About eleven years ago Peter Kinney and his wife Lisa Sandquist decided to set up a foundation to actively give their fortune away. Yesterday on a bright sunny morning along the River Liffey in Dublin, a mural was unveiled on the side of Liberty Hall declaring: You don’t deserve equality. It is your right.”

The banner was unveiled to launch a new €10 million Equality Fund managed by Rethink Ireland, with private funding from The Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist Foundation matched by public funds from various government departments.

Eleven civil-society groups are being backed by the fund which is planning to tackle the hard issues required to advance equality for LGBTI+ communities, migrants, people with intellectual disabilities, Travellers, women survivors of addiction and domestic sexual violence, sex workers and organisations that combat racism and hate in Ireland.

Minister of State for Community Development and Charities Joe O’Brien, Deirdre Mortell, chief executive of Rethink Ireland, Mariaam Bhatti, co-founder of The Great Care Co-Op, a carer-owned home care co-operative founded by migrants, and Martin Collins, Co-Director, Pavee Point, all gathered on Butt Bridge for the launch.

However, Kinney and Sandquist were 8,300 kilometres away in Los Angeles, as they were unable to fly back to Dublin for the launch due to Covid-19 travel restrictions.

But who are they and what do they want the Equality Fund to do?

From house painting to value investing

Peter Kinney is a very low-profile Irish success story. Born in Dublin, he emigrated to the United States in 1988 after studying Business Economics and Social Studies in Trinity College Dublin. “It goes back to luck,” Kinney tells me on a phone call from LA.

“I was lucky to be born privileged. I went to the US in the late 1980s on a J1 student visa painting houses in Chicago. One of the guys I was painting a house for had retired when he was 35 from investing,” Kinney said.

The two got to talking about business. “I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, but we got on really well. I said what you’re doing seems interesting…being able to retire at 35 and work your own hours certainly was!”

This conversation led to Kinney getting an introduction to the close-knit world of investing in Chicago. “The guy I knew said I had to go for lunch with a guy he knew. I didn’t have a suit, paint was under my fingernails,” he said. “But I got on well with this guy and he said to come back to me when you graduate.”  

Kinney duly emigrated to Chicago when he finished his degree. He met his wife Lisa Sandquist during his house painting days while she was studying art history at Northwestern University. They celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary in two weeks’ time.

Sandquist sold technology products for 15 years before becoming a yoga instructor in 2003.

Kinney meanwhile showed a talent for investing and began to make headway working initially for others.

In 2003, he founded Kinney Asset Management, a value-orientated investment manager backed by Joel Greenblatt, a legendary investor who founded Gotham Asset Management.

The fund accepted 240 applications for funding and whittled these down to 25 projects for an in-depth interview.

Greenblatt popularised an investment technique called magic formula investment which he described in a 2006 interview as: “You’re buying good companies, on average, at cheap prices, on average.”

Kinney said Kinney Asset Management took a similar approach. “We are really old-fashioned investors. We are value investors looking for traded companies that are trading below their intrinsic value. We don’t use leverage. There is nothing fancy,” he said.

Kinney Asset Management is an investment partnership for foundations, endowments, and high net-worth individuals.

In Ireland Kinney is the portfolio manager of the Kinsale Compass Fund, which again specialises in seeking value stocks for investors. Kinsale was founded by Gearoid Doyle, who was previously head of institutional equity sales for Merrill Lynch in Chicago. It was there that Kinney and Doyle became friends.

Peter Kinney has been quietly successful in business, but as the years went on, along with his wife, he decided to also focus on giving back.

Picking partners, picking charities

Peter Kinney said he and his wife wanted to help leaders and organisations make an impact in Ireland by supporting “hard stuff” that can find it difficult to raise funds or scale. He said he felt Rethink Ireland had the expertise to do that after his foundation started working with Rethink Ireland on a smaller scale in 2018 when it gave more than €300,000 to an earlier version of the Equality Fund.

This money helped organisations like Amal Women’s Association, which works with Muslim women in Ireland, Stay Safe Work Wise (SSWW), which works to protect the safety of sex workers, and the Phoenix Programme, which provides therapeutic intervention to sex offenders, their families and their victims. “This went very well. We had a great experience dealing with volunteers and it started us thinking about a series of projects and doing more,” Kinney said. “We want to be a catalyst for change.”

After dipping its toe in working with Rethink Ireland, the Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist Foundation wanted to do more. “We went back to Rethink and we said we want to do this in a serious way,” Kinney recalled. “The only thing we asked was that Michael Barron continued running the fund.”

Barron previously founded and led BeLonG To, Ireland’s national service for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender young people. He was also actively involved in campaigning to secure marriage equality by referendum and he led EQUATE’s work to reform school admissions.

Kinney said that the Irish tax code did not encourage philanthropy, unlike the United States.

Kinney said there were a lot of pluses to working with Rethink Ireland, rather than the foundation directly investing in equality organisations. “It takes effort to give money away wisely,” he said. “Rethink Ireland has a full team of analysts and a full structure in place to help you do it. They are really superstars of the charity sector in Ireland,” he said.

“It meant we could get going quickly and the fact they can get matching funds from the government made it a no brainer for us.”

Kinney said his foundation was based in Chicago where he lived, so a link-up made sense. “We are very involved in Ireland and we have some understanding of the issues but you need to have feet permanently on the ground which they do, so this was a fantastic opportunity for us.”

Kinney said about nine months ago, Barron produced a detailed document setting out how a bigger investment in the Equality Fund would make a difference. “It set out who the players were and what difference we could try to make working with them,” Kinney recalled.

The fund accepted 240 applications for funding and whittled these down to 25 projects for an in-depth interview. “We sat in on every one of those interviews,” Kinney said.

“We wanted to look at what is not getting funded and what needs to be done. Can we do something sizable? And can we do follow-on funding to help these organisations grow?”

He said he and his wife had worked closely with Rethink Ireland on carrying out due diligence and preparing contracts to work with each of the 11 projects supported by the Equality Fund.

“We were surprised at the areas that needed funding,” Kinney said. “But we were also incredibly inspired by the people we met and their passion. These are superstar leaders,” he said. “They are working without getting paid. They are prepared to struggle.”

Among the projects the Equality Fund decided to invest in are the Empowering Traveller Women Project, set up by the Tipperary Rural Traveller Project (TRTP) to help Traveller women find employment locally; the DAVINA Project which works with women survivors of addiction and domestic sexual and gender-based violence; and Sex Workers Alliance Ireland, a worker-led advocate group for people who are sex workers.

Spend down philanthropy

The Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist Foundation is a spend-down one that intends to give away all its funding in its founders’ lifetime making it not dissimilar to Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies – albeit at a smaller scale. Why did they decide to set up a foundation? “It comes somewhat from our background and how we think about life and death,” Kinney replied.

“There is a concept that Warren Buffett talks about of the lucky sperm club – being lucky to be born in a certain country, to certain parents at a certain time. Myself and Lisa were both lucky with our families and to be born in stable countries. We got all the opportunities in life and we want people to have the same support that we have and they don’t. We know we are lucky and other people are not.”

Most of the Foundation’s work has been outside Ireland until the launch of the Equality Fund. Kinney said there was a different approach to philanthropy in Ireland to the United States. “The mindset around philanthropy in Ireland is not as well developed,” he said. “In the US it is expected of you to give if you do well. In Ireland, it is not the case.

“Part of the reason why we are doing what we are doing is to encourage other people to figure out what they want to do with their wealth. We want to encourage giving to happen. In Ireland, a lot of private philanthropy is private as people don’t want to be out in the public arena doing things. I think Ireland needs to get over that and people are afraid of being cut down if they are seen to be giving.”

Kinney agreed that a lot of the philanthropy in Ireland was done by older people rather than younger entrepreneurs. “Young people are very interested in causes like climate change,” he said. “But I think sometimes young people don’t know what to do. That needs to change, and Rethink Ireland can help.”

Kinney said that the Irish tax code did not encourage philanthropy, unlike the United States. “The government has made some efforts to change but there is no reason why it shouldn’t be much easier to give money away,” he said.

Kenney said he was now 55 and firmly committed to philanthropy. “We are committed to giving everything away,” he said. “But we are not coming to Ireland to try and influence – that is not where we are coming from. All we want to do is give a voice to communities that have a great voice and great organisations – we want to help those voices be heard.”

Rethink Ireland

It is the afternoon after yesterday’s launch when I talk to Deirdre Mortell, the chief executive of Rethink Ireland. Mortell previously co-founded the One Foundation with Declan Ryan and prior to that held senior roles in fundraising and communications in Oxfam and Barnardos. She said Rethink Ireland had first met Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist through The Ireland Funds.

“Peter and Lisa had been talking to them about their desire to support equality issues in Ireland after the referenda,” she said. “They subsequently travelled to Ireland and we were able to meet, and learn that we were highly aligned. We piloted the Equality Fund for a year, we all learned a tonne, and built on that experience together.”

Mortell said that Rethink Ireland was able to help donors increase their impact by helping them access state funding. “Matching funding means quite simply double the impact.  Government support brings more than just the funds but also the endorsement that is so valuable,” she said. Rethink Ireland’s matching funds come from the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth via the Dormant Accounts Fund.

“Rethink Ireland’s donors support a wide range of issues from tackling educational disadvantage to strengthening youth mental health to building equality, and of course supporting the green transition. Together we work hard to spotlight the awardees – it is their innovations that will change Ireland,” Mortell said. “We just help by lifting the lid, spotlighting them, and curating a little bit so that donors can access the innovations that interest them the most over time.”

The fund, she said, had a number of targets with its €10 million investment. “We believe the Equality Fund will strengthen the voices of some of Ireland’s most marginalised communities, from rural communities in Donegal, to LGBT+ women in Cork, to Traveller women in Tipperary, as well as supporting anti-racist work, and resisting the march of the messages of hate by the far right,” she said.  “Growth that leaves people behind is a problem, not a solution.” She said Rethink Ireland also offered its grantees a place on an accelerator programme and non-financial support.

“We call this venture philanthropy. We know that the skills it takes to develop an innovation are not the same as those needed to scale it,” she said. “This dedicated budget and the Accelerator programme provides an opportunity to add the technical skills or capacities to turn weaknesses into strengths. The Accelerator is a peer learning community – we always remember that the answers to most of the hard questions are among the awardees in the room.”

What should someone do if they are thinking about philanthropy and working with Rethink Ireland? “I think in Ireland we underestimate what a unique role philanthropy can play, by bringing both funds but also knowledge and an appetite for risk to the table,” Mortell said.

“We are ambitious for Rethink Ireland as we face a climate crisis and emerge from a health crisis.  We believe that together we can build a more equal Ireland, through social innovation. We can only do this in collaboration with philanthropists, government and civil society. We have committed to developing strategic clusters of innovation in equality, social enterprise, education and health, and the green transition. Our doors are open.”