefing material** covering veteran-facing charities/signposting, that is not a trivial “admin” issue — it has real-world consequences for veterans who are expected to navigate fragmented civilian support systems while managing service-related health and vulnerability.

One useful way to show the scale of what “visibility” would mean in practice is to ground it in the **size of the charity sector**.

#### How many registered charities are there in New Zealand right now?

The Department of Internal Affairs (Charities Services) public register indicates **29,431 “Registered” charities** (count returned directly from the register’s open data feed). ([odata.charities.govt.nz][1])

That is the **current baseline**: tens of thousands of charities exist nationally, across every domain (health, disability, housing, advocacy, emergency relief, etc.). In that context, a “we don’t hold any list / directory / briefing material” response is not just a refusal outcome — it confirms there is **no internal mechanism** for the VAB to consistently see, map, or assess the broader support landscape that veterans actually rely on when statutory entitlements don’t cover the need.

#### How many of these are directly veteran-focused?

There is **no single official public metric** that cleanly answers “how many are veteran-focused” because:

* “Veteran-focused” is not a single mandatory category in public reporting; and
* many veteran-support entities are **multi-purpose** (e.g., welfare + community + remembrance + emergency relief) and may not use consistent naming.

What we established so far (charities scale vs “veteran visibility” gap)

1) How many registered charities exist in New Zealand?

The most recent official “whole-of-sector” count I could verify is from Charities Services (DIA) in its 2024/2025 “year in numbers” snapshot. It states:

There are 29,208 registered charities in New Zealand (as at 2024/2025).

This matters because it gives the scale of the charity sector that veterans (and their families) may need to navigate when they fall outside or between statutory entitlements.

2) How many of those are “veteran-focused” charities?

A precise, defensible number is not available from a single official publication, because Charities Services does not publish (in the snapshot) a category like “veterans” as a standalone count. The Charities Register is searchable publicly, but there is no official “veteran charities total” figure published in the way “total registered charities” is published.

So the only credible way to answer “how many are veteran-focused” is to use a replicable search method on the Charities Register with strict inclusion rules (e.g., the organisation’s name and/or stated purposes explicitly indicate veteran/ex-service support), and then verify “Registered” status entry-by-entry.

What we can say safely at this stage is:

There are clearly veteran-related organisations on the Register, but
any number you publish must be tied to a transparent keyword logic + verification rules, or it can be attacked as cherry-picked.

3) Why this links back to VAB OIA finding

The now-closed NZDF/VAB OIA (#33398) established (via the agency’s s18(e) position) that the VAB does not hold a list/directory/briefing set identifying veteran charities and community support organisations. In plain terms: the “front-door navigation map” isn’t held in the place many veterans would expect.

Set against the verified scale of 29,208 registered charities, the gap is not trivial: it implies veterans may be expected to self-navigate a very large sector without an identifiable VAB-held “visibility layer” for non-statutory supports.

4) Important limits (so the annotation can’t be undermined)

The 29,208 figure is official but it is a snapshot (“as at 2024/2025”), not a real-time counter.
A “veteran-focused charity count” is not officially published as a single figure, so any public claim must be framed as “count using replicable register search logic”, not as a DIA-published statistic.

Some charities may support veterans without using explicit keywords in name/purpose; a strict method will under-count by design (that’s acceptable if disclosed).

“Related Requests”

#33398 (closed) — established VAB does not hold a veteran-charity visibility list / signposting material (s18(e)).

#33682 (new) — tests why the gap persists (decision-making/prioritisation/responsibility) without re-asking for a directory.

DIA / Charities Services — provides the official sector-scale baseline (29,208 registered charities as at 2024/2025).