Kresge Foundation

The Kresge Foundation was founded in 1924 with an initial gift of $1.6 million from Sebastian Spering Kresge. Kresge was the founder of the S.S. Kresge Company which started as a small chain of convenience stores which grew into what is now known as the Kmart Corporation. Kresge chaired the Kresge Foundation for a short while after its founding before serving as treasurer until his death in 1966. Kresge donated over $60 million to the organization by the time of his death. The original intention of the Kresge foundation was to focus on education issues mainly in the city of Detroit. ³

The Kresge Foundation changed paths from the original intentions of S.S. Kresge in 2006 when they began a “multiyear transition to redefine” the foundation. Elaine D. Rosen, chair of the board of trustees for the Kresge Foundation, claimed that the organization needed to redefine itself as a “strategic philanthropy in order to stay relevant in the 21^st century.” The organization now funds organizations that promote liberal and left-of-center issues. ³

In September 2025, the Kresge Foundation announced it would relocate its headquarters from Troy, Michigan, to the Marygrove Conservancy campus in northwest Detroit. The move, scheduled for completion in 2028, is part of a $180 million commitment that includes $130 million in headquarters construction and campus improvements and $50 million in neighborhood-focused initiatives. The investments build on Kresge’s long-standing work in Detroit, including nearly $400 million directed to the Livernois-McNichols corridor since 2015. As part of the relocation, the foundation is partnering with community organizations such as the Live6 Alliance to support affordable housing, home repair, rental assistance, and local economic development while aiming to avoid resident displacement. ⁴

Advocacy

Environmental Initiatives

The Kresge Foundation has funded several environmentalist initiatives, from localized organizations to larger foundations including the Tides Foundation. The Kresge Foundation has also supported left-of-center environmentalist groups including the Island Press Urban Resilience Project, which has also advocated in favor of the Green New Deal legislative plan. ^{5 6}

In 2023, Kresge provided a $3 million loan guarantee to assist with a weather-dependent energy initiative by Ithaca, New York to become carbon-neutral by 2030. Joe Evans, portfolio director for Kresge’s Social Investment Practice, stated that the support was due to the media attention behind BlocPower, a weather-dependent energy start-up company taking part in Ithaca’s initiative, and its founder Donnel Baird. Evans stated, “It was a for-profit company owned by a Black man. The board was diverse, the staff was diverse. Their focus was on improving the quality of life and operating expenses for housing where lower-income people and communities of color live…There was a fair amount of alignment.” ⁷

Kresge is a funder of Inclusive Prosperity Capital, which received a $249.3 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to provide solar energy to “low-income and disadvantaged communities” or LIDACs. ⁸

Kresge funds the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, which advocates for local institutions to adopt  weather-dependent energy sources. Kresge sent an $800,000 grant to the Network in 2025. ⁹

In February 2021, Kresge joined the Donors of Color Network campaign to take Climate Funders Justice Pledge (CFJP) to pledge more than 30 percent of U.S. climate change funding to groups led by racial minorities. In April 2023, Kresge claimed that it donated 39.1 percent of its funding and had helped the campaign raise over $120 million in total for those groups. ¹⁰

In August 2022, Kresge supported a proposed Securities and Exchange Commission rule to require regular disclosure of climate related information, including greenhouse gas emissions. ¹¹

In April 2023, Kresge’s senior program officer of the environment program Jessica Boehland released a series of book recommendations which included Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh, Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet—and How We Fight Back by Kate Aronoff, and Reconsidering Reparations by Olufemi O. Tawo, which advocated reparations for slavery. ¹²

In June 2024, Kresge published an op-ed claiming that nurses “are well-positioned to provide reliable, evidence-based information on both [health and climate change].” The op-ed advocated for more funding towards nurses’ groups to fight climate change through advocacy of more government regulations and implementing environmentalist approved policies in health care. ¹³

In December 2024, Kresge helped Sunwealth close a $30 million loan with Goldman Sachs Alternatives to develop environmentalist approved, weather-dependent energy. Kresge put up a $3 million non-funded guarantee to get the loan approved. The project is targeted towards “disadvantaged” communities. ¹⁴

In April 2025, Kresge’s Shamar Bibbins and Monica Valdes Lupi published an article which claimed that climate change was a public health crisis. The article also went on to claim, “climate resilience, public health, and racial equity are deeply interconnected.” ¹⁵

Kresge Foundation was reported as being among the top 30 funders of members of Louisianans Against False Solutions (LAFS), a coalition of weather-dependent energy advocacy groups. Kresge gave $3,827,000 to LAFS groups between 2020 and 2025. ¹⁶

Immigration

The Kresge Foundation has amassed a recent history of supporting initiatives that protect and promote illegal immigration into the United States. In September 2019, a report funded in part by the Kresge Foundation was released that focused on illegal immigrants in the Midwest. The report identified lack of access to services, poor public perception, insufficient funding, and lack of “strategic funding focus” as “critical issues” to illegal immigrants and refugees. The Kresge Foundation, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, and The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan founded the Southeast Michigan Immigrant and Refugee Funder Collaborative in response to their findings. ¹⁷

Biden Community Violence Intervention Collaborative

In June 2021, the Biden administration announced a program to combat rising gun violence and violent crime using a collaborative composed of government and nonprofit organizations funding community violence intervention (CVI) measures. The Kresge Foundation was reported to be a major funder of the collaborative alongside the California Endowment, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Kellogg Foundation. Other foundations funding the initiative include the MacArthur Foundation, Arnold Ventures, the Emerson Collective, the Heising-Simons Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. CVI strategies “act as an alternative to heavy-handed policing” by focusing its efforts on the minority of citizens who are perpetrators or targets of violent crime. CVI treats violence as a communicable disease rather than a violent crime and attempts to stop the “spread” of violence. ¹⁸

DEI Programs

On its website, the Kresge Foundation has statement on its website claiming, “Since this country’s inception, every facet of community life has been shaped by pervasive, enduring, corrosive, and invidious structural and institutional impediments to racial equity and racial justice.”  ¹⁹

In 2018, Kresge joined the Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and Surdna Foundation in creating the Amplify Fund to fund groups run by racial minorities. In December 2022, Kresge donated another $2 million to the fund, which had distributed $14 million by then. ²⁰

In May 2021, Kresge president and CEO Rip Rapson published an article on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death praising the “1619 Project” media initiative. ²¹

In October 2021, Kresge announced that it would close its offices on Columbus Day to honor “Indigenous People’s Day” while publishing a “land acknowledgement.” ²²

In May 2024, Kresge published an article claiming to support DEI efforts and further stating, “the work to advance DEI is central to our mission and must be central to our way of working across the organization.”  ²³

In September 2024, Kresge made a $1.1 million grant to Build Healthy Places Network “to tackle structural racism and health inequities in disinvested communities across the country.”  ²⁴

Education

In May 2021, Kresge published an article in support of then-President Joe Biden’s proposal for tuition-free community college claiming there had been an overall decline in college enrollment. ²⁵

In April 2024, Kresge published an article supporting then-President Biden’s plans to forgive student loan debt for borrowers.  The article claimed that states “de facto privatized” universities by cutting funding and that racial minorities were more likely to have larger student loans due to “historical and structural racism.”  ²⁶

Leadership

Rip Rapson is the president and CEO of the Kresge Foundation. Prior to this, Rapson worked as a legislative assistant for the late former U.S. Representative Donald M. Fraser (D-MN). Rapson later served as a deputy mayor of Minneapolis and as the president of the McKnight Foundation, a left-of-center philanthropic organization ²⁷

Aaron Seybert is the managing director for the Social Investment Practice at the Kresge Foundation. He joined in 2016, working as a social investment officer for Kresge’s American Cities and Detroit Programs project. Prior to Kresge, he worked at several impact investment companies, including Cinnaire and the Legal Aid of Central Michigan, before serving as the executive director of JPMorgan Chase Bank. ²⁸

John A. Barker is the Vice President and Chief Investment Officer for the Kresge Foundation. Starting with the company in 2007, he previously worked in Kresge’s senior investment team. Prior to Kresge, he was the assistant investment director of the University of Notre Dame’s investment office for five years. ²⁹

Cecilia Munoz is the board chair of the Kresge Foundation. She joined the board of trustees in 2017. She began her career at UnidosUS and eventually became director of the domestic policy council in the Obama administration. After leaving the White House, she joined the New America think tank and joined its board of directors in 2023. She is a senior fellow at Results for America, a trustee of the Joyce Foundation and MacArthur Foundation, sits on the advisory boards of the Open Society Foundations and JPB Foundations, and sits on the boards of Protect Democracy and Civic Nation. ³⁰

Funding

According to the Kresge Foundation’s 2023 tax return, the group had $279,706,042 in revenue, $236,434,347 in expenses, and $4,065,070,521 in assets. The group gave $185,027,660 in grants. ³¹

In 2023, New Venture Fund, a nonprofit managed by consulting firm Arabella Advisors, received a $2.15 million grant from the Kresge Foundation. One of the nonprofit’s sister organizations Windward Fund also received a $600,000 grant that year. ³¹

As of April 2024, the Kresge Foundation donated at least $1 million to the NPR Foundation, which supports National Public Radio (NPR). ³²