Garth is a founding partner of the capacity-building social enterprise, LEAD Centre for Not for Profit Governance & Leadership. He also taught part-time for 18 years in Graduate Programmes in Not for Profit Management with Unitec NZ across 7 regions of Aotearoa New Zealand and in 6 Pacific Island Countries (teaching values, ethics, organisational change & effectiveness, community research & evaluation, governance, leadership, strategy & stewardship, advocacy & public policy).
He has researched and published widely on a range of non-profit issues, including: sector demographics and data (including volunteering data), funding and accountability (especially ‘contracting’), social capital and community development, learning and capacity building, non-profits and the media. He has run workshops on Community Research and on Harnessing the Power of Monitoring & Evaluation and Taking Charge of Outcomes. Garth chaired the inter-sectoral study of the Aotearoa New Zealand Study of the Not for Profit Sector, 2004-2008 (as part of the Johns Hopkins University International Nonprofit Comparative Project). Several times he has served on the assessment panel of New & Emerging Community Researcher Awards, and he has advised Statistics NZ on Non Profit Institutions, and the Social Investment Agency on Data Protection and Use. He has also co-chaired the Tangata Whenua, Community and Voluntary Sector Research Centre (Community Research), since 2006, and has been a board member, including 3 terms as Deputy Chair, of Australia New Zealand Third Sector Research (2001-2017), and as a peer reviewer and guest editor of Third Sector Review, and peer reviewer for Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.
Qualifications: Bachelor of Social Work (1st Class Honors) (University of New South Wales), and Graduate Diploma in Not for Profit Management (Unitec NZ). Garth was also New Zealand’s first registered Social Auditor (SAN, UK), and awarded a research bursary by Australian Foundation for Study of Mental Retardation, and University of NSW Book Prize for Study of Racism.