The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) has announced that it awarded more than $483 million in new grant commitments during the 2021 fiscal year, the largest single year of grantmaking in the foundation’s 91-year history.

The record grantmaking represents a 91 percent increase over the prior fiscal year and was focused on addressing the foundation’s priorities of thriving children, working families, and equitable communities. To that end, expanded payout funds were provided in support of innovations in quality early education; philanthropic partnerships for community rebuilding and reimagining beyond COVID-19; supporting people of color-serving institutions and leadership, racial equity, and racial healing, including narrative change; and policy advocacy and systems change. 

More than half of the foundation’s grants (55 percent) benefited communities in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, and New Orleans—the foundation’s primary U.S. focus areas—as well as Chiapas and the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico and the central and southwest regions of Haiti. The foundation also announced a shift to real-time storytelling via its refreshed digital platform, Every Child Thrives.

“The need for our families and children has never been greater,” said Kellogg Foundation president and CEO La June Montgomery Tabron. “Now is the time to act and think differently. If we are to confront these issues, if we want to be the generation to overcome them, we must be agile and adapt to the moment and make it a movement where every child thrives.” 

(Photo Credit: Getty Images/fizke)