OVERVIEW: Kresge’s funding prioritizes community redevelopment and expanding opportunities in America’s cities. It supports arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services and community development in Detroit.
IP TAKE: Kresge’s grants only support highly engaged organizations with a proven plan of attack, so grant seekers should expect serious competition when applying for Kresge funding. It supports organizations—not individuals—that make a visible impact, both nationally and within lower-income communities in Detroit. That means smaller groups should propose projects that will see demonstrable results. This funder also has a tendency to support organizations with work that represents overlapping interests, for example, economic opportunity and neighborhood revitalization, or public health and climate change.
This is an otherwise open-minded funder that’s passionate about its focus areas. However, it’s not the most approachable as staff sometimes take a long while to get back to grantees. Kresge can be an important funder, but openness to unsolicited inquiries varies.
PROFILE: Established in 1924, the Kresge Foundation is a Detroit-based funder that prioritizes support for vulnerable and underserved communities in American cities. It was founded by Sebastian Spering Kresge, the retail giant whose empire started with five-and-dime stores but grew to encompass Kmart and Sears. It seeks “to promote human progress,” and its programs “seek to expand opportunity for low-income people so they can gain the tools and supports needed to lead self-determined lives and join the economic mainstream.” Kresge’s grantmaking largely focuses on “[s]ocial investing tools to help expand opportunities for low income people living in cities.” The foundation’s eight grantmaking areas are American Cities, Arts & Culture, Detroit, Education, Environment, Health, Human Services and Social Investment Practice.
Grants for Racial Justice
In 2020, Kresge announced a renewed commitment and expansion of its racial justice grantmaking across all programs. In a recent year, the foundation made a grant to Race Forward, a New York City-based organization that “brings systemic analysis and an innovative approach to complex race issues to help people take effective action toward racial equity.” Another recent grant supported Junebug Productions, a theater company based in New Orleans that aims to “to create and support artistic works that question and confront inequitable conditions that have historically impacted the Black community.” Other racial justice grantees include Nashville’s Mosaic Changemakers, Arise Detroit and the Plowshares Theater Company.
Grants for Arts and Culture
Kresge’s Art and Culture grants prioritize what it calls ‘Creative Placemaking,’ or “an approach to community development and urban planning that integrates arts, culture, and community-engaged design strategies,” [that] seek to “influence community development-related systems and practices that expand opportunities for low-income people in disinvested communities in American cities.” The program names three overlapping focus areas and three initiatives to guide its arts and culture grantmaking. Its focus areas involve creating “capacity to shape healthier neighborhoods,” effecting “creative change in cities” and supporting “the equitable creative placemaking field.” The foundation also names three grantmaking initiatives:
Building and Supporting Equitable Development is a national program to “advance community development through arts and culture.”
Culture of Justice focuses on “reimagining community justice through arts and culture” and makes grants that involve arts programs with human services, leadership development, criminal justice reform and economic development and mobility.
FreshLo (Fresh, Local and Equitable) aims to “drive equitable neighborhood revitalization” through programs that involve creative placemaking, food and community development initiatives.
Recent grantees of Kresge’s arts and culture program include the Thirdspace Action Lab of Cleveland, the Marygrove Conservancy of Detroit, the National Public Housing Museum of Chicago and Colloqate Design of New Orleans.
Grants for Women and Girls
Kresge makes its grants related to women and girls across its programming through a gender lens; however, it awards the majority of women and girls-related grants through its Human Services program, which seeks to “[r]eset the odds so that people have an improved set of opportunities to live healthy, economically stable and self-determined lives.”
Women’s and girls’ organizations receiving past funding from Kresge include the Lower East Side Girls Club of New York, which received a grant for its programming focusing on at-risk girls and young women; and Women’s Home, an organization using a multi-disciplinary approach to helping women with mental illness and/or substance abuse issues.
Grants for Climate Change
Kresge’s health grants program is centered on climate change giving, which has undergone an overhaul; spending is expected to increase in the future. The program emphasizes building cities’ resilience in the face of climate change. For Kresge, climate resilience means “the capacity not just to withstand stresses and shocks but also to prosper under a wide range of climate-influenced circumstances. Resilience in the long term is possible only if society acts quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, thus, avoids the worst impacts of climate change.” The foundation views curbing and reacting to climate change as a moral issue related to how it will disproportionately affect the most vulnerable people. The program is decidedly urban and focused on humans in its grantmaking. It’s been one of the more proactive philanthropic leaders when it comes to preparing for the inevitable threats posed by climate change.
The program also invests in a host of climate change related initiatives, which focus on the relationships between climate change and health, urban opportunity, and equitable water systems. While previous guidelines reflected this with subprograms in energy efficiency and adapting to the effects of climate change, the revision meant to tighten up its intentions and fold it more closely within the foundation’s broader goals.
As Program Manager Lois DeBacker describes Kresge’s environmental program: “Climate change is a systemic problem that will impact built, natural, and social environments in unexpected and uncertain ways. Our aim is to help communities both reduce emissions so society can avoid the worst impacts of climate change and develop the capacity to prosper under a wide range of climate-influenced circumstances.”
The foundation has identified three prongs in the new program guidelines:
Reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change
Plan for the changes that already are underway or anticipated
Foster social cohesion and inclusion
Grants for Public Health and Access
The Kresge Foundation’s health grants are heavily connected to alleviating urban poverty and reducing healthcare disparities in underserved communities. The foundation takes a decidedly community-based approach to health, naming focus areas of community-driven solutions, community investment and community health ecosystems. The foundation’s current initiatives for its health giving concern the advancement of health equity through housing and climate change, creating grants that support overlapping interest areas in community development and environment. Grants stemming from the foundation’s health program tend to go to large, well-established organizations in the health and health policy fields. Recent grantees include the Public Health Communications Collaborative, the National Council of Urban Indian Health and the BUILD Health Challenge, a collaborative grantmaking entity that supports “local collaborations of community-based organizations, health systems and/or health plans, local public health departments, and resident leaders addressing local health priorities.”
Grants for Higher Education and Economic Opportunity
Kresge’s education program is one of its most well-funded, awarding about $20 million yearly towards education. Overall, its grantmaking to education emphasizes various aspects of higher education. This initiative features three main programs:
Aligning and Strengthening Urban Higher Education Ecosystems seeks to “improve coordination between the many systems low-income students rely on to reach their higher education goals.”
Institutional Capacity Building for Student Success seeks to “help minority-serving postsecondary education institutions carry out their missions and better help low-income students succeed.”
The Urban Pathways to College program aims to “increase the number of low-income students, both from high schools and adult populations, who get into college ready to succeed.” While the foundation operates nationally, its education program prioritizes its four states—California, Florida, Michigan, and Texas—and three urban areas—Detroit, Memphis, and New Orleans.
Additionally, the foundation currently invests in four targeted initiatives:
BOOST provides human services, education and career services to people with low incomes.
Syaphumelela supports higher education in South Africa, focusing on access and interventions for student success.
Advancing Student Transportation Solutions aims to eliminate transportation as a barrier to higher education by creating solutions in partnerships with schools and transit systems.
CoPro2.0 supports College Promise programs that offer free education, advance equity and improve educational outcomes.
Grants for Criminal Justice, Economic and Community Development
Kresge’s American Cities program area works “expand opportunity by promoting effective and inclusive community development practices” in urban areas across the U.S.” As with some of its other grantmaking areas, Kresge’s work in this area is conducted through focus areas and targeted initiatives. It currently names four focus areas:
Knowledge Exchange supports “research, thought leadership and convenings that seek to improve place-based community development practices in cities.
National Intermediaries grants go to national organizations working to advance equity in urban areas.
Multi-City Initiatives support innovative projects that work across cohorts of two or more cities to improve quality of life in low-income areas.
Grantmaking for Memphis and New Orleans support community development for low income areas, including programs for sustainable development, urban planning and improved access to human services.
The foundation’s also names three targeted initiatives for its American Cities program.
The Shared Prosperity Partnership works with city governments, local leaders and other organizations to “create more inclusive economies in cities nationwide.”
Kresge Innovative Projects: Memphis supports nonprofit organizations working to improve quality of life in Memphis’s low-income areas.
Kresge Community Support: Fresno, similarly, works with nonprofits and community-led groups to improve life for urban residents and address the city’s longstanding issues with “environmental injustice, inadequate housing and lack of quality jobs.”
Grantees of the American Cities Program include Innovate Memphis, Momentum Nonprofit Partners, the Brookings Institution and the Highlands Project.
Grants for Detroit
Kresge prioritizes Detroit grantmaking above all other funding areas and has made twice as many Detroit grants as any other area. It supports Detroit through a series of local focus areas:
Early Childhood/Hope Starts Here works in collaboration with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to ensure that in Detroit “children are born healthy, well-prepared for kindergarten, and on track for success by third grade and beyond.”
Nonprofit Capacity Building and Leadership Development grants support efforts to “build a more inclusive Detroit by elevating talented leaders outside traditional power structures and providing residents and nonprofit leaders of color opportunities and resources to shape their city.”
Equitable Community Development makes grants and social investments that aim to improve low-income neighborhoods and create economic mobility for Detroit residents.
Coordinated Investments and Technical Assitance provides support to “neighborhood steward” organizations that “amplify the strengths and enhance the unique character” or Detroit’s many diverse communities.
Arts and Culture Ecosystem grants support Detroit-based arts organizations of all sizes with a nod to “the power of arts and culture to preserve and enhance identity, connectedness and opportunity.”
And the Transformative Project/Marygrove Cradle-to-Career Campus represents a $50 million commitment from Kresge for the establishment,, over several years, of a PreK-12 school on the site of the Marygrove Conservancy in Northwest Detroit.
Additionally, Kresge supports these Detroit-based initiatives:
Kresge Innovative Projects provides support to innovative projects that “tap the vision and creativity of residents to improve quality of life in their neighborhoods.” In addition to Detroit, this program supports projects in the nearby communities of Highland Park and Hamtramck.
Kresge Arts in Detroit provides “no strings attached” support to artists and arts organizations in the greater metropolitan area.
Important Grant Details:
At the end of a recent year, Kresge had over $3 billion in assets and made grants totaling over $56 million. Grant seekers can find more detailed information on Kresge’s finances on its financials page.
For those seeking more detailed information about Kresge’s grants, its About Our Grantmaking page, and searchable Grants Awarded page. Grants typically range from $100,000 to $1 million. While Kresge prioritizes non-profits, universities have received grants in each of its program areas in the past. Those seeking more information about Kresge’s grantmaking habits should review its Annual Reports and Grants Database.
Grantseekers should review the foundation’s open requests for proposals, which are listed on the Current Funding Opportunities page. They are also available through the foundation’s email list, which keeps grantseekers up-to-date on new grantmaking opportunities.
PEOPLE:
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