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Ninety-six years ago, our founder, W.K. Kellogg, had a vision: of a future where every child and family had access to high-quality education, nutrition, healthcare, and real economic opportunity. In the near century since, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) has worked to make his vision a reality by investing in community-driven change.
Mr. Kellogg understood that the most effective initiatives were led by communities and shaped by people’s lived experience. That philosophy continues to guide the foundation’s work today—and it feels especially urgent at a moment of rapid change and deep uncertainty in our society. No matter where they live, children deserve to grow up with safety, stability and trust in the institutions that serve them.
That’s why the Kellogg Foundation works with communities across the country and around the world to transform and strengthen the systems that support children and families. And it’s why we concentrate a significant portion of our grantmaking in six priority places—Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, New Orleans, Mexico’s Chiapas Highlands and the inner Yucatán Peninsula, and central and southwestern Haiti—where we’ve built deep, long-term partnerships.
In our fiscal year 2024-25, those investments delivered transformative results in the form of significant gains in early literacy, early childhood education, affordable housing, family financial security, small business growth and much more. Below is a snapshot of what our partners accomplished throughout the past year, demonstrating how long-term, community-driven investments translate into real results for children and families.
In early childhood education, Michigan reached a new milestone this fiscal year: becoming one of just five states to enroll 50,000 children in pre-K programs that meet all national quality benchmarks. The expansion of no-cost, high-quality pre-K programs in Michigan saved families an estimated $475 million in child care costs in 2025.
This achievement builds on longstanding efforts by WKKF and our partners, including Detroit’s Hope Starts Here initiative, which brought together more than 18,000 residents alongside leaders from the public and private sectors to help expand early care and education opportunities across the city.
In Grand Rapids, WKKF and local leaders helped lay the groundwork for sustained community investment in education programs benefitting nearly 10,000 children annually.
And in Battle Creek, more than three-quarters of the Battle Creek Public School Class of 2025 are now pursuing higher education tuition-free, thanks to two groundbreaking scholarship programs supported by WKKF, the Bearcat Advantage and the Legacy Scholars program.
Our partners in Battle Creek also took major steps to increase access to affordable housing, creating the city’s first Low Income Housing Tax Credit award in more than 20 years and potentially also securing up to $1 million in matching funds from the state for its Battle Creek Housing Fund.
This year also marks an important transition for our hometown. With the completion of transactions in December 2025, the foundation has concluded its long-standing ownership of the companies that trace their roots to the original Kellogg Company. While ownership of these companies has changed, WKKF’s commitment to Battle Creek remains unwavering and woven into the very fabric of who we are. As we have for nearly a century, we will continue to carry forward Mr. Kellogg’s philanthropic legacy by working alongside nonprofit, public and private-sector partners to help build a stronger future for every child and family who calls Battle Creek home.
Thanks to a holistic strategy and years of sustained investment, Mississippi saw a significant decrease in pregnancy and childbirth-related deaths in 2025, moving from last to 45th in the nation. WKKF-backed programs have also expanded support for breastfeeding parents and babies—more than tripling between 2010 to 2025 the share of Mississippi babies exclusively breastfed at six months.
Decades of focused WKKF investment in early literacy and educator support are also paying off. In 2025, Mississippi was recognized for achieving the nation’s largest gains in early reading, with 77% of third graders passing the literacy promotion test on their first attempt.
In New Mexico, WKKF investments helped strengthen the support system for families across the state. In 2025, a WKKF-sponsored tax assistance program helped more than 9,000 New Mexico families secure more than $17 million in refunds and credits—including nearly $3 million in child tax credits.
Another partnership, with BBC Storyworks, shone a light on culturally responsive maternal care and has led to increased Medicaid reimbursement rates and improved access to traditional birth workers in the state. Our partners also testified at the UN Permanent Forum, resulting in a historic recommendation to integrate Indigenous midwifery into national health systems.
With support from WKKF and the steadfast advocacy of our grantees, New Orleans has become an even more welcoming place to raise a family. During the past fiscal year, investments in the city’s Early Childhood Education Trust Fund helped make high-quality early childhood education accessible to 3,300 more New Orleans children. The Trust Fund has grown to nearly $42 million over the past seven years, powered in part by a 1:1 local investment match.
A WKKF-funded procurement program also expanded opportunities for New Orleans’ small businesses, helping local entrepreneurs secure nearly $10 million in contracts and create or sustain nearly 100 jobs during the past year. WKKF’s investments in local businesses and workforce efforts are helping more New Orleans families build stable incomes. Since 2010, the share of young children living in households with at least one full-time working parent earning more than twice the federal poverty level has increased by nearly 20 percentage points.
As WKKF’s two international priority places, Mexico and Haiti represent our unwavering commitment to partnering with communities where children and families face serious barriers to success. In Mexico, a WKKF-funded Mayan language learning program enabled more than 30,000 preschool students from Indigenous communities to receive a culturally relevant education and support for their well-being. Another WKKF-funded program helped more than 2,000 local coffee producers increase their profits and support their families.
In Haiti, WKKF’s investment helped unlock an additional $2 million in individual donations for Health Equity International’s Emergency Fund. The organization, a critical lifeline for rural Haiti, leveraged our support to deliver nearly 3,400 healthy newborns, conduct more than 14,000 pediatric malnutrition screenings and care for almost 1,000 infants in its NICU. And in its third year, our Pockets of Hope campaign has continued working with other global funders to accelerate investment in Haiti’s community-led initiatives and demonstrate the power of collective action to support children and families.
While our priority places anchor our work, WKKF is also proud to support efforts to strengthen the systems children and families rely on across the United States.
Over the past year, our national and community partners have leveraged billions in public, private and philanthropic capital to reinforce early childhood education and expand economic opportunity, ensuring that proven approaches can reach more families.These initiatives include everything from a first-of-its-kind program to provide direct support to growing families to an innovative real estate investment model that is breaking down barriers for childcare providers seeking to open new centers.
Nearly a century after Mr. Kellogg first articulated his founding vision, we find ourselves at another defining moment in our nation’s story — one that calls on us to build on the progress we’ve seen and to stand firmly in our commitment to children and families, no matter the headwinds.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation’s independence, I am reminded that realizing Mr. Kellogg’s aspirations for children requires a deeper appreciation of our interdependence—an understanding that strong institutions, thriving communities and lasting opportunity are built not in isolation, but through shared responsibility. When we come together around a common purpose and put the well-being of children and families first, there is no challenge we cannot meet together.
That may sound far from our current reality, but at WKKF, we see it happening every day in the communities we serve. The progress we’ve witnessed is proof that with courage, determination, and committed community investment, a brighter future for our children is within reach.
It’s up to all of us to do the work of healing, reach across our differences, and find common ground so we can build the better world our children deserve. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is ready to partner with all who share our mission, and we look forward to continuing our vital work in the year ahead.