We support our operations at KFF from our endowment and from external funds, which mostly come from foundations and state and local health departments with whom we partner on Greater Than AIDS. We use external funds chiefly for the incremental costs of projects we could not otherwise undertake. Today external funding represents about thirty percent of our overall operating budget. Our role as an independent source of information on national health issues requires that we maintain full, independent control of everything we do in our funding relationships whether funders are supporting our policy analysis, our polling, or our journalism through KFF Health News.
While we havea sizeable endowment for a national non-profit organization, we could not play the national role we play today without the external funding we receive. External funding has also led us to work with organizations we would not otherwise forge strong relationships with, making KFF – which as part policy, polling, and news media organizationdoes not fall neatly into any community –not only a “grantee” but a fuller participant inthe foundation and non-profit community. We greatly value these connections and the opportunities to expand our impact they bring.
Because our independence is central to our credibility and our role, our Board of Trustees has adopted guidelines which govern our relationships with all funders. In sum these guidelines require:
1. That any external funding advances our mission, program priorities and objectives;
2. That it will be used primarily for incremental project costs;
3. And that our external funding never compromises KFF’s credibility, independence, or reputation in any way, and hopefully will enhance them.
A current list of our funders follows:
AARP
Arnold Ventures
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Blue Shield of California Foundation
California Healthcare Foundation
California Wellness Foundation
Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment
Colorado Health Foundation
Colorado Trust
Commonwealth Fund
Delaware Department of Health and Social Services
Delaware HIV Services, Inc.
Elton John AIDS Foundation
Ford Foundation
Fulton County, Ga., Department of Health & Wellness
Good Words Foundation
Google
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Headwaters Health Foundation of Western Montana
John A. Hartford Foundation
Milbank Memorial Fund
Missouri Foundation for Health
Molina Family Foundation
Montana Healthcare Foundation
Nina McCormick Kaiser 1999 Trust
Pacific Business Group on Health (with funding from the West Health Institute)
Peterson Center on Healthcare, LLC
Poynter (with funding from Google and Facebook)
The SCAN Foundation
Sierra Health Foundation
Silicon Valley Community Foundation (Chan Zuckerberg Initiative DAF)
Silver Century Foundation
South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control
Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation
Texas Department of State Health Services
Twitter
UNAIDS
United Way of Middle Tennessee, Inc.
Virginia Department of Health, Office of Epidemiology
Walgreen Co.
Well Being Trust
