​​Will Keith Kellogg

Will Keith Kellogg was born in Battle Creek, Michigan. His parents were industrious, community minded Seventh-day Adventists, who instilled their 14 children with values of compassion and charity. Kellogg left school at the age of fourteen to work for his father’s broom factory. As a young man he served as business manager of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a prominent hospital and health spa where his older brother, John Harvey Kellogg, was head physician.

Experimenting in the sanitarium kitchen, in the mid-1890s the Kellogg brothers developed the corn flake as a nutritious breakfast alternative for patients. The cereal became sensationally popular. While his brother continued his medical career, W.K. Kellogg founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company in 1906. By 1922, when the business was renamed W.K. Kellogg Company, Kellogg had become the “Cereal King of America” and one of the country’s richest men.

Ambitious though he was, Kellogg never pursued wealth for its own sake. Primarily concerned with stewarding his fortune for the benefit of others, he established the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to promote “the health, happiness, and well-being of children.”

The foundation’s first major initiative was the Michigan Community Health Project (MCHP), an effort to improve access to public healthcare and education across seven rural counties surrounding Battle Creek. MCHP’s comprehensive approach to community development proved visionary, as it enlisted ordinary citizens – including parents, teachers, farmers, health professionals and elected officials – to collaborate in the planning and implementation of innovative solutions to locally-identified problems.

From its beginnings in southern Michigan, WKKF scaled up its grantmaking to support public health and education work across the U.S. and internationally. By 2005 the foundation had awarded more than USD 4 billion to grantees over three continents.

WKKF is widely noted for its leadership in advancing racial equity. After decades of investment to alleviate systemic barriers to opportunity for underserved communities of color, in 2007 the foundation formally committed to becoming an anti-racist organization. As such, WKKF manifests its commitment to racial equity, diversity and inclusion not only through its funding priorities but also in its organizational culture and governance.

Even as WKKF continues to adapt and change in the 21st century, the foundation remains true to Kellogg’s belief that the best way to improve children’s lives is to engage with ordinary people to identify and solve the problems in their communities.

Contributors: Maha Tazi, Erin Brown