Our Values Criteria
Nine values serve as the centerpiece of our grantmaking. These values focus our decision-making and reflect our strategic priorities.
Our values criteria is applied to the six fields of interest within which we work – health, the environment, arts and culture, education, human services, and community development.
We ask all applicants to tell us how your organizations exemplify various Kresge values and to describe the collective influence these values have on the people and communities you serve:
Creating opportunity – How does your organization’s work expand opportunities and support for low-income people in order to improve their quality of life and enable them to participate more fully in the economic mainstream?
Community impact – How will your organization and the proposed project benefit the larger community?
Institutional transformation – Does your proposed project have the capacity to profoundly influence the overall organization and its operations? How?
Risk – Tell us how your organization is using new and possibly untested approaches for addressing the needs or tensions of communities in flux. For example, have you developed new ways to broaden access to new immigrant communities?
Environmental conservation – Describe how your project incorporates sustainable building practices, embodies the principles of sound land-use planning, and promotes environmental stewardship and/or historic preservation.
Innovation – How might your project advance best practices in a particular field?
Collaboration – Describe your organization’s promise for bringing multi-party, interdisciplinary approaches to problems that defy solution by a single sector.
Underserved geography – How has your project addressed locations with high concentrations of need and low financial capacity, such as poor rural areas or cities with a minimal tax base?
Diversity – Describe how your organization’s staff and board reflect the racial, ethnic and gender composition of the population they serve.
If you have questions, e-mail the Grants Inquiry Coordinator or call 248-643-9630.