Opportunity’s $200,000+ donor Alan Wilderland: ‘You have to play the game’

Opportunity's biggest donor is also entwined in party strategy and governance.The money-man behind Opportunity knows the party's policies will cost him."I would definitely be paying more tax," he says.Alan Wilderland describes his wealth as placing him in the "1 percent". He dances around the term "disadvantage" - he hates using the word - when explaining the impact of Opportunity's tax policy on land-rich people."I feel like I've got so much advantage in life that it's more like a reduction in the amount of advantage that I have."Wilderland is among this election's biggest donors. He's donated $221,160 to Opportunity so far this year, eclipsing Phillip Mills and Brian Cartmell's donations of $100,000. His donation tally will grow over the coming months.His last big donation was the result of the party leveraging his wealth with a dollar-for-dollar campaign matching small donations.Each month he donates another $5000, and he's not ruling out making more large one-off donations before the polling booths open.His contributions extend well beyond what Opportunity's latest campaign policy to "clean up politics" would allow. The policy proposes limiting donations to $30,000 per donor.On TVNZ's Q+A, Opportunity's leader Qiulae Wong was questioned about the policy, given it is benefiting from no donation cap. Wong said future elections would be fairer as new parties wouldn't need to compete with parties that can raise millions of dollars.Wilderland was among the group that picked Qiulae Wong to be the party's leaderRNZ / Samuel RillstoneWilderland says the proposed donation cap would make it harder for wealthy people to influence the government. His own large donations at this election are a necessary transition, he suggests."To change the game you kind of have to play the game first," he says."It's possible to be successful and then pull the ladder up behind you. I think it's also possible to create a movement and a revolution, and then put things in place...I'd like to see Opportunity get into parliament, have a lot of influence toward making it harder for wealthy people to basically dictate the rules."Without his cash, Wilderland thinks Opportunity would find campaigning difficult. The party was given a $118,755 broadcasting allocation by the Electoral Commission, a far cry from National's and Labour's allocation of around $1m each."I think every dollar counts. I think we are stretching the money that we have as far as we possibly can. Without that donation we'd have to be stretching things a lot further," he says.Wilderland says "we" because his involvement goes beyond being the party's biggest donor. He's on Opportunity's board and the party's strategy team. He was even one of five people responsible for the selection of Wong as the party leader.Despite the weight of his donations and his influential role in the party, he denies his voice carries more weight than others in the party.A big donor with board and strategy rolesWilderland says he was recruited into the party after making a donation. Initially asked if he wanted to volunteer, he decided his skills in governance and marketing were better suited to being on the board than volunteering on the phones. After being elected to the board, he also joined the party's strategy team.His work on the board focuses on what he describes as the day-to-day governance of the party, such as compliance.The strategy team focuses on how to reach people with campaign messages and has six or seven members including candidates, board members, and a person from the policy team.He doesn't believe his deep pockets have an impact on the party's policies."I really believe that the people who are on the team with me aren't looking at that. They aren't deferring to me more than anybody else."There are policies he doesn't totally agree with, but describes himself as an armchair opinion holder."I trust the policy team to do their jobs really well," he says. "I'm not really in it to influence individual policies."What matters to him, he says, are the party's values. These are stated in the party's charter document and include truthfulness, equality, ingenuity, and efficacy.If the party veered from its values, he says he would stop donating.Opportunity's constitution states that if 75 percent of the board thinks a caucus decision prejudices the charter, they can overrule it. The board also has to approve any deals made during potential coalition negotiations.Who is Alan Wilderland?Wilderland was one of two "super nerds" who co-founded DJ software company Serato. From humble beginnings 27 years ago, the Auckland-based company has grown to employ 160 people and is doing "pretty well", he says. In 2025, a 66 percent stake was sold to a Canadian company for US$66 million ($116m). Wilderland is not as involved in the day-to-day operation of Serato as he once was, but remains on the board.While he avoids the word disadvantage, "values" and "integrity" pop up frequently. He believes Opportunity's policies will help the country.Wilderland says he thinks long term. He wants his young children to grow up in a country where their friends and all of society are thriving, including businesses."You can't have small business if half the country can't afford their groceries," he says.He sees policies from Labour and the Greens as helping people at the lower-end of the socio-economic scale, but being administrative heavy. ACT and National are more efficient, by using market rules, he says, but they benefit people who don't need more."The policies are aimed at the people who need it, rather than the people who already own everything, but the way we go about it is simple and administration-light."He also gives to charity, but says it's a bottom-up approach, and a sign the government has failed. His support of a political party is an attempt to tackle things from the top-down, he says."I think it's pretty clear at this point that the way that we've been doing things for the last 30 to 50 years has gotten us to a point now where we're kind of on the brink of collapse."