Foreign funding of our NGOcracy
"We’re funding existing organisations that all receive funding from the Irish government. We can’t fund advocacy projects or political things, we can’t buy real estate…there’s a whole list of things you can’t fund." said Peter Kinney in 2019. Perhaps the Rowan Foundation needs to review its funding.
Nominally "non-governmental organisations" (NGOs) are often not just funded by Government departments or its agencies but also by philanthropic bodies which are very often outside of Ireland.
The Rowan Foundation is one philanthropic body from abroad providing funding to NGOs in this country such as TENI, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland, and to the ICCL which said last month it had published "Ireland’s first ever 'Know Your Rights' guide for trans and non-binary people" for which it's been much criticised for example by Sandra Adams for Genspect.
"This guide wasn’t produced on the margins. It was written and researched by the Transgender Equality Network of Ireland( TENI) and ShoutOut, part-funded by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC), with input from bodies including Free Legal Aid Centres (FLAC) and the Irish Penal Reform Trust. It was reviewed by A&L Goodbody, one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. This is not the work of amateurs, and that is precisely what makes its failure to state the law accurately so serious."
"The Rowan Foundation, doing business as The Rowan Trust, is a charitable private foundation with 501(c)(3) status, registered in the United States of America."
The http://rowantrust.org website now appears to have gone but this is what was online three years ago
The Rowan Trust's former Executive Director Michael Barron, a co-founder of BeLonG To, another transactivist lobby group, is now listing Michael Barron Social Change Consultancy on his LinkedIn profile
The Irish beneficiaries of the Rowan Foundation for 2024 received over three quarters of the total provided of (presumably dollars) 1,619,714:
The directors of the private Rowan Foundation based in Chicago, Illinois are listed as Peter A Kinney and Lisa L Sandquist. The Currency reported in 2021
"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."
"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.'"
"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."
Peter Kinney told The Examiner in 2019
"We’re funding existing organisations that all receive funding from the Irish government. We can’t fund advocacy projects or political things, we can’t buy real estate…there’s a whole list of things you can’t fund."
Funding the promotion of gender ideology in Ireland would certainly seem to be very political advocacy as the ICCL is doing along with TENI (Transgender Equality Network Ireland) and ShoutOut in the new guide produced last month.
Perhaps as philanthropist Sigrid Rausing has done recently, Peter Kinney and Lisa Sandquist also need to look again at how their money is being spent.
