Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Convening:the Foundation's 40,000-square-foot conference center serves as a community resource, providing meeting facilities, state-of the-art technology and amenities for a wide range of local, regional and national gatherings. We provide the space at no charge for nonprofits to use for their charitable programs and activities. Before the pandemic, the Foundation historically served more than 66,000 guests into the conference center meeting spaces. Although the conference center was closed to the public throughout 2021, in august of 2020, the Foundation established the community food service program to benefit families and children in our region. The program provided more than 40,000 meals to those in need, and allowed our food services staff, contracted through bon appetit management company, to continue working while serving the community. In addition, the Foundation uses the space to further its own convening purposes as well.

Entrepreneurial learning:the Foundation seeks to prepare people for success in their jobs and careers. Part of the Foundation's entrepreneurial learning initiative is to ensure individuals are equipped with information, resources, credentials, and confidence to navigate, seek, secure, and advance sustainable employment along their chosen career paths, including starting and growing a business. The Foundation supports entrepreneurial learning through programs such as 1 million cups (1mc) and Kauffman fasttrac. 1mc provides a supportive, inclusive space for entrepreneurs and their communities to gather and connect, where they can work through business challenges and identify opportunities. Kauffman fasttrac provides access to free content, templates, and tools that help aspiring entrepreneurs refine their vision into a researched and tested business plan.

Evaluation:at the Kauffman Foundation, we believe measurement and evaluation are vitally important to achieving our mission to help people become economically independent by advancing educational achievement and entrepreneurial success. Evalution provides Foundation leadership and staff with rigourous evidence to support strategic learning and inform decision-making about grants and the programs we operate directly. Our evaluation work is driven by three goals: 1) understand our progress in achieving strategic objectives; 2) create and share lessons learned along the way; and 3) use evaluation results to improve and increase our impact. The Foundation's evaluation framework spans all three levels at which the Foundation operates: grants, internally operated programs, and program-area strategies. While we use different measurement approaches for each of these levels, there is a consistent focus on establishing and tracking progress toward key outcomes.

Return of unused grant funds