Impact Change

impactchange

Kalamazoo Community Foundation 2013 Annual Report

2013 Donors gave 1,687 gifts totaling

$47 million.

impact change Impact and change.

Donors created

27 new funds,

bringing the total number of funds held here to 836.

Nonprofits received

$14 million

in responsive and donor-suggested grants.

Students were awarded

357 scholarships totaling $1.1 million.

The assets of your Community Foundation totaled

$438 million.

Those are two words that concisely describe our work.

The needs of our community often exceed the capacity to address them. This requires us to be very smart with the resources we have. This is why we constantly ask ourselves, Are we doing all we can to make life in Kalamazoo County better for all? How can we make a profound impact on our community? We can do it by using our deep knowledge of community resources and needs, and collaborating with diverse people and organizations in meaningful ways.

As an organization, we know that change is necessary for improvement. If we ever hope to solve our most challenging issues, we know we must continuously improve and increase our impact. When this happens, life in Kalamazoo County will be better for all.

We have many stories about how we made an impact on Kalamazoo County in 2013 through learning, leadership and collaboration. In this report we share just a few.

Thank you for supporting our mission, and for the many ways you contribute to making life here better for all.

Love where you live.

Carrie Pickett-Erway President/CEO

our mission To make life better for all through leadership and stewardship of resources that last forever.

our vision To be a national leader of excellence in community philanthropy.

our core values • Integrity • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion • Excellence

impact education The Learning Network of Greater Kalamazoo, which we helped create and now provide administrative leadership and primary funding for, has been the focal point of this work. The Learning Network is a unifying force to ensure that every Kalamazoo County child is ready for school, post-secondary education, a career and the world.

In 2013, The Learning Network made an impact on Kalamazoo County by providing grants totaling $2.1 million in support of: • Kindergarten Readiness Action Network • College and Career Action Network • Adult Learning Action Network • Lift Up Through Literacy • Kalamazoo County Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Prevention and Treatment Project The activities of the three Action Networks included: • Kindergarten Readiness helping to launch Kalamazoo County Pre-K, which provides Kalamazoo County 4-year-olds with the opportunity to enter kindergarten ready for success.

• College and Career helping first-generation college goers, students of color and students with significant financial need get ready for college by preparing for the ACT test, completing the Free Application for Federal

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2013 Annual Report

Student Aid form, and making them aware of Michigan’s Tuition Incentive Program.

• Adult Learning informing adult learners about GED test changes and motivating them to take the test in 2013. They provided information on where to go for classes, tutoring and support to take the GED or prepare for the new test.

Finally, to help measure its impact and focus its energies, The Learning Network in 2013 launched two data-driven endeavors: Efforts to Outcomes, a data platform that enables the tracking of outcomes across multiple organizations; and a countywide scorecard (see it online at www.thelearningnetwork.org/lngkscorecard) that is a collection of performance data measuring how well our county is doing in meeting its educational goals.

impact change With Efforts to Outcomes and the scorecard in place, The Learning Network will know which strategies are working well, for whom and why, and its decision making will be highly data informed. Having and using quality data empowers organizations to make informed decisions that lead to better outcomes and greater impact.

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As a parent, I look forward to the milestones my children reach at every early stage of learning. We make education fun every day through play, studying the world around us, and other creative resources. Early childhood education will help enrich and nurture my children’s learning.

Candace Moore with her daughter, Madison Member | Great Start Parent Coalition

2013 Annual Report

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We want to help transform how and how well people who live in Kalamazoo County are prepared for success in school and life.

Kalamazoo Community Foundation

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impact equality As one of only two charitable funds in the State of Michigan dedicated solely to promoting equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning people, our LGBT Equality Fund has the potential to make a major impact on Kalamazoo County.

The Equality Fund, an endowed fund created in 2000, has four priorities: • Advocate for human rights and equality to positively impact Kalamazoo County’s LGBT community.

• Promote social justice and unity.

We hold the Community Foundation’s Love Where You Live mantra close to our hearts. The Equality Fund plays a subtle role in helping Kalamazoo achieve “loveability.” In this special place — Kalamazoo — it is not about fitting the mold, it is about equality and embracing all people.

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“

Equality Fund Supporters and Advisory Committee Members

• Improve online access to information about the fund and revise our printed materials.

• Build the membership of the fund’s advisory committee and provide the committee with more opportunities for engagement.

• Find ways to reach out to new donors and grant seekers to make a more meaningful impact in Kalamazoo County.

• Support activities that celebrate the rich social and cultural contributions of the LGBT community.

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Jerry Harty & Jon Durham

Their feedback helped us:

• Strengthen organizations that serve the physical, health, social or emotional needs of the gay and transgender community.

In particular, it supports programs that facilitate leadership development, and programs that impact LGBT people of color, youths and families; transgender people; and multiple generations.

Throughout 2013, we asked for guidance from LGBT community partners who helped us rethink our existing strategies. This outreach was critical to our being able to identify and set in motion strategies to maximize awareness and effectiveness of the fund.

impact change In 2013, Kalamazoo County nonprofits received $44,750 in grants from the Equality Fund and other Unrestricted Funds to address the needs of LGBT people in Kalamazoo County. Since it was created in 2000, we’ve made $460,000 in grants from the Equality Fund.

2013 Annual Report

Kalamazoo Community Foundation

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impact improvement Just as Kalamazoo County and its needs continuously evolve, so does your Community Foundation.

Sixty-three organizations attended four forums last year and told us they valued:

We make a point of seeking out feedback and learning opportunities, making adjustments based on what we learn, and continuously improving our strategy and processes so we can make life in Kalamazoo County better for all.

• Connecting with other organizations.

In the past, to evaluate whether or not we and our nonprofit partners were making the best use of community resources, we mandated that grantees submit a final grant report online — a solitary task of plugging number-driven data into a computer program.

But after researching best practices and asking for feedback from our grantees, we realized there’s much more to effective grantmaking.

Grantees can now choose between two reporting options: completing the traditional report or attending a Results and Learning Forum, which we launched in 2013. When they attend a Results and Learning Forum, grantees have multiple opportunities to talk about the impact their program made. They share any challenges they encountered, ask for feedback from us and other grantees, and provide feedback of their own. It’s a shared experience that everyone learns from — including us.

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• Learning about the work of other nonprofits.

• Creating synergies from face-to-face connections.

But as we said, we’re focused on continuous improvement, so with each new opportunity we ask for feedback and continue to refine our grant evaluation process so it’s an effective, valuable experience for everyone.

impact change We turned an evaluation ritual into a more meaningful interaction that demonstrates: success isn’t always about meeting numeric goals, there is value in “failing forward,” shared learning is a means toward collective ownership of our community work, and interactive evaluation better demonstrates our core values.

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The Community Foundation continues to be a growing ground for change agents.

Since 2005, I have had the opportunity to glean guidance and leadership from the Community Foundation. Exploring alternative ways to evaluate grants this year was refreshing to be a part of.

Circles of conversations made for an atmosphere of more authentic sharing of both celebrations and challenges.

Deborah Warfield Executive Director | Media Arts Academy

2013 Annual Report

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We also make a point of helping the nonprofits we partner with do the same.

• Having open and honest conversation with us.

Kalamazoo Community Foundation

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impact relationships

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As professional advisors, we know there are many ways for our clients to support Kalamazoo, and the Community Foundation is a great resource — for all clients, not just the very wealthy.

The Community Foundation’s team understands all aspects of charitable giving, from the technical to the emotional.

They can help people make more of an impact than they ever thought possible.

Senior Vice President, Investments | Raymond James

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Darlene Hybels, CFP®

According to Webster’s dictionary, a relationship is defined as “an emotional or other connection between people.”

Here at the Community Foundation, we have a lot of relationships. Some are obvious: the relationships among our internal team, the relationships we have with grantees, and those we have with donors. But you may not know about the relationships we have with professional advisors.

We consider attorneys, accountants, financial planners, trust officers and other professionals to be our partners in the charitable giving process. They look to us to help them understand the many ways they can help their clients make an impact on the community we all love.

In 2013, we created our first Professional Advisor Council. Our goal was to strengthen our relationships with professional advisors so they could strengthen their relationships with their clients.

Each quarter we meet with a volunteer group of advisors to: • Exchange ideas about how they can help their clients use philanthropy to make an impact.

• Provide updates on our work in the community, what we are learning, and how we are using what

we learn to lead and cultivate efforts that will result in systemic solutions to community challenges.

• Highlight the ultimate community impact of our partnership with each other.

In 2014, we’ll look for ways to further develop the group and its mission, as well as add to and diversify its membership.

impact change When we have more meaningful relationships with professional advisors, we enable them to have more meaningful relationships with their clients. Because they know us and respect us and our core values, they can confidently suggest that their clients support the community through the Community Foundation. They trust we will be good stewards of the resources given to us, and that we will use our knowledge to make sure their clients’ gifts support quality efforts to address Kalamazoo County’s needs.

Pictured Left to Right: Craig Platt, Teresa Nelson, Bill Millard, Kristy VanderMolen, Dan Youngs, Andy Vorbrich, Darlene Hybels, Dan DeMent, Jack Ullrey, John Kuiper, Nicole Asher, Eric Tiller, Chuck Prudhomme and Erin Gallagher.

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2013 Annual Report

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impact giving The very first gift to the Community Foundation in 1925 was also from W.E. Upjohn and it was unrestricted too — meaning he didn’t say it should be used for a specific purpose other than to make life in our community better.

Kalamazoo County’s immediate needs, as well as invest in the work of organizations that are looking for solutions to persistent challenges and collaborating with others to make long-term, transformative change.

To make a long story short, your unrestricted gifts ensure we will always have resources to effectively address current and future needs.

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W.E. and other early donors were certainly aware of what Kalamazoo County’s needs were. However, they also were aware that they couldn’t possibly know what Kalamazoo County’s needs would be in 1950, 1980 or 2013.

As it turns out, our first grant was made in the area of education (now our top priority), but we’ve also made thousands of grants that address community needs no one could ever have envisioned. And we’ll always make these kinds of community investments, which is why unrestricted gifts are so important.

Your unrestricted gifts become part of a permanent endowment, which means they’re invested so they grow and make an impact forever. They provide the community with flexible resources to help address

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impact change In 2013, nonprofits in Kalamazoo County received about $2.7 million in responsive grants from our Unrestricted Funds. Thanks to the unrestricted gift from the W.E. Upjohn Prizes Trust, we will be able to increase that amount by about $800,000 in 2014 and years to come.

Somewhere, someone has the cure for cancer locked in their head or is the next Mozart or Martin Luther King Jr. With the right supports, that potential can be unlocked. Our unrestricted gifts to the Community Foundation allow them to use their vast knowledge of the community to provide the necessary funds to the right agencies that provide that support.

Sally & Andy Vorbrich Spirit of Community Fund Donors

2013 Annual Report

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Two thousand thirteen was a record year for gifts to the Kalamazoo Community Foundation. Donors gave 1,687 gifts that totaled $47 million. One of those in particular made a major impact on our organization and will make an even greater impact on Kalamazoo County: an unrestricted gift of $23 million from the W.E. Upjohn Prizes Trust.

Kalamazoo Community Foundation

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finances

our team

financial position

The financial resources available for our grantmaking come from the interest earned on the first gift given to the Community Foundation in 1925 and every gift given to us since then. The vision of every donor is realized in each and every community investment we make in the work of a local nonprofit. These funds, and our knowledge of the community, fuel our impact throughout Kalamazoo County. At the end of 2013 our assets totaled $438 million.

Our board of trustees provides guidance for our grantmaking and community leadership. These individuals represent diverse community interests and donate their time, energy and expertise to help us identify opportunities for long-term community impact, respond appropriately when unforeseen challenges arise, and address community needs.

For the year ending 12.31.13 Assets Grants paid Gifts received

$438 million $14 million $47 million

Our complete audited 2013 Financial Statement is available online at www.kalfound.org/publications. You also may request a copy by contacting us at 269.381.4416 or info@kalfound.org.

For endowed funds, we strive to preserve the original value of gifts in terms of inflation, and grow our assets as much as market conditions allow. We employ a moderate growth strategy in which 70 percent are invested in equities, 25 percent in fixed income vehicles, and five percent in real estate funds.

board of trustees

impact change According to a Council on Foundations survey, in 2013 we ranked second in investment performance among community foundations nationwide. Strong investment performance means strong investment returns, which result in more money available to make an impact on community needs.

Investment Performance For the year ending 12.31.13

Actual

1 Year

21%

Benchmark

Our staff works closely with donors, grantees and others to make a meaningful impact on Kalamazoo County. It includes skilled professionals in community investment, donor relations, finance, administration, human resources and communications.

3 Years

18 %

11%

10%

5 Years

16%

14%

Si Johnson Chairperson Frank Sardone Vice Chairperson James Escamilla Trustee Barbara James Trustee Ronda Stryker Trustee Hon. Carolyn Williams Trustee Dr. Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran Trustee

staff Community Investment Jessica Aguilera Sandy Barry-Loken Zach Bauer Kari Benjamin Stephanie Carrier Bobbe Luce Elena Mireles-Hill Amy Slancik Suprotik Stotz-Ghosh

Office of the President/CEO Sue Bos Carrie Pickett-Erway Finance & Administration Kelly Campbell Selena Jepkema Susan Meldrim Katie Paauwe Karen Racette Susan Springgate Jan Winling Debbie Wood

Donor Relations Carol Carter Coby Chalmers Joanna Donnelly Dales Jill Dykehouse Ann Fergemann Jeanne Grubb Valerie Mitchell Nancy Timmons

Marketing Communications Candice Atwater Shannon Bronsink Tom Vance

7 Years

6%

6%

Don’t let this be the end of our relationship until next year’s annual report. Connect with us. ( 269.381.4416 : www.kalfound.org

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2013 Annual Report

Kalamazoo Community Foundation

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Kalamazoo Community Foundation 151 South Rose Street, Suite 332 Kalamazoo, MI 49007-4775

Love Where You Live

Photography

The 2013 Annual Report was photographed by Robert Neumann of Big Event Studios.

The Kalamazoo Community Foundation is committed to environmental sustainability.

This publication is printed on paper made from FSCÂŽ-certified fiber and contains 10 percent post-consumer recycled content. It was printed locally by an FSC-certified printer using soy inks.

FSC certification ensures that the highest standards of responsible forest management are met.

When you are finished with this report, please support our commitment to the environment by recycling it or passing it along to a friend.