ThinkDesign is pleased to announce the Kresge Foundation’s 2009 Annual Report has received a Council on Foundations Silver Wilmer Shields Rich Award for Excellence in Communications. The award honors organizations using the right vehicle and the right message at the right time to encourage others to think and act in ways that support their foundations’ missions.
The purpose of the Kresge Foundation’s annual report this year was to present, for the first time, the strategic objectives of Kresge’s six new program areas and put them in context of the realities of current society. The annual report is built around questions without definitive answers. The questions are central to the piece and central to the notion that an alternate reality—a future we all want to live in—is possible.
As Kresge’s president, Rip Rapson, said in the opening of his letter: “The challenge in philanthropy is less about being sure you’ve landed on the correct set of answers to seemingly intractable questions than it is being confident that you’re asking the right questions in the first place …. As we have redesigned our grantmaking over the last three years, we’ve been asking a lot of questions — difficult ones that have forced us to re-examine the very basis of the way we work.”
By asking big questions, Kresge is stating a desire to be part of the innovative solutions. By wanting to be a part of long-term answers, with the organizations on the front lines most able to answer them, Kresge is using this annual report to define their clear intentions.
