Director of Talent and Organizational Development; KF

Director of Talent and Organizational Development (KF)

Posted on May 23, 2018

The Kresge Foundation is a $3.6 billion private, national foundation that works to expand opportunities in America's cities through grantmaking and social investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services and community development in Detroit. In collaboration with our nonprofit, public, private and philanthropic partners, we help create pathways for low-income people to improve their life circumstances and join the economic mainstream.

“Creating opportunity for low-income people is a hallmark of our work at The Kresge Foundation,” says Rip Rapson, president and CEO. “Our programs reflect the inflection points where we think we can actually make a difference in the life trajectories of people who are poor, disadvantaged or underserved in fundamental ways.”

These five values shape who we are as an organization and guide how we work – with each other and with our many grantees and partners.

Stewardship

How we manage our resources

We commit to exhibiting the highest levels of integrity, humility, excellence, and an abiding sense of responsibility in acting as stewards of the human, reputational, and financial resources entrusted to us to advance the foundation’s mission and to animate the credo of our founder, Sebastian Kresge to leave “the world a better place than we found it.”

Respect

How we treat one another

We will treat with respect every staff member, and everyone with whom we work, valuing each person’s distinctive background, personal style, and perspectives, while displaying honesty, dignity, kindness, trust, and collegiality in all of our interactions with one another.

Creativity

How we approach our work

We will embrace experimentation, reasoned risk-taking, and continuous improvement, recognizing that we must balance support for proven and effective approaches with the pursuit of new approaches that, although unproven, hold the promise of breaking through stale or unproductive approaches to the seemingly intractable challenges our society faces.

Partnership

How we work with others

We will actively seek out and embrace opportunities to partner and support others to devise and implement solutions, recognizing that by cooperating, coordinating, and aligning with others and one another we will leverage collective experience, insight, networks, and resources to more effectively advance the foundation’s mission to promote human progress.

How we seek to improve the lives of low-income people living in America’s cities and how we invest in our staff

Through the work of our programs and partnerships, we will deploy an array of grantmaking and investing tools to expand opportunities for low-income people living in America’s cities so that they may improve their life circumstance and join the economic mainstream.

We will foster a workplace environment and culture in which staff members have the opportunity to express their talents and ambitions, be acknowledged and rewarded for their achievements, grow in their effectiveness and careers, and see their efforts reflected in a strengthened sense of common purpose.

In 1924, with an initial gift of $1.6 million, Sebastian Spering Kresge established The Kresge Foundation in Detroit. He did this to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the S.S. Kresge Company, which began as a single five-and-10-cent store –a revolutionary merchandising idea at the time –and grew into a nationwide chain of stores. Many years later, the enterprise became known as Kmart Corp.

Mr. Kresge chaired the first foundation board meeting and then served as treasurer until his death in 1966, at age 99. By then, he had contributed $60.5 million to the foundation. All along, he maintained a steadfast commitment to charitable giving.

For more than 80 years, his mandate to promote human progress was realized through the support of fundraising campaigns to build capital projects – libraries, hospitals, schools, museums, community centers and the like – that, over the years, have contributed to the creation of the nation’s nonprofit infrastructure.…