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Battle Creek’s children of all racial and ethnic backgrounds deserve a world-class education with well-resourced classrooms, top teaching talent and abundant career opportunities. We’re working with Battle Creek Public Schools (BCPS) and the community to transform the district with excellence, overturning the severe historical disadvantages created by segregation and policies like Schools of Choice.
Our region’s higher education institutions are getting in on the act by:
Grantees like Pulse use shared data to advance a comprehensive early childhood system, and help launch new centers like New Harvest Learning Center in Battle Creek neighborhoods where there weren’t any. Meanwhile, the Calhoun Intermediate School District is leaning in to an approach to shared services to strengthen child care centers’ business models and leadership.
The Burma Center and VOCES are creating and delivering culturally relevant education in diverse languages for communities of color.
We partnered with the State of Michigan, local child care providers and employers to create affordable child care options through the Tri-Share program, an approach that splits the cost of child care between employers, employees and public and private funding.
Together with our neighbors, we strive to make Battle Creek a vibrant and equitable community, where children’s health and education come first, supported by families’ economic well-being.
When our founder, Will Keith Kellogg, made his fortune, he poured it back into the community that raised him. Believing in the practical wisdom of his neighbors, he invested in the expertise of everyday community members as they collaborated to improve education and health locally.
Making our home in Battle Creek for more than 90 years, we live by those same ethics today, guided by community leaders who best understand the challenges the city faces and the changes that our neighbors want to see.
We focus on reducing health disparities in two ways: through programs and direct services, as well as changing broken systems that don’t work for everyone. This dual focus aims to remove economic and social obstacles while ensuring everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be healthy.
As a result of stakeholder input and analysis of data disaggregated by race, in Grand Rapids we are investing in:
Read about health equity in Grand Rapids: Health Equity in Grand Rapids’ “Neighborhoods of Focus.”
We’re expanding assistance for small business enterprises to accelerate business growth. We’re doing this by supporting:
Some families need short-term assistance or other supports to move from poverty to financial stability. So we fund efforts to inform policies and change systems to create greater economic stability for families and communities. This looks like helping people access affordable, high- quality child care and overcome other barriers to employment, including the expungement of criminal convictions.
In Grand Rapids, we’re working to help people – especially people of color – access career pathways for upward economic mobility and wealth-building opportunities. We partner with employers, job seekers and community organizations to widen pathways to stable, high-quality jobs and equitable employment opportunities.
Our investments focus on:
WKKF grantmaking focuses on the early child care system and promoting access to affordable, high-quality child care.
In an examination of early care and education programs across Kent County, where Grand Rapids is located, the research found:
Read the report Split by More Than the Grand River, authored by IFF and funded by WKKF, to learn more.
Our grantmaking centers the people who face long-standing barriers to quality health care, early childhood care and education, good jobs and good food.
We’re investing in 17 Neighborhoods of Focus in the Grand Rapids community. They were identified based on disaggregated data of census tracts that demonstrate how systems and policies have affected opportunities available in different areas of the city. Learn more about our Neighborhoods of Focus from three WKKF-funded reports highlighting the data published in collaboration with the Community Data and Research Lab of the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University and IFF.
In Grand Rapids, we’re all about access. In this city, rich with tremendous opportunity and resources, we aim to ensure everyone can participate – especially people of color. That’s why we lean in to support what we call neighborhoods of focus, areas of the city’s near south and west sides that have the greatest racial disparities in education, health and economic opportunities.
When economies grow inclusively, individual skills grow, accessibility to employment improves, investment increases and quality of life gets stronger for more members of our community.
We support efforts that inform policies and change systems. We partner with employers, job seekers, community organizations and community development financial institutions, so more families can access stable, high-quality jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities.
We invest in building pathways from pre-kindergarten to college and career, and we help people access affordable, high-quality child care.
The result: Together, we’re moving toward a Grand Rapids where every child, parent and community member can get a foothold on the road to success.
Learn about the social determinants of health.
Office Location:
3011 West Grand Boulevard, Suite 321Detroit, MI 48202
Guided by community wisdom and analysis of data disaggregated by race, our investments address both systems (process) and services (outcomes), including:
We envision an economic landscape that helps Detroiters move along a continuum toward a middle-class household income and generational wealth. We aspire to see residents obtain jobs that provide a living wage, opportunity for advancement and overall family stability.
The Hope Starts Here framework, created in partnership with the Kresge Foundation, promotes systems transformation through community engagement, collective investments and a coordinated approach.
Our Hope Starts Here investment supports:
We’ve already seen some significant developments in policies that increase access to child care scholarships (formerly subsidies), child tax credits and supports for the early childhood workforce.
Grassroots community organizers – often the people most directly affected by racism and injustice – are leading innovative and necessary solutions to Detroit’s problems. We ground our grantmaking approach in ensuring organizations led by people of color have what they need to address structural racism as it intersects with other systems of inequality.
Improving systemic social issues involves shifting perceptions and beliefs by changing the narrative. Detroit’s story needs to be told using asset-based, empowering narratives highlighting the people who have always loved the city and kept going through every challenge. This is the story of the real Detroit moving into an equitable future.
To change the Detroit narrative, we invest in:
Welcome to Detroit. The people of our city can teach the world something about resilience and what it takes to come back when systems fail children and families. Detroiters know that lasting change only happens through addressing historical racial tensions and injustices, and centering racial equity, community engagement and local leadership.
As attention and opportunity return to the city, it’s critical to tell the story of the real Detroit: a place where people with grit and determination held on when others gave up. These stories provide power to the Detroiters who are forging the city’s future and frame that future around the vision of equity held by people who have always loved the city.
We’re making groundbreaking and impactful investments to ensure organizations led by people of color have what they need to bring their vision to life – and to ensure racial equity is the cornerstone of the Detroit experience from day one, birth through career.
Improving systemic social issues involves shifting perceptions and beliefs by changing the narrative. Detroit’s story needs to be told using asset-based, empowering narratives that highlight the people who have always loved the city and kept going through every challenge. This is the story of the real Detroit moving into an equitable future.
Our focused investments in Detroit champion:
We also invest statewide to fix broken systems in early childhood education, employment equity and health equity so they work for all children and families across the state.
Our focus on early care and education supports:
To promote employment equity, we support:
Our focus on health equity aims to eliminate race-based health disparities in:
Children and families experiencing hardship need advocates who hear them and believe in their unique perspectives and solutions. We focus on supporting statewide policy advocacy to get systems working equitably for all children, families and communities across Michigan.