In the Summer of 2022, as The Kendeda Fund further clarified the specifics around our long-planned spend out at the end of 2023, the topic of final grantee reports came up. What were the Fund’s wishes and expectations to receive “final reports” from long-standing, core grantees in each of our program areas?
Relatively quickly, we determined that traditional grantee reports would not be necessary or particularly useful to us or to our grantee partners. We decided to make final grants with no expectation of a final report. Instead, we invited a small number of grantee partners across each of our program areas to participate in a process to help clarify this moment, and describe, as best as possible, our grantees’ thinking on where their respective fields ought to evolve. After all, while we were “exiting the highway”, our grantee partners’ vision was fixed squarely down the road, into a future without the Kendeda Fund.
In exchange for their time, our commitment was to share these “voices of our grantees” with our respective fields. It was, perhaps, our last opportunity to amplify their ideas and wishes. And so, six of our Fund Advisors set about putting in motion processes to gather our core grantees’ insights. In some cases, conversations were held as a collective; in others, one-on-one.
In all cases, we used outside facilitators and writers from different areas like academia, journalism and evaluation to gain additional perspectives. Our aspiration is that funders and practitioners engage with these insights and use them to inform their own approach to the work in the future.
Toward a Safer Future: Gun Violence Prevention
Reflections on a decade of slow, steady progress in gun violence prevention; implications and challenges for the road ahead.
For the last decade, The Kendeda Fund has been one of a small but growing number of funders leaning into the nation’s gun violence crisis and supporting a diverse set of far-sighted organizations decisively shaping its trajectory.
Southeast Sustainability
Transformative Leaders || Transformative Ideas
There is a growing coalition of nonprofit sustainability practitioners rooted in communities in the American South. With the technical capacity to take national best practices and translate them for Southern policy makers, homeowners, design and construction professionals, these leaders have what it takes to achieve the sustainability results the region needs.
Reflections on Montana Conservation
Considerations for Future Funders
By supporting those with decades of success, innovative partners and communities with a strong stewardship ethic, Kendeda has been a champion of community-based conservation in service to the vision of an ecologically, economically and culturally thriving Montana.
Pathmakers: Atlanta Equity
Leadership reflections from the Kendeda Fund Atlanta Equity Portfolio
Compelled to act, the Kendeda team reimagined its Atlanta strategy, pivoting from civic investments to a new approach centering the urgent needs of the city’s Black and brown communities.
Girls’ Rights: Reflection Journey
A 10-Year Journey
Kendeda began our girls’ rights work ten years ago. At that time, our vision was to catalyze the creation of a world in which all girls systematically have the capabilities, choices, security and power to fully realize their human potential.
Employee Ownership at the Crossroads
Reflections on the Kendeda Fund’s Big Bet on Employee Ownership
In the years that we have been supporting employee ownership, starting with EO-curious grantmaking, leading to deeper investments, and then launching a ‘Big-Bet’ for advancing the scope and scale of employee ownership, we have always been focused on our commitment to dignity and sustainability.