Faced with falling lottery profits, the Lottery Grants Board is cutting grants this financial year and will soon stop helping one-off community projects.
Lottery Grants Board secretary Paul Curry said the board was having to make hard decisions about demands on the shrinking lottery profits.
The board would make $100million available for distribution in the next financial year, compared with last year's $115 million.
But Finance Minister Michael Cullen said yesterday that next week's Budget would offset the drops in grants to several art and recreation organisations.
Creative New Zealand and the Arts Foundation would get a little over $2 million between them in the Budget. The Film Commission would get $857,000, the Film Archive $63,000 and Sport and Recreation New Zealand (formerly the Hillary Commission) $3 million.
The Lottery Grants Board yesterday announced allocations for this financial year:
* $56.318 million to statutory bodies, including Creative New Zealand, Sport and Recreation New Zealand and the Film Commission. Last year they received about $61 million between them.
* $27.155 million to support welfare, youth, seniors, individuals with disabilities and problem gambling.
* $16.527 million for environment and heritage, marae and health research.
* $5.12 million to Lottery General, the principal cash source for outdoor safety, which last year received $10.8 million.
* $4.486 million to the facilities committees that have supported one-off projects in the past, but will be wound up next financial year.
Mr Curry said the board had been "trimming down" one-off grants for the past three years.
Arts and sport had taken a cut of 8.6 per cent in this year's funding, and the environment and heritage, health research and marae facilities a 17 per cent cut.
He said the Lottery General Committee, would continue to receive its current level of funding.
