WICHITA, Kan. – The Kansas Health Foundation is pleased to announce the second chapter of the Giving Resources to Our World (GROW) Healthy Kansas Initiative. By investing $30 million in GROW II, the Foundation will assist many more community foundations across the state in building endowments, learning new financial management strategies and exploring ways that foundations can work together to reduce expenses and raise the quality of their services.

One of the Kansas Health Foundation’s priorities for this new phase of GROW is to help foundations build endowments that are focused on public health improvements. In the first phase of GROW, a large portion of our matching funds established the Kansas Health Foundation Children’s Fund at each community foundation, which will provide ongoing resources to improve the health and well-being of Kansas children.

The Kansas Health Foundation started working with community foundations in the late 1990s as a way to further our mission of improving the health of all Kansans. We believe that stronger community foundations lead to stronger communities that result in healthier communities.

In just the first five years of GROW Healthy Kansas, participating community foundations had increased their assets by 141 percent, increased their total gifts by 163 percent, increased their grant-making dollars by 43 percent and established themselves as philanthropic leaders in their communities.

An independent evaluation of GROW concluded that the program “has already achieved significant success” and it “will continue to show a return on investment for generations to come.”

Because of this great success, the Kansas Health Foundation decided to launch this second 10-year chapter of GROW. Community foundations that are interested in participating in GROW II can find more details and download a GROW II application at www.kansashealth.org.

To arrange interviews with Kansas Health Foundation staff members, call Communication Officer Kathy Manweiler at 316-262-7676 or send her an e-mail at kmanweiler@khf.org.