The Kalamazoo Foundation for Excellence Reimagines Community Investing
Community: Kalamazoo
Population: Over 12,001
Project Description
The Kalamazoo Foundation for Excellence (FFE) was founded in 2017 as an independent non-profit to steward a permanent endowment of more than $500-million to support the City of Kalamazoo. The FFE addresses systemic challenges to Kalamazoo’s municipal and community prosperity as a rust belt town with aging infrastructure, generational poverty, and lack of new investment. The FFE is the first known project of its kind globally. The FFE reduces property taxes by 38% for all taxpayers to retain and attract residents and businesses; it supports approximately 20% of the City’s general fund budget; it invests millions of dollars per year in aspirational projects and programs determined by the community through the award-winning Imagine Kalamazoo Strategic Vision and Master Plan. A brief list of accomplishments includes more than 600 units of affordable housing, 300,000 free rides on transit for high schoolers, more than 500 small business investments, and infrastructure investment.
Is your project easy to replicate in other communities (clear in its impact and execution for other communities)?
The Foundation for Excellence can be replicated at a variety of scales in any community. The impact can be custom tailored to any community’s key needs. FFE is a financial and governance model with replicable bylaws.
What is the Community Wealth Impact (based on one or more of the categories you selected) of your project?
The FFE has been responsible for $220-million of investment since 2017 and plans $485-million more by 2040. It will exist in perpetuity to continue this level of impact forever. Key investment figures are: $15.4 million for infrastructure; $9.9 million for affordable housing; $9.7 million for youth development; $8.6 million for economic development; $4.8 million for park enhancements; $3.4 million for complete neighborhoods; $1.8 million for shared prosperity; and millions more.
Describe the creativity and originality of your project.
The FFE is a unique approach to prosperity and reinvestment that adapts the time-tested concept of a university endowment to the municipal context. It maintains 1.3% operations costs due to how the model leverages the economy of scale offered by the integration with the municipality. It furthermore provides very flexible capital for creative investments for Cities. The FFE has again and again made projects possible that otherwise would never have been possible.
Project Multimedia
The owner of Huey D’s Desserts making product. Huey D’s was supported by FFE-funded small business grants/loans.
One of dozens of single-family in-fill homes built in historic core neighborhoods by FFE in Kalamazoo.
Some of the fifty-plus miles of sidewalk repaired or created with FFE, the first such work in many decades in Kalamazoo.
A ribbon cutting ceremony for a small business supported directly by FFE grants/loans.