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Fortune: Founder of Kellogg's
Legacy: W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Foundation Assets: $5,729,303,302
2002 Giving: $200,745,771
Major Funding Areas: youth and children's services, education |
Born on April 7, 1860 in Battle Creek Michigan, Will Keith (W.K.) Kellogg never went further than sixth grade in school, yet he amassed a huge fortune and enriched the lives of millions of people around the world. When he died on Oct. 6, 1951, at the age of 91, his W. K. Kellogg Foundation, formed in 1930, was one of America's richest philanthropic organizations.
W.K. Kellogg might best be described as the inventor of modern breakfast cereal. More specifically, in 1894 he changed the way people ate breakfast forever, when he and his brother John accidentally created the precursor of what is today know as Kellogg’s Cornflakes.
Kellogg left school at the age of 14 fourteen. He first worked as a stock boy and later as a traveling broom salesman for his father, a broom manufacturer. At the age of 18 he went to work for the Battle Creek Sanitarium, (also know as the "San"), which was operated by his brother, the famed Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.
At the age of 24, earning $6 a week, Kellogg thought his future looked bleak. He was working 15 hours a day, seven days a week doing the books, buying supplies, answering correspondence, and serving as handyman, janitor and mail order clerk for the sanitarium’s many products.
The sanitarium stressed healthy living, with a diet that eliminated caffeine, meat, alcohol, and tobacco, and Kellogg assisted his brother with research into vegetarian diets and bread substitutes. The pair invented many new foods from grains, but none as famous as their accidental breakfast flakes.
One day, while cooking some wheat, the men were called away and the wheat was left to go stale. Upon returning, they forced the stale wheat through the rollers anyway, something they normally would not have done. They were surprised when the wheat did not come out in long sheets of dough, but rather as wheat kernels flattened into a thin individual flakes. When baked, the flakes yielded a tasty, crunchy breakfast food that would spawn a whole new industry of cereals.
The new flakes were first served to patients at the sanitarium, but they were so well liked that the sanitarium began selling them via mail order to previous clients and referrals. In 1906, W. K. Kellogg created the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company to sell Toasted Corn Flakes cereal. Despite his inability to get a patent on toasted flakes, numerous financing problems, and stiff competition, W.K. Kellogg succeeded in defeating his competition through the use of ingenious marketing.
His decision to have his name and signature scripted on each package of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes with an explanation that read - " The original has this signature" - helped "Kellogg’s Corn Flakes" become the premier brand in the market. By 1909 W.K. Kellogg’s company was selling over one million boxes of cereal per year and was well on its way to becoming the largest manufacturer of ready-to-eat cereals in the world. On its 75th anniversary in 1981, W.K. Kellogg’s company had forty-seven plants operating in twenty-one countries.
Despite his millionaire status, W K. Kellogg lived a modest life, residing for many years in a two-story stucco house on West Van Buren Street in Battle Creek, Michigan. His early philanthropic pursuits were limited to helping local teachers, children orphaned by war, the blind and the otherwise less fortunate, as well as local hospitals and medical programs. As his wealth grew, W.K. Kellogg continued to give generously to charitable causes, especially those involving children.
In 1925, W.K. Kellogg established the Fellowship Corporation, which helped build an agricultural school, a bird sanctuary, an experimental farm and a reforestation project. He also donated nearly $3 million to hometown causes, such as the Ann J. Kellogg School for handicapped children, a civic auditorium, a junior high school, and a youth recreation center.
In June 1930, the W.K. Kellogg Child Welfare Foundation was established and shortly thereafter renamed the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In 1934, W.K. Kellogg donated more than $66 million in Kellogg Company stock and other investments to the Foundation to promote the health and well being of children.
From the outset, the W.K. Foundation's mission was clear - to promote the health, happiness, and well being of children. W.K. Kellogg believed in long-term solutions over short-term handouts and was steadfast in his belief that education offered the greatest opportunity to improve one generation over the other.
Over the last 60 years the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has provided a wide range of grants for projects including: creating public health departments in small counties; home screening programs for children; training public health workers as home nurses; school improvement; expanded library services; and community development.
The Foundation has also financed projects such as: advanced schooling in Latin America for dentists, physicians and health professionals; post war food production in England, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, and Norway; graduate programs in health, hospital administration; volunteerism; aiding the disadvantaged with an emphasis on minorities; and extended programming to the people of South Africa.
In the 1990s Foundation programming began to focus once again on something W.K. Kellogg had originally wanted most - serving the needs of youth and helping "children everywhere to face the future with confidence and a strong-rooted security.”
"Use the money as you please," Kellogg said, "so long as it promotes the health, happiness, and well-being of children."
For more information about the W.K. Kellogg Foundation please visit:
http://www.wkkf.org
For more information about Kellogg's please visit:
http://www.kelloggs.com
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