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We envision a nation that marshals its resources to assure that all children have an equitable and promising future – a nation in which all children thrive.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation commits wholeheartedly to these values:
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation began with the humble, yet visionary commitments of W.K. Kellogg, who wanted to invest his fortune in the health, happiness and well-being of children. With hometown pride and deep care for the place that raised him, he started by investing in the children and families of Battle Creek, Michigan.
W.K. Kellogg cared about children, the conditions in which they were raised and what the future held for them. He believed in the power of communities to forge solutions to the problems facing them and he wanted to equip people with the knowledge and resources to pursue those solutions.
Vision, humility and belief in people are the values stewarded by the Kellogg Foundation for more than 90 years. Today those values take shape in our support of community-led efforts to ensure every child and family can thrive, with access to good health care, good food, good education, good jobs and equitable opportunities.
W.K. Kellogg is born to a large, Midwestern family accustomed to simply making ends met. He begins his working life at age 7 and becomes a traveling salesman at age 14.
At age 46, W.K. Kellogg invents Corn Flakes and changes his fortune. “I never, at any period of my life, aspired to become wealthy,” he later wrote. “It is my hope that the property that kind Providence has brought me may be helpful to many others.”
During the Great Depression, three of W.K.’s trusted advisors sign the articles of association for a philanthropic foundation bearing his name. For much of the decade, the Kellogg Foundation focuses on Battle Creek, Mich. Based on the vision of local doctors, nurses, educators, farmers and parents, the foundation helps establish public health departments, new professional standards for physicians, a home visiting nurses squad and improved K-12 curricula and facilities.
World War II requires a vast increase in the number of highly- trained medical personnel. Nearly every medical school in the U.S. receives funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The foundation also expands grantmaking internationally, supporting Latin American health professionals and European farmers.
Postwar concerns inspire a triple focus on medical professionals, food systems and educational access. The foundation helps establish new career pathways for dental hygienists, medical technicians and hospital administrators. WKKF grantees strengthen food systems through creating the first extension programs to connect scientific research with farming practices. Funding also goes to the newly established American Association of Junior Colleges and to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges.
By its 50th year, WKKF becomes one of the world’s largest private philanthropic organizations, improving health, agriculture and education on four continents. Programming expands into southern Africa, with scholarships offering unprecedented opportunity to Black South Africans during apartheid.
Renewing its commitment to W.K. Kellogg’s intent, foundation leaders survey the philanthropic landscape and find that racism places the greatest hurdle for children and families thriving. The Kellogg Foundation establishes powerful commitments: to being the most effective anti-racist organization in the U.S., prioritizing specific communities for at least a generation, developing local leadership and vowing to follow the lead of communities as they forge innovative solutions to the problems they and their children face.
The foundation receives its income primarily from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Trust, a charitable trust set up by Mr. Kellogg in 1930 with his earnings from his cereal company. WKKF, Kellanova and WK Kellogg Co. are legally separate entities and operate independently of each other. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is governed by an independent board of trustees and is not managed or directed by either company.