Brotherly Love

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2024

Two things that can be said without question about the late Vic Regnier Sr.: One, he was one of Johnson County’s most storied names in home-building and land ownership over the second half of the 20th century. Two, he didn’t want generational wealth to dissuade his three children—Vic Jr., Bob and Cathy—from fulfilling their own potential.

“My Dad was very clear: He did not want us to inherit a whole bunch of money, because he just thought it would screw us up,” Bob Regnier says. “That we would stop working and kind of live off the fat of the land.”

They didn’t. Vic Jr. went on to excel in senior-living design and for nearly 30 years has been a professor and leadership figure at the University of Southern California. Bob, a year younger, went into banking, started the Bank of Blue Valley in 1989 and sold it 30 years later. And Cathy went to work for her father, then after his death became caretaker for their mother, who died in 2005, and who more recently has assisted Bob with management of Ranch Mart Hardware—ownership of which, he says, “is God’s way of keeping me humble.”

In three decades of building a bank, orchestrating its 2019 sale, then flunking retirement and returning to a leadership role now with Hawthorn Bank, Bob Regnier has worked with his siblings to establish a broad philanthropic footprint in K-12 and higher education, youth development and other causes. To date, the combined giving of the V&H Foundation—named for Vic and his wife, Helen—the bank’s history of philanthropy and Bob’s personal foundation have made a total impact approaching $50 Million.

For those reasons and more, Bob Regnier is Ingram’s 2024 Philanthropist of the Year, joining an alumni group that includes Henry Block, Bill Dunn, Charlie and Kent Sunderland, Shirley and Barnett Helzberg, John Sherman, Marlys and Mike Haverty, Peggy and Terry Dunn and Linda and Paul DeBruce.

Coming to Philanthropy

Bob Regnier’s philanthropic outlook was largely shaped by family and circumstance. But it’s informed by much more than his father and mother’s favored causes or the simple return on invested funds in the quarter-century since Vic Regnier left this world. 

An equally important part of that ethos comes from Bob’s commitment to civic engagement—he’s been everywhere, on both sides of the state line, with his wallet and his calendar, sitting on more than a dozen boards. Another part flowed from lessons divined about success and the kind of moral debt it incurs—in his case, to those who, over the course of 30 years, helped take Bank of Blue Valley from a start-up into one of the region’s biggest locally-based banks.

Could the Regnier legacy have been even more prominent with better planning? We’ll never know. But it exists today in large part because the Regnier Three responded as quickly and effectively as they could to maximize that generational wealth on behalf of non-profits and schools here, rather than see it hoovered up by the Internal Revenue Service.

Suffice to say, Vic Sr., did not leave a sophisticated estate plan. 

“No, it would be the opposite of sophistication,” Bob says. So when cancer came calling in the late 1990s, the contours of philanthropic potential had largely been defined. Bob and his siblings, working with the Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City and trusted legal advisers in estate planning, quickly crafted a strategy using Philanthropy to minimize the impact of estate taxation.

A significant gift went to the community foundation, the feds took their reduced cut, and the Regniers set out to make a difference with the balance, including:

• A foundational donation to Wonderscope Children’s Museum, one of their father’s earliest projects. 

• Another $4 million to jump-start funding for Regnier Hall, home of Kansas State University’s College of Architecture, Planning & Design (Vic Jr., is an alumnus).

• $3 million went to establish the Regnier Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UMKC, where Bob received his MBA.

The latter reflects Regnier’s deep connection to his second alma mater. In addition to financial support, he is board president of the UMKC Foundation. And the Regnier Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the UMKC Bloch School hosts the annual Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, recognizing global, regional, local and student leaders in entrepreneurship.

“Bob Regnier has always been deeply committed to UMKC and the Kansas City community through his generous support of entrepreneurship and giving back to our region,” says Chancellor Mauli Agrawal. “It’s what makes him such a deserving Philanthropist of the Year.”

Other gifts have benefitted Johnson County Community College (hence, the Regnier Center on that campus), the University of Kansas, Union Station’s restoration, Jewish Family Services, the Johnson County Museum, the Shawnee Mission and Blue Valley school districts, the Johnson County Library system, and many other causes. 

That giving has been impactful, especially for Wonderscope, for which Vic and Helen Regnier were champions, with Bob having filled their shoes. Most recently, says executive director Roxane Hill, he served as Wonderscope’s capital campaign chair and led efforts to build its new museum. 

“Without Bob and the family, Wonderscope’s hill to climb would have been much steeper; we are forever grateful to them,” Hill says. “Bob is very vested in the sustainability of Wonderscope, our programs, and our mission. That’s not only financially. In particular, he is very passionate about our kindergarten readiness program, Road to Readiness.”

In fact, he serves as the “graduation speaker” for families who complete the eight-week program. “Bob has always been more than just a funder; he has been an advocate, an adviser, an ambassador, just a true friend and supporter,” Hill says.

Making It All Work

Getting to a comfortable mix of giving has been both a labor of love and, at times, a test on the limits of sibling collaboration as three diverse viewpoints come to the table several times a year to update and refine the giving agenda. 

Forming a consensus on direction and decisions was not always easy.  

“We have consistently looked for projects and direction that would be things that their parents would have agreed with,” Bob says. Education, children’s issues and Johnson County projects ended up at the top of their agenda.

A key piece of the family’s giving impact came through the community foundation, Regnier says. “Dad had a private foundation, but you just can’t do the same thing because of the rules. If it’s a public foundation, which community foundation is, you can. It’s a lot more flexible and we were able to craft a strategy that over time would create a meaningful foundation base that integrated with the existing family business.”

That enabled them to leverage what had been the first step for the family with creation of his parents’ foundation in 1989.

“Dad was a complicated guy; like all the entrepreneurs and people who are really super successful, he worked hard and he was proud of the fact that he was accumulating assets, but he didn’t spend it,” Regnier says. “We took some nice vacations as kids, he took us to lots of places, but having said that, he just didn’t want to buy a big house; he drove a pickup truck his entire life. He didn’t want to spend the money and that’s part of the reason I think he was so successful, just kept accumulating land, and it gave him the ability to take some risks early in life in his business life that allowed him to wait for these things to pay off.”

Thrust on comparatively short notice into managing the fruits of those labors, the Regnier siblings had an uneven start.

“We were trying to figure this out and so we actually spent an entire weekend kind of in our own private strategic planning to sit down with a chalkboard and try to put down what we were going to do and we went about it very seriously,” Bob says. “We established a list of priorities, but when we were faced with the reality of people coming asking for money, it never fell into those columns. We’re trying to think about what my dad would have done, but we also know that he would have wanted something that showed a return. He wanted something that had a long-term benefit.

“I’ve always said he made all this money in Johnson County, and most of the benefit should remain there. The answer was in front of us all the time: My parents looked at philanthropy as an investment, rather than charitable giving. They wanted to assist in ongoing future change. Investing in projects and programs that would make the world a better place for future generations.”

A good example of this was the first charitable initiative they initiated.  

“My parents were active in our educational pursuits and attended musical concerts, athletic events and school programs,” Bob says. The program they identified with was the Shawnee Mission school district’s science fair; in the 1960s, the space race and technology were reflected in these school projects. “My parents wanted to see excellence in academics celebrated like athletics and cultural pursuits,” Bob says. “They approached Dr. Leonard Molotsky (the district’s superintendent) and offered to provide a celebration and incentive for the winners of the science fair.”

And once that strategy was in place, the task became a constant assessment of new requests and performance with prior commitments. How do they measure the impact of their giving?

“That’s a really good question,” Regnier says, “And I wouldn’t say that we’re the paragon of an example of how you should do that. We do ask for reports. It’s a conscious habit when we make a decision to give some money to a charity. You know, from my perspective, and I think my siblings’ perspective, this particular charity has reached the bar, whatever that bar is that we feel makes this is a worthwhile organization. They’re worthy of supporting, so they have a much easier path to get a future gift from us because they’ve gone over the bar at least once now.”

That, in turn, raises the bar for new gifts. 

“The reality is that we only have so much money, so we want to give things that have an impact,” Regnier says. “If somebody comes and ask you for 100 grand and you give them five grand, you’re not really doing them any favor. I mean it helps five grand worth, but you don’t help advance the cause.”

Finding a Purpose

So what causes have they most advanced? 

“The largest donation we’ve ever made was actually supporting Wonderscope, a project that my dad started,” Regnier says. “Maybe that’s not as big an impact on the community, but it provides a respite for young mothers, completely safe on the inside, where they can let the kids kind of enjoy themselves and learn something in the process.”

Financing the museum’s move from a former elementary school in Shawnee to a more expanded location in south Kansas City was a significant milestone, but one that came with lessons. 

“It was a very difficult project because it was expensive and frankly we—I—didn’t do as good a job of fundraising as I should have,” Regnier says. “We ended up writing a bigger check than we planned, but that is one entity we are proud of. It’s a beautiful place.”

The Regnier Center at JCCC has seen explosive growth in an unexpected area of study—gaming technology—and across the state line, UMKC has been able to advance its goals of promoting entrepreneurship and business startups through Regnier contributions. In addition to some grants to K-State’s Olathe campus, Regnier himself was a co-chair of the effort to secure passage of the JCERT sales tax, funding what’s known as the Johnson County Education Research Triangle to leverage the research might of K-State, JCCC and KU.

That impact can inspire reflection in someone who has prospered. 

“When I got started, I wanted to be successful from a business perspective, so I worked on that,” Regnier says. “I worked on trying to build the bank and tried to make it more profitable, to make it bigger and better. But the more successful I was, the more I realized that—well, it’s a combination of things. First of all, there were the people around me that made me successful. So I started looking at that, trying to figure out ways that I could help them and that’s one of the hallmarks of my organization.

“Then I started looking at all the other things that were important out there that made my organization successful and that’s the Blue Valley school district, and the community college. The social structure in Johnson County. I was looking for ways that I can make a difference. So I do think it’s an evolutionary thing.”

That evolution invariably leads to additional self-reflection. After his father’s death, he says, “we would think, OK, what can we do that would, you know, help the environment around us and be additive? It wasn’t necessarily giving cash to somebody—if you do that, they pay their bills and it’s gone. It’s the old parable about giving a man a fish vs. teaching a man to fish—they’re good for the rest of their life.”

That, Regnier says, is the framework he and his siblings have erected around their giving. “We really felt strongly that we were helping build an infrastructure that would allow people to go out and create a career or a job, something that would allow them to be self-sustaining for the rest of their lives, and that was important to us.”

The point, he says, isn’t a legacy of buildings bearing the family name, though plenty of those mark the regional landscape.

“What’s important to me is, has something happened that, absent me, wouldn’t have happened?” Regnier says. “All of us can and should look at that. If you go through life and nothing’s changed as a result of your being on this earth for 60 or 70 years, that’s a missed opportunity.”