The Kresge Foundation

The Kresge Foundation is a philanthropic private foundation headquartered in Troy, Michigan, United States. The foundation works to expand opportunities in America's cities through grantmaking and investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services and community development efforts. The Kresge Foundation is one of wealthiest charitable organizations in the world, with an endowment of $4.3 billion as of June 2021.

In 1924, with an initial gift of $1.6 million, Sebastian Kresge established the Kresge Foundation in Detroit. Twelve years earlier, he and partner John G. McCrory opened the first 5-and-10-cent store in Memphis, Tennessee, and parlayed the concept and operations into a chain of stores that were incorporated as the S.S. Kresge Company. In 1977, the enterprise became known as Kmart. The Kresge Foundation and Kmart are no longer affiliated.

Since 2006, the foundation has been led by Rip Rapson, formerly of the McKnight Foundation. He succeeded John Marshall III who had led the foundation for 19 years as president and CEO.

Kresge has practiced strategic philanthropy since completing a transition that began in 2007. Long known for its exclusive use of the challenge grant to help local communities raise funds for major construction and renovation projects, it now employs an array of funding methods to address and advance a set of narrowly defined programmatic objectives. It awards grants and makes program-related investments. Some grants are awarded for a single year; others are for multiple years. Some of its programs accept applications on an ongoing basis. Others proactively invite or solicit applications.^{[citation needed]}

As of early 2019, about 15 percent of the foundation's domestic holdings were in firms owned by women and people of color. In April of that year, the foundation pledged to ramp up investment in women- and minority-owned firms to 25% by 2025. In November 2020, the foundation sent a standardized questionnaire to all of its 150 money-managing firms to measure the diversity of their ownership and compel these firms to diversify their management.

In the early 2000s, together with the City of Detroit and General Motors, the Kresge Foundation formed the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy as a nonprofit to build and operate the Detroit riverfront. The Kresge Foundation gave a challenge grant of $50 million to the conservancy which was, at the time, the largest grant awarded by the foundation. Over the following two decades, the conservancy has restored and built out 3.5 miles (5.6 km) of River Walk along the Detroit International Riverfront between Belle Isle and Joe Louis Arena, later to be extended to the Ambassador Bridge.

Since the late 2000s, the Kresge Foundation has awarded more than $6 million to more than 250 artists through the awards and fellowships in its Kresge Arts in Detroit program. In 2015, the foundation added the Gilda Awards, named after Gilda Snowden, to recognize emerging artists in Detroit.

In 2010, the foundation invested $35 million into the M-1 Rail (now QLine) project to build 3.4 miles (5.5 km) of streetcar service from Downtown Detroit through Midtown to New Center. In total, the foundation contributed $50 million to the streetcar project which opened in May 2017 at a total cost of $187 million. A gift from the foundation also allowed free rides on the QLine until early September of that year and at various periods in subsequent years.