Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private, nonpartisan foundation that works with communities in education and entrepreneurship to increase opportunities that allow all people to learn, take risks, and own their success. The Kauffman Foundation is based in Kansas City, Missouri, and uses its $2.6 billion in assets to collaboratively help people be self-sufficient, productive citizens. Its grantmaking and research activities are focused on advancing entrepreneurship,[5] improving education,[6] and supporting civic development in Kansas City.[7]

In entrepreneurship, the foundation focuses on strengthening organizations and programs that allow entrepreneurs to develop knowledge and skills, start a new business, or grow an existing one, and strengthening communities to have more supportive environments for entrepreneurs, including policies, practices, and programs.

This is done by connecting entrepreneurs and advocates to policymakers so they can educate them about why entrepreneurship matters and how to support it; championing a community-focused model of economic development, focused on the entrepreneur, with the help of ecosystem builders; providing opportunities for aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs to learn how to start and grow their businesses; building more access to capital for entrepreneurs who have been historically left behind, including due to their race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic class, and/or geographic location; creating knowledge and actionable guidance for decision-makers that improves policies, practices, and programs; and helping entrepreneur support organizations in the Heartland region build capacity and pilot programs that serve entrepreneurs.

The foundation's major entrepreneurship education programs include Kauffman FastTrac, which equips aspiring entrepreneurs with the business skills and insights, tools, resources, and peer networks necessary to start and grow successful businesses; 1 Million Cups, a free program designed to educate, engage, and inspire entrepreneurs around the country; Kauffman Entrepreneurs, a resources site for developing ideas; and Global Entrepreneurship Week, a series of events every November designed to encourage entrepreneurship.

In education, the foundation supports students of all ages to find and define their paths, starting with early childhood education and continuing to career readiness. This is done by investing in people and organizations to increase access to quality early childhood education; supporting students, focusing on their outcomes from kindergarten through high school to ensure opportunity and success are equitable, unpredictable by race or background; changing what it means to graduate from high school, prepared for what happens next, and providing all students with the opportunity to earn college degrees or other credentials; setting a new standard for workforce credentialing through innovative non-degree pathways and an embedded entrepreneurial curriculum; bringing communities of educators together to ensure talent pipelines and development programs are racially diverse, robust, and relevant today and in the future; and collaborating with and learning from communities of all kinds to identify challenges, understand approaches, and catalyze efforts to ensure learning and education are pathways to individual economic empowerment and regional growth.

In 2011, the Kauffman Foundation opened the Ewing Marion Kauffman School, a college-preparatory public charter school in the Kansas City Public Schools district.[8] Kauffman Scholars, Inc., founded in 2003, is another educational program supported by the Kauffman Foundation. Kauffman Scholars, Inc. is a multiyear college access and scholarship program intended to help low-income urban students in Kansas City.[9]

The Foundation's work complements the work in education and entrepreneurship while also contributing to the vibrancy of Kansas City. This is done by helping students living in historically disinvested areas achieve success through investments outside of school, such as afterschool, STEM programming, and targeted programs to stimulate supportive learning environments for youth; helping established, nationally recognized cultural assets build organizational and financial capacity; helping emerging, regionally recognized cultural assets to increase their capacity to scale and sustain programming; and supporting communities as they work to solve entrenched local issues that create disparate outcomes.