Grant Details

?The Kern Family Foundation's mission is to empower the rising generation of Americans to build flourishing lives anchored in strong character, inspired by quality education, driven by an entrepreneurial mindset, and guided by the desire to create value for others. The foundations focus is on initiatives that have long-term, systemic impact. The foundation includes four program areas:

Faith, Work, and Economics

The predominant mission of the foundation in this program is to equip pastors with an understanding of the intersection of faith, work, and economics, and to empower them to lead their congregations in active application of this knowledge by:

1. Educating future and existing pastors about the importance of work in developing people's character, affirming their dignity, sustaining them, and helping them to flourish;
2. Educating future and existing pastors about how the economy is a moral system in which people exchange their work, and that free enterprise grounded in moral character is the most effective way to promote dignity, lift people out of poverty, and produce human flourishing;
3. Sustaining and building upon this education by growing active networks of pastors and theological educators who recognize the importance of integrating the spheres of work and the economy into one's understanding of discipleship; and
4. Providing resources that enable pastors to actively apply this understanding in their churches.

K-12 Education Reform

The foundation program is dedicated to restoring to our educational institutions the ability of its communities to form citizens of good character with attributes like integrity, industriousness, and personal responsibility while instilling the technical abilities that allow young people to support themselves with meaningful work in well-paying, high-demand jobs. In the area of academic achievement, the foundation places emphasis in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, disciplines that will allow young people to adapt to an increasingly technological world. The foundation makes strategic investments with the goal of producing systemic, transformative results. Because school leaders are the most important actors in developing schools that will shape students' character and help them achieve, the foundation invests in the recruitment, selection, training, placement, and support of a new generation of principals.

Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN)

The program's mission is to graduate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset so they can create personal, economic, and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work. The long-term goal is for these new engineers to catalyze a transformation in the workforce and to build economic and technical commerce in their communities. This focus on entrepreneurial leaders is increasingly important as the U.S. competes to maintain its economic position in a global marketplace based on innovation. The program reaches students through a network of institutions. KEEN currently involves 19 universities around the country. The program provides institutional grants, topical grants, and small group grants. To learn more about participating universities and the grant application process, see the KEEN web site: http://www.keennetwork.org/about-keen/program-faq

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Program-Related Investment

The foundation has made a PRI, in the form of a loan, to a national nonprofit that develops transformational school leaders and designs effective leadership policies and practices for school systems across the country, to assist in its principal training program costs.