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Our partners successfully advocated for Medicaid postpartum extension in 2023, which extended Medicaid coverage from 60 days to one year after birth. They won presumptiveDIGITAL Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women in 2024, which allows women to access immediate care while their application for Medicaid is being considered. Both measures represent critical policy changes that can improve infant and maternal mortality rates.
More than half of the state’s counties are maternity-care deserts, with no OB/GYNs, certified midwives or hospitals providing obstetric care. We are working toward a Mississippi where all mothers can give birth safely.
Our partners successfully advocated for Medicaid postpartum extension in 2023, which extended Medicaid coverage from 60 days to one year after birth. They won presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women in 2024, which allows women to access immediate care while their application for Medicaid is being considered. Both measures represent critical policy changes that can improve infant and maternal mortality rates.
We make our first investments in Mississippi, supporting pre-med scholarships.
Our grants support curricula and other resources at colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the state.
We expand our investments from education to rural health care access, leadership development and job training.
Given the high number of children living in poverty but, more important, the experience and legacy of our local partners, we named Mississippi a priority place, committing investments for at least a generation.
We focus our grantmaking in Jackson, East Biloxi and Sunflower County, while also making state-level investments that can positively impact all Mississippi children. Each of our priority communities face unique challenges that are in need of long-term planning and partnerships:
Many health-promoting resources – like education, transportation and healthy food – are unevenly distributed. That’s why we support efforts that dismantle economic and social obstacles to health, such as poverty and discrimination, so everyone has an opportunity to be healthy.
We maintain a dual focus on reducing health disparities through programs or services, as well as fixing broken systems that don’t work for everyone.
Our funding supports:
Learn more about the social determinants of health.
We’re committed to building a vibrant Battle Creek, anchored by a strong dependable economy and an abundance of opportunities for the future. That means strengthening small businesses and attracting new ones, building a thriving downtown and inspiring more investments and improvements to our city’s infrastructure.
Our grantmaking is:
We invest in a collaborative Battle Creek workforce development ecosystem, ensuring all families, regardless of where they enter the system, have equitable access to stable, high-quality jobs, while removing the barriers that keep people from working.
Our partnerships include:
The future looks bright for Battle Creek kids. Collaborating with Battle Creek Public Schools (BCPS), Kellogg Community College (KCC) and Grand Valley State University (GVSU), we support scholarships to ensure entry into career pathway jobs and a diverse, talented workforce ready to fuel local businesses and our city’s economy.
Opportunities include:
Battle Creek Public Schools has successfully supported 91% of its 2024 high school graduates in pursuing postsecondary education via the Bearcat Advantage and Legacy Scholars programs. Seventy percent of Bearcat Advantage and Legacy Scholars recipients are students of color and 75% of them are first-generation college students.
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: