2014 Annual Report

The Kellogg Foundation views leadership as essential to all we hope to achieve in communities on behalf of vulnerable children and families. This legacy is part of the impetus behind the launch of the WKKF Community Leadership Network.

In the dining room at the foundation’s headquarters in Battle Creek, there’s a telling display of photographs from the life of W.K. Kellogg.

From his early days, we see a photo booth tintype of a young, lanky "Will Keith," the record-setting broom salesman in a then stylish top hat. From his years as a business executive, we see a middle-aged "W.K." with the thinning hair and laser-intense gaze of a breakfast food pioneer who heads a far-flung economic empire. Finally, we see "Mr. Kellogg," the elderly philanthropist in his last decade of life. He still wears a three-piece business suit, but blinded by glaucoma, sits stoically beside his beloved seeing-eye dog.

Mr. Kellogg, by all accounts, was not the emotive type. Yet these images do evoke a quiet strength and integrity that were hallmarks of his life and leadership. As with all good leaders, he began with a powerful vision, and even as his eyesight dimmed, never wavered from it. For the Kellogg Company, it took the form of cereal factories and retail distribution chains that spanned the globe. For the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), his vision centered on improved education, nutritious diets and accessible health care for vulnerable children and families, created and sustained by people who lived and worked in the community.

Both enterprises relied on financial capital and technical innovation to succeed. However, Mr. Kellogg considered the human factor as the most essential of all. In the late 1920s, when asked what he would do with his growing fortune, Mr. Kellogg replied in his usual succinct fashion, "I’ll invest my money in people."

We view leadership as essential to all we hope to achieve in communities on behalf of vulnerable children and families.

His belief that WKKF should help people reach their full potential, so that they can lead others to do the same, still undergirds our work. We view leadership as essential to all we hope to achieve in communities on behalf of vulnerable children and families. For what social change effort, in any age, has ever succeeded without it?

This was true in the 1930s, when WKKF’s Michigan Community Health Project helped make leaders out of local doctors, newspaper editors, teachers, farmers and social workers. It’s true today in our priority places of Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans, as well as Mexico and Haiti.

This legacy was part of the impetus behind the launch of the WKKF Community Leadership Network (CLN), announced in November 2013. For WKKF, its launch represents another step in our learning journey. We made significant investments in leadership development during the 1980s through 1990s, most notably in the well-regarded Kellogg National Fellows Program (KNFP), which was later renamed the Kellogg National Leadership Program (KNLP). Alumni of WKKF’s fellowship programs went on to serve with distinction as judges, doctors, nationally known journalists – their number even includes a U.S. surgeon general. We ended KNFP/KNLP in 2002, but continued to support leadership across all of our program areas.

Then, as we shifted some of our emphasis to place-based programs in 2008, the need for another kind of leadership program arose. We had built KNLP around annual groups of 45-50 fellows, selected from across the United States. With the CLN, we’ve taken more of a community-based focus to leadership development.

As a funder, WKKF has long collaborated with those leading change in their neighborhoods, towns, counties, states and beyond. Our work and our vision of change require people with a first-hand, personal knowledge of the needs of their communities. Of course, communities are never homogeneous. Recently, for example, we took the opportunity to ask residents of our hometown in Battle Creek about how they define a community leader. As you'll see in the video within this letter, their responses are highly varied.

Our inaugural class of 120 WKKF CLN fellows represents the kind of community leaders that the foundation seeks to develop. Of these, 96 belong to cohorts from Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans. They are complemented by 24 national fellows selected from outside WKKF’s priority places and are focusing on racial equity and healing.

The CLN fellows are diverse in age, gender, race/ethnicity, education and way of life. They include school principals, clergy, tribal leaders, community organizers, a newspaper publisher, a state senator and a NASA policy analyst. Some are formal leaders, some are informal leaders. Until recently, some never saw themselves as leaders. They are rising to the occasion in pursuit of a passion for social justice, racial equity, health, food, education and so on.

In this, we agree with author John Maxwell’s insight that, "Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another." And, on an individual level, we are helping CLN fellows develop attributes essential to exercising that influence: courage, vision, perseverance and collaboration.

When I think of WKKF’s leadership legacy, a scene from our founder’s life comes to mind exemplifying these attributes. The date was July 4, 1907, and W.K. had just watched his first factory, an old wooden building, burn furiously to the ground. To a lesser leader, it could’ve been devastating. His fledgling, one-year-old business had no capital to rebuild. With the ruins still smoking, W.K. told his employees to report for work the next morning. By the day’s end, he had arranged for an architect to begin plans for a much larger and safer factory. Then, with characteristic courage, he somehow drummed up the financing to make it a reality.

Today, confronted by the challenges manifest in Ferguson, Miami, Staten Island, Cleveland, Phoenix and elsewhere, that kind of courage is precisely what we need from our leaders and ourselves.

We need the courage to ask and devise practical, actionable answers to fundamental questions that go to the heart of the character of our communities and our nation.

We need the courage to ask and devise practical, actionable answers to fundamental questions that go to the heart of the character of our communities and our nation: How do we improve life outcomes for children? How do we unwind the long, deeply held racial biases that were wrongly legitimized more than 100 years ago by the Supreme Court in Plessy vs. Ferguson and – despite the progress of the past 100 years – are still displayed today by another case called "Ferguson"? How do we instill, in ourselves and our children, the recognition that black lives, like all lives, matter?

Finally, we need in all of our leaders the courage we have seen and will see in the CLN fellows as they act as leaders for change in their networks and in the places where they live. In an age of political fragmentation, they will work to unify communities and find collaborative solutions on behalf of vulnerable children. In an age when issues of race still divide, wound and impoverish our nation, they will pursue racial equity and racial healing as a way to build new consensus around our shared fate as Americans.

In raising leaders for such work, we expect both the fellows and their communities to grow and change. We are committed to building a new generation of leaders who can build and sustain long-term change. For the WKKF Community Leadership Network, our fellows will be (and already are) stewards and advocates of the collective good.

This same ethos guides WKKF’s leadership programming. It’s summed up in our credo "the practical application of knowledge to the problems of people." Our hands-on leaders will serve vulnerable children and families where they find them: in streets, schools, farms, clinics, gleaming capital buildings and dim church basements. They will lead by empathy and example – North Stars whose innate courage will inspire others to become the best of what they already know themselves to be.

The very fact that we’re discussing our own governance is as important as the governance model itself. In the process with La June’s courageous leadership, we’re demonstrating the foundation’s ongoing commitment to leadership development, including our own.

For much of her first full year leading the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), President and CEO La June Montgomery Tabron and the board of trustees have engaged in an energetic discussion about the foundation’s governance model. In particular, we’ve been looking at the respective roles of board and staff in defining the ends we want to achieve, distinguishing them from the means to achieve them, and the ways we’ll measure progress.

While the foundation is about to celebrate its 84th birthday, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that governance is open for discussion. After all, Mr. Kellogg deliberately opened the door to flexibility about means, ends and governance when he directed the foundation to "Use the money as you please so long as it promotes the health, happiness and well-being of children." His reluctance to dictate reflected his larger belief in the capacity of people to address their own problems and create appropriate solutions. He was explicit about that belief when he pledged to "invest my money in people."

We're demonstrating the foundation’s ongoing commitment to leadership development, including our own.

And that’s exactly the point. In some respects, the very fact that we’re discussing our own governance is as important as the governance model itself. In the process with La June’s courageous leadership, we’re demonstrating the foundation’s ongoing commitment to leadership development, including our own.

Beginning with the Michigan Community Health Project, one of our first efforts as the Kellogg Foundation, and continuing through most of our history, leadership development has been an important part of our approach. Throughout the years we’ve supported the growth of leaders in fields from agriculture to food systems to hospital administration to education, including an entire generation of community college administrators.

In 2014 the foundation launched the newest expression of Mr. Kellogg’s belief in people by welcoming the first class of the new WKKF Community Leadership Network (CLN).

It’s important to point out that, for the foundation, leadership development is not about creating new leaders to fill a vacuum. We’ve long understood that even the most impoverished community already has people who inspire and help shape ideas. They may have no official role. They may not identify themselves as leaders. They may not even have a concrete vision of the future.

But they do have a vision that a better future is possible. And they possess the courage, the perseverance and the collaborative spirit to help realize it.

By identifying emerging and established community leaders, and helping them build networks and gain skill and insight, we want to help communities create sustainable social change.

We support the continued growth of these individuals because we believe their leadership and influence are keys to creating engaged communities. By identifying emerging and established community leaders, and helping them build networks and gain skill and insight, we want to help communities create sustainable social change. We want to help them turn social change for and with the community into lasting social change by the community.

The challenge to develop community leaders goes to the heart of the foundation’s identity and we take it seriously and personally as trustees. In the broadest sense, the foundation exists to create sustainable social change by helping people help themselves. Such change demands time, energy and focus. That’s why, as an example, the board has committed to work in each of our priority locations for at least a generation. It’s why we made an initial six-year commitment to the CLN.

By a similar token, that’s also why we’ve applied one of the most basic principles of sound leadership – that of ongoing development – to ourselves. As much as we want to help current and emerging leaders be more effective in creating and sustaining change in their communities, we’re adopting a governance model that will allow the "community" of the Kellogg Foundation to be more effective in leveraging our skills and resources.

As La June Montgomery Tabron mentions in her first president’s letter, with the first class of the WKKF Community Leadership Network (some of whom are featured in roundtable videos in this annual report), the foundation is again leveraging an approach partnered with our grantmaking that we believe is fundamental to social change.

My fellow trustees and I have met the members of that class – they are excited and committed – as are the trustees. We are all enthusiastic about their potential. Their ongoing development, and ours at the Kellogg Foundation, not only represents the spirit of Mr. Kellogg, but is also essential to fulfilling his vision to protect the interests and ensure the success of vulnerable children today and into the future.

Leadership development has been a hallmark of the Kellogg Foundation’s work over time, from the Michigan Community Health Project in the 1930s to the WKKF Community Leadership Network today.

With their very first program – the Michigan Community Health Project (MCHP) in 1930 – the leaders of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) made engaged local leadership central to their vision of sustainable social change. In their 1941 report summarizing the MCHP and the foundation’s first 11 years, they expressed their belief that, "Any assistance the foundation could offer should … bring to … communities through their own leaders the best of current thought in order that those directly concerned could work out their own solutions."

To that end, the MCHP involved hundreds of local leaders in promoting community health, education and welfare in seven southwestern Michigan counties. In addition, the foundation inaugurated the first of its international leadership development efforts, granting fellowships in connection with the MCHP to two Montreal physicians.

But beyond recognizing the need to engage leaders, WKKF founder Will Keith Kellogg, then-President George C. Darling and then-General Director Emory C. Morris also understood that effective leaders are not born but developed. And they characterized the development process broadly as, "a method … by which … people could study their problems, learn to appreciate the wealth of their resources, exchange experience, talk with others who had solved similar problems successfully, and find their own answers through cooperative community action."

By the time the MCHP was winding down, leadership development and creation of "pipelines of leadership" had become integral to the foundation’s efforts on behalf of children. In the years since – while its approach to meeting the needs of children has evolved in response to changing circumstances – the foundation has consistently acted on the belief that capable, connected local leadership is essential for communities seeking to craft solutions and realize their visions. And to a great extent, its leadership development activities continue to follow the process outlined in 1941.

For example, with the start of World War II, the foundation began awarding fellowships to non-U.S. citizens – primarily health and education students – the majority of whom ultimately assumed leadership roles in their home countries.

Following the war, the foundation continued its international efforts, funding the Salzburg Seminars, which invited young intellectuals from nations recently at war to meet to discuss issues of mutual interest. It also created fellowships to provide leadership in rebuilding European agriculture. And it inaugurated a graduate studies fellowship program for professionals from Latin America, the Caribbean and the five southernmost African nations.

In the 1950s, in response to the explosion of young families and the growing demand for education and job training in the U.S., the foundation turned its attention to developing leaders in education. The Cooperative Program in Educational Administration (CPEA) was a nationwide program for advanced education for public school administrators and teachers.

A companion effort, the Junior College Leadership Program (JCLP) established a training program for junior college leaders that is credited with influencing the community college curriculum nationally and producing an entire generation of junior college administrators, including 17 presidents and 23 deans in California alone.

The latter decades of the 20th century saw consistent foundation efforts to build and maintain similar pipelines of community leadership, both generally and in areas of specific foundation focus.

For example, the Kellogg National Fellowship/Leadership Program (KNFP/KNLP), which ran from 1980 to 2002, was designed to provide individuals with "the opportunity to engage in a three-year quest to broaden their intellectual horizons and bolster their capacities for leadership."

The Kellogg International Leadership Program (KILP), consisting of two groups of fellows, was intended to advance leadership capacity for human services worldwide.

Other fellowship and leadership programs created since 1980 focused on community health; health professions; health policy, including health disparities; and sustainable food and farming systems, including international food systems.

More recently, in an effort to cultivate a critical mass of leaders in six cities, the foundation inaugurated the Kellogg Leadership for Community Change (KLCC) program, which evolved to become the national Community Learning Exchange. Applying a range of social, economic, cultural and experiential criteria, KLCC identified fellows from multiple communities who were then brought together for a series of two-year sessions to develop their skills and resources while advancing collective visions for their communities.

But the foundation’s belief in leadership development is not limited to adults. For example, for more than 20 years the foundation supported the International Youth Foundation (IYF). Among its activities, IYF employs programs like the Youth Action Net to leverage the skills and abilities of youthful social entrepreneurs in building traditions of community and civic engagement and leadership in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and other parts of the world.

In the early years of the 21st century, the foundation funded a number of initiatives collectively called the Health Leadership Cluster, designed to develop leaders in understanding, addressing and eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health care access and outcomes. In addition, the W.K. Kellogg African American Fellowship and Development Program sought to build a network of universities focused on developing leadership in health systems with an emphasis on health disparities research.

Food Systems Policy Fellows was a national program of professional fellowships supporting efforts to enhance communications about food and agriculture issues in the U.S.

Most recently, the WKKF Community Leadership Network (CLN), launched in May 2014, supports development of emerging and established leaders in the foundation’s priority places of Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans and nationally in racial healing and justice work. Beyond these programs, throughout the past seven years the foundation has made a large number of individual grants focused on leadership development consistent with its strategic framework and priority places.

Overall, more than 2800 existing and emerging community leaders have participated in Kellogg Foundation leadership development efforts and hundreds more will be added in the years to come.