The Kresge Foundation HQ

In American cities, The Kresge Foundation seeks to:
- expand opportunity by promoting effective and inclusive community development practice ;
- build strong, healthy cities by promoting the integration of arts and culture in community revitalization;
- collaborate with civic, nonprofit and business partners to promote and expand long-term, equitable opportunity in Kresge’s hometown for its current and future residents;
- focus on increasing postsecondary attainment while eliminating gaps for low-income students and students of color in the United States and South Africa;
- help cities implement comprehensive climate-resilience approaches grounded in equity;
- help build equity-focused systems of health that create opportunities for all people to achieve well-being;
- support the advancement of human services to accelerate social and economic mobility for people with low income;
- work to expand opportunity, strengthen neighborhoods and improve quality of life by providing access to capital.

Kresge works strategically at the intersections of our eight funding programs and practices to expand opportunity in America’s cities. We work deeply in places like Detroit, New Orleans and Memphis. We also fund work nationally to improve systems and advance equitable policies nationwide. We use an array of flexible grantmaking and social investment tools, including general operating support, project grants, planning grants and impact investments.

Kresge employs a varied set of instruments in pursuit of our mission.
Convening: Bringing leaders together in person to exchange knowledge and lessons learned leads to better alignment, a stronger field and faster results. With the right people in a room, problems can be dissected, collaborations can form and solutions can be discovered.
Cross-Sector Collaboration: The challenges and opportunities for economic revitalization have changed immensely in the past decade with constraints on public funding, reconfigurations of markets, the rise of entrepreneurial impulses and a heightened awareness of the need to
embrace solutions that provide urban residents with the opportunity to join the economic mainstream. Too often, those exploring solutions to these problems in the public, private, nonprofit and philanthropic sectors are working in parallel. The foundation sits in a unique position to set the stage for these allies to break out of their silos and work together.
Field-Building: We use our capital and convening capability to develop fields and enhance the sectors in which we work. We identify complex issues and convene actors needed to resolve them. Advancing fields can only be done in partnership with nonprofits, government, academia, business and other sector specialists.
Grants: Grants are essential to advancing our work. The foundation awards approximately $160 million in grants each year to nonprofit organizations with strong track records of impact.
Learning: Through our work with partners in the field, the foundation attempts to capture what works to improve social outcomes. We compile and share those lessons in multiple ways — through funding research, disseminating data, conducting rigorous evaluation and supporting strategic communications — to spread that knowledge.
Policymaking: The problems that limit opportunity for low-income people are systemic; changing policies that dictate those systems must be part of any long-lasting solutions. The foundation can advocate for the types of policy changes that will help advance our mission by funding research, backing education campaigns and supporting organizations that are doing grassroots organizing and outreach.
Social Investments: Kresge’s Social Investment Practice makes non-grant capital, often at below-market terms, available to nonprofit or for-profit enterprises whose efforts advance the foundation’s mission. These investments also generate modest financial returns for the foundation. Social investments are at the cutting edge of philanthropy today, and we have fully embraced this financial toolset, which includes: Debt, Equity Investments, Deposits and Guarantees.
Technical Assistance: By providing leadership development training and other operational or management assistance, Kresge leverages
collective insight and resources to help enhance the effectiveness of nonprofits.

Annually our President and CEO reflects on the foundation's learning from the year prior in the foundation's annual report. This is his most recent letter: https://racialjustice.kresge.org/letter-from-the-ceo-and-president