The institutional left’s funding behemoth W.K. Kellogg Foundation has partnered with and given major donations to George Soros’s Open Society Institute and the Tides Center as part of its massive push to promote a far-left agenda.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is the nonprofit arm of cereal and sweets giant Kellogg’s, based in Battle Creek, Michigan. The Kellogg Company is chiefly known for its breakfast brands, including Special K™ cereal, Eggo® waffles, and Pop-Tarts®; but its namesake nonprofit W.K. Kellogg Foundation is one of the largest institutional funders in the world and is the seventh largest philanthropic foundation in the United States.
The Kellogg’s website explains the history of the Foundation:
As the United States sunk into the Depression, W.K. Kellogg declared, “I’ll invest in people.” He split shifts and hired new employees to work them. He also founded the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, whose mission — to help children realize their potential — complements that of the Kellogg Company to this day.
In recent years, however, the focus of the Foundation has drifted away from just helping children toward promoting left-wing political issues.
Examples of such funding include a direct grant to George Soros’s Open Society Institute, which received $200,000 from the Foundation to “eliminate racial inequities in the juvenile justice system and promote racial healing through community-based conferences, policy changes, and communication strategies.”
Two other far-left groups, the Tides Center and Tides Foundation, both based in San Francisco, are also top recipients of funds and support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. A search of the grants given by the Foundation for “Tides” yields over 120 results.
Most recently, on November 1, 2016, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation gave $2,150,000 to the Tides Center in order to:
Scale up farm-to-school benefits for vulnerable children through continued expansion to early care and education sites and diversification of partnerships, ensuring equitable access and institutionalization
Another W.K. Kellogg Foundation grant in 2016 gave over $380,000 to Tides in order to:
Provide updated publications/tools describing the state of grantmaking with a racial equity/racial justice lens, including insights to support grantmaking considerations at the program officer and institutional levels, through support of the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity
The benevolent-sounding program descriptions go along with the way George Soros, one of the world’s wealthiest men, portrays his “open societies” vision. An article on Fox News described the model for Soros’s charitable contributions as “pro-one world government, pro-abortion, pro-government controlled media, pro-drug and even pro-euthanasia and against the very institutions that stand for traditional values such as family and faith.”
The connection between the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Tides appears to go beyond mere funding. In a section of the Tides website called “Expanding Your Reach,” Tides explains to community organizers and would-be grant recipients how they can be part of a “partnership” with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and other top institutional left funders to get more of the billions of dollars available for issues ranging from elections to immigration reform and foreign policy. The website says:
In partnership with institutions like The California Endowment, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Open Society Foundations, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, and many others, we have granted hundreds of millions of dollars. With Tides, your foundation can ease administrative burden, expand programmatic capacity, collaborate effectively, and increase the impact of your grantmaking programs.
Tides is a platform for funding collaboratives that address issues as diverse as global disability rights, election administration reform, and state-based LGBT advocacy. Funders also start innovative programs with Tides that cross multiple issues, such as the integration of reproductive health with AIDS/HIV treatment in Africa. Tides also provides vehicles to support funding advocacy on critical policy issues like immigration reform, health care and U.S. foreign policy.
Tides was founded in 1976. One important institutional left figure who is part of Tides is Wade Rathke, whose official biography on his own blog lists him as “Founder of ACORN, Chief Organizer at ACORN International, Author of Citizen Wealth, Global Grassroots and The Battle for the 9th Ward,” in addition to pointing out:
Wade is also the Chair of the Organizers’ Forum, which brings together labor and community organizers for two dialogues per year, one domestic and one international. The Organizers’ Forum is a project of the Tides Center. Wade was a founding board member of the Tides Foundation and continues to serve as senior advisor of the San Francisco-based organization and for a number of their entities including the Paradox Fund and Frontera Fund.
It’s unclear how many consumers are aware of Kellogg’s institutional leftist funding through its namesake nonprofit, but it’s safe to say not all agree with the company’s ultra-liberal political views. In 2014, the Kellogg Company was criticized by some for an ad featuring its Frosted Flakes Tony the Tiger character saying, “Wear your stripes with pride,” to promote the company’s sponsorship of a gay pride march in Atlanta, Georgia.
As Breitbart News has also reported, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has put over $75,000,000 into an initiative to “combat structural racism in America.” An article on the Foundation’s website explains:
Since the birth of America, racial privilege and structural inequities have influenced the nation’s policies and social systems, from healthcare, education and child welfare to media, food consumption, justice and countless other facets of everyday life. In America, those who differ from the majority because of race, color, sexual orientation, religion, gender, weight and other characteristics face a deluge of outright discrimination and unconscious bias.
This is a developing story…