Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is a private foundation headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, and one of the largest U.S. foundations focused on entrepreneurship and education. Ewing Marion Kauffman — founder of Marion Laboratories and the original owner of the Kansas City Royals — established it in 1966 and funded it over time with his company stock and his estate. Operating on an endowment commonly reported in the $2.6–2.7 billion range, the Foundation underwrites entrepreneurship research and programs, education and college-access initiatives, and civic development in Kansas City. This page covers the Foundation itself; the company and ballclub are detailed on Marion Laboratories and the Kauffman Foundation.

Summary

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (often abbreviated EMKF) was founded in 1966 by Ewing Marion Kauffman (1916–1993).¹ Kauffman seeded and later enlarged the endowment with shares of Marion Laboratories and, after its 1989 merger, Marion Merrell Dow; his 1993 estate added significantly to its assets.² The Foundation is headquartered at 4801 Rockhill Road, near the Country Club Plaza and the University of Missouri–Kansas City, in a campus that includes the Kauffman Foundation Conference Center.¹

The Foundation’s mission is to help individuals attain economic independence by advancing educational achievement and entrepreneurial success, reflecting Kauffman’s own conviction that those two paths produced self-sufficient, productive citizens.¹² Its work concentrates on three areas: entrepreneurship, education, and civic development in Kansas City.¹³ With assets commonly reported between roughly $2.6 billion and $2.7 billion, it ranks among the largest private foundations in the United States and is widely regarded as the most influential American foundation focused specifically on entrepreneurship.¹³

Founding and endowment

Kauffman created the Foundation in 1966, decades before his death, while Marion Laboratories was still growing.¹ He chose to give away the bulk of his fortune rather than pass it intact to heirs, and he structured the Foundation to outlast him — funding it with Marion stock during his lifetime and directing a large share of his estate to it when he died on August 1, 1993.²

The endowment has been reported at varying figures over time: roughly $2.7 billion in some institutional and encyclopedic summaries, and approximately $2.6 billion in the Foundation’s own recent materials, with assets above $2.4 billion as of 2023 and annual grantmaking on the order of $90 million that year.¹³ Either way it places EMKF among the largest U.S. private foundations and the largest devoted primarily to entrepreneurship.³

Entrepreneurship work

The Foundation’s entrepreneurship mission has two strands: research that documents how and where new businesses form, and operating programs that support founders directly.

On the research side, the Foundation became a national authority on startup activity. For roughly two decades it produced the Kauffman Index — a widely cited annual measure of U.S. entrepreneurial activity tracking new-business formation across states, metros, and demographic groups. The original Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity ran from the mid-1990s; the Foundation relaunched it in 2015 to emphasize entrepreneurial outcomes and later retired the branded “Index,” replacing it with the Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship dataset.⁴ Its research and policy work has been cited at federal, state, and local levels.

On the program side, the Foundation operates several signature initiatives:

• Kauffman FastTrac® — an entrepreneurial-education program launched by Ewing Kauffman in 1993, which has trained tens of thousands of entrepreneurs (the Foundation reports roughly 80,000 served over three decades).⁵
• 1 Million Cups (1MC) — a weekly, free community gathering for entrepreneurs, launched in 2012 in Kansas City and since spread to more than 100 communities nationwide.⁵
• Kauffman Fellows Program — a selective fellowship developing the next generation of venture-capital leaders.¹
• ESHIP Summit and related entrepreneurship-ecosystem (“ecosystem building”) convenings and research.⁵

Education and college access

Education has been a Foundation priority since its founding, rooted in Kauffman’s belief in opportunity through schooling. The lineage runs from his personal Project Choice scholarship program — which he started in 1988, paying college costs for students who stayed in school and out of trouble — into the Foundation’s later, larger education initiatives.⁶

In 2003 the Foundation established Kauffman Scholars, Inc. (KSI), a long-term program providing scholarships, tutoring, and mentoring to Kansas City students beginning in seventh grade, drawn from economically qualifying households in the Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas school districts. KSI sunset in 2023 after twenty years, having served a cohort in which roughly 90 percent of scholars came from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups.⁶

The Foundation also helped launch and fund KC Scholars, a regional college-financing program serving a six-county metro (Wyandotte and Johnson counties in Kansas; Cass, Clay, Jackson, and Platte counties in Missouri), backed by a multi-year, multimillion-dollar EMKF investment alongside dozens of community partners.⁶ More recently its education work has emphasized college access and completion, workforce and career development, and “Real World Learning” in regional schools.³⁵

Kansas City civic impact

The Foundation’s third focus is its home city. Locally its grants and programs have supported education and entrepreneurship infrastructure, college access for low- and middle-income students, and civic development across the metro.¹³ Its Rockhill Road campus sits beside the University of Missouri–Kansas City, and its research and convening work have positioned Kansas City as a recognized center for entrepreneurship-ecosystem thinking.⁵

A 2024 strategic refresh under president and CEO Dr. DeAngela Burns-Wallace (who joined in 2023) sharpened the Foundation’s priorities around equitable economic mobility in Kansas City, aiming to make the region a national model and to remove systemic barriers for historically under-resourced communities.³

The Kauffman name appears on several Kansas City institutions, but they have distinct origins and should not be conflated. Kauffman Stadium — the Royals’ ballpark — was renamed for Ewing Kauffman after his 1993 death. The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts stems from separate philanthropy associated with Muriel McBrien Kauffman (Ewing’s wife) and the Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation, and is not a project of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.¹

Legacy

Through the Foundation, Ewing Kauffman converted a Kansas City pharmaceutical fortune into a permanent, nationally significant philanthropic institution. It made Kansas City a center of gravity for entrepreneurship research and ecosystem-building, produced data and programs cited well beyond Missouri, and channeled decades of investment into local schools, college access, and civic life.

The Kauffman Foundation belongs to a distinctive Kansas City tradition of family-built companies turned civic philanthropy — alongside the Hall family (Hallmark), the Bloch family (H&R Block), and the Kemper family (Commerce Bank) — that has shaped the metro’s educational, cultural, and economic institutions across generations. Of these, the Kauffman Foundation is the one whose mission reaches most explicitly beyond the region, toward the formation of new businesses across the country.

Sources

Footnotes

1. “Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation,” Wikipedia — founded 1966 by Ewing Marion Kauffman; headquartered in Kansas City, MO; assets ~$2.7 billion; focus on entrepreneurship, education, and Kansas City civic development; Kauffman Fellows Program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewing_Marion_Kauffman_Foundation ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

2. Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, “The Legacy of Ewing Marion Kauffman” — Kauffman established and endowed the Foundation with Marion company stock and his estate; mission of educational and entrepreneurial self-sufficiency. https://www.kauffman.org/emk/kauffman/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, institutional materials and Startland News coverage of the 2024 strategy refresh — assets ~$2.6 billion (>$2.4B and ~$90M grants in 2023); three focus areas; CEO Dr. DeAngela Burns-Wallace (arrived 2023); equitable economic mobility in Kansas City. https://startlandnews.com/2024/04/kauffman-foundation-new-strategy/; https://www.kauffman.org/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

4. Kauffman Foundation, “Historical Kauffman Index” and “Kauffman Indicators of Entrepreneurship” — the Kauffman Index tracked U.S. startup activity (original index ~1996–2014; relaunched 2015; later replaced by the Indicators dataset). https://www.kauffman.org/historical-kauffman-index/; https://indicators.kauffman.org/reports ↩

5. Kauffman Foundation, “Operating Programs” — Kauffman FastTrac (launched 1993; ~80,000 entrepreneurs served), 1 Million Cups (launched 2012; 100+ communities), ESHIP Summit / ecosystem building, Real World Learning. https://www.kauffman.org/operating-programs/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

6. Kauffman Foundation, “Kauffman Scholars, Inc.” and “KC Scholars,” with Startland News coverage — Project Choice (1988), Kauffman Scholars established 2003 and sunset 2023 (~854 alumni; ~90% from historically marginalized groups), KC Scholars six-county program. https://www.kauffman.org/kauffman-scholars/; https://startlandnews.com/2023/12/kauffman-scholars/; https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/kauffman-invests-79-million-for-kansas-city-scholarship-program ↩ ↩² ↩³