Amplify · New Zealand
Amplify is Sam and Kate's small family foundation. We back people working on the bits of the system that block progress. We like people who are eager to try new things, with humility and courage. Right now, there’s a lot to do with - and on - AI.
What is actually stuckSometimes the problem is not that people do not care, or that nobody has a good idea.
It is that the world around them makes the good thing harder than it should be. The money is hard to find. The rules are out of date. The incentives reward the wrong behaviour. The people who need to work together are pushed apart. The people most affected are not in the room.
We are interested in those stuck points.
What we are for
That is the basic idea behind the things we're trying. People need trust, dignity, a healthy environment, and institutions that can make decent decisions when things get hard.
We are especially interested in the foundations underneath good outcomes: the trust, tools, rules, relationships, and shared infrastructure that let many other good things happen. Less "fund one programme forever", more "help build the conditions that make better responses possible."
We are not trying to fund everything that matters. We are asking a narrower question: where can a small amount of money, attention, or connection help the people already trying to solve something important move better?
Right now
AI is changing the background conditions for almost everyone: how people write, learn, decide, apply for funding, run organisations, and understand what is true.
Some organisations are already adapting. Many are not. And the people most exposed to the downside are often the least represented in how the tools are built. A model that speaks Swahili, te reo Maori, or Hindi still may not understand the community using it.
So we are not interested in AI because it is shiny. We are interested because it is already part of our reality. People and institutions need to learn how to live with it, shape it, and push back on it.
What we do
A grant is useful when money is the thing that is actually stuck. Often it is not. Often the missing piece is a person, a next funder, a credible signal, a trusted introduction, or someone willing to say "this is worth paying attention to."
That is why we work mostly through relationships, small grants, and connecting people who should probably already know each other. We do not have an open grants process. We share what we learn when it is useful to others.
Route
Make useful introductions
Put people, funders, evidence, and institutions in front of each other when the missing piece is trust or visibility.
Bridge
Small, timely grants
Grants of roughly $10-30k NZD when a small amount of money now changes what is possible next.
Signal
Go first when useful
Sometimes a small early yes helps a bigger funder, partner, or institution take the next step.
Learn
Show our working
When we fund or learn something useful, we try to make the tools, notes, or mistakes available to others.
Current bets
Here are our small bets that test whether a specific thing is stuck, and whether a small push can help it move.
Test
Can community organisations learn to use AI for real work without becoming dependent on tools they do not understand, or losing the voice their communities trust?
Register interest →Test
Can we make it easier for New Zealand charities to find the right funders, and for funders to see what is actually happening in the field?
Visit FundSorter →Test
Can good evidence on livelihoods reach donors at the moment they are actually making decisions, not six months later in a report nobody reads?
Learn more →Test
Can a practitioner community become more than a mailing list: a place where people trust each other enough to share, match, and move?
Learn more →How we learn
It is easy for funders to tell themselves a nice story. We are trying not to do that. If the work is not changing anything real, we want to know.
These are the kinds of signals that would make us rethink the approach.
01
The grant creates activity, but nothing changes afterwards.
02
People like the introductions, but nobody changes a decision.
03
The same blockage is still there, which means we probably misunderstood it.
04
We keep helping people who would have been fine without us.
05
AI makes things easier but less trusted, less human, or less locally grounded.
What we share
We are learning in public where we can. Not because we have finished answers, but because other people may be trying to solve the same puzzle.
Short notes on what shifted, what is unresolved, and what we are watching.
A plain account of why AI moved from "interesting" to "we need to pay attention now."
Curricula, research, and practical artefacts that others can reuse or improve.
Get in touch
We do want to hear from people working on a real blockage: something important is stuck, you have a clear read on why, and a small intervention could help the next thing happen.
Tell us what you think we are missing. Or send the thing you cannot stop thinking about.