Our founder, Ewing Kauffman, aspired to advance human welfare by creating future generations of entrepreneurs. Consistent with this aim, Mr. Kauffman also realized the importance of young people obtaining a quality education. In seeking to make real his vision, we the associates of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, embrace the following beliefs.
As stewards of Mr. Kauffman’s trust and values, we believe . . .
- We are privileged to do this work.
- Our pursuit of excellence, with no conventional market signals, requires relentless self-examination and conviction to the ever-increasing importance of the Foundation’s work.
- Our success requires continuous personal and intellectual growth, careful listening, honesty and openness in challenging one another, personal and corporate humility, and high quality teamwork, leavened by a sense of humor.
- We must avoid conflicts of interest, honor trust, and maintain
appropriate confidentiality.
- We are responsible for making prudent, wise, and leveraged use of all our resources, including our reputation, fellow associates, ideas, networks, and money.
- We will make a meaningful difference by recognizing and pursuing opportunities, thinking creatively, taking thoughtful action, undertaking responsible risks,
nurturing our culture of open dialog, and seeking continuous self-renewal.
- We must hold ourselves to high standards of effective grantmaking and our grantees to high standards of performance, measured wherever possible. We are guided by research, purposeful discussion, fact-based judgments, fairness, clearly articulated expectations, and by acknowledging and sharing our failures and successes with others.
Each associate of the Kauffman Foundation is responsible for bringing the words of our credo to life.
