Kennards Hire launches Foundation and pledges $7 million

On Wednesday night, at a gala event in celebration of their 70th anniversary, family-owned Australian equipment hire business Kennards Hire launched the Kennards Hire Foundation. Its inaugural gift will see the new foundation donate $7 million over the next five years to its nominated charities.

The vision of the Foundation is to make both Australia and New Zealand a better place for future generations by significantly improving the ability of disadvantaged young children to be independent, self-sufficient contributors to society. In conjunction, the Kennards Hire Foundation will fund conservation projects for both land and species, to support a vision of a better world for future generations.

The Kennards Hire Foundation will be donating to a wide array of children’s charity organisations, including Stepping Stone House, the Smith Family Learning for Life Program, Kids Xpress, BackTrack, Nawarddeken Academy in Australia. KidsCan and the Springboard Community Works will be the first recipients in New Zealand. 

Director of the Kennards Hire Foundation, Kirsty Kovacs, is passionate about helping others and spoke of the foundation’s origins and purpose:

“Whilst the Kennards Hire business has been giving to charities for over 20 years, we wanted to celebrate and formalise our philanthropy. So we have created the Kennards Hire Foundation as a formal structure to give back to organisations that we believe can provide real change.”

“One of Kennards Hire’s values is ‘One Family’. We are a family business and so we appreciate that family is at the heart of every human being. It gives you belonging, it gives you purpose and it is what makes you whole. Many of these charities give a hand up to those who need it, and an education or other opportunity which they wouldn’t otherwise receive. But what most of these guys do, is give them family, give them belonging and give them purpose”.

As part of their commitment to conservation, the foundation will also support Taronga Zoo, Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) and Bush Heritage, to aid in bringing their vision for a better environment into reality.

“We believe these three organisations provide ground breaking research, science and monitoring that proves the effectiveness of their conservation management techniques. They all do them slightly differently but have some wonderful results. For example, in late 2017, the AWC released endangered Bilbies into the Mt Gibson Wildlife Sanctuary, the largest feral predator-free area on mainland Western Australia.  It is hoped that the population there will grow to around 600 Bilbies, which incredibly is still only 5% of the entire global population of these native animals.”

In 2017, Kennards Hire donated more than $1.2 million to community groups across Australia and New Zealand. The Kennards Hire branch network will continue to support and contribute to local charities, schools, sporting and community groups.