Tracie Coffman is a Program Officer for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. In this role, she works in the foundation’s priority place of Grand Rapids, Michigan to support thriving children, working families and equitable communities.
Coffman is responsible for identifying and nurturing opportunities for affecting positive systemic change within communities and executing programming efforts that are aligned with overall organizational direction. She provides expertise in all aspects of the grantmaking process including evaluating grant proposals, conducting background research, preparation of funding documents, grant monitoring, driving community connections and providing grantee customer service. In this role, she also serves on the larger Michigan place-based team, developing programming priorities and identifying and nurturing opportunities to affect positive change for children and families within the state.
Prior to joining the Kellogg Foundation, Coffman served as the director for Kent County’s Essential Needs Task Force (ENTF). In this position, she led the organization and community partners in collective impact work to shift the systems of housing, transportation, food, utilities, and workforce development to produce more equitable outcomes for families. She also represented the ENTF on the Kent County Board of Commissioners – Human Services Committee, Community Action Agency Advisory Board, and the FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter Program Board. Prior to this, she was a founding member of the Michigan Foreclosure Task Force, eventually serving in its lead staff role; she was as an adjunct professor at Grand Valley State University’s School of Social Work and built and led the foreclosure prevention program at Home Repair Services for thirteen years, spanning the great recession.
Coffman is currently a City of Grand Rapids mayoral appointee board member for the Rapid Regional Transit Authority, a Kent County Commission appointee board member and executive committee member of the Kent County Child and Family Coordinating Council, and an advisory board member of the Michigan Poverty Law Program. Prior to these appointments, she served six years as an elected board member for the Community Economic Development Association of Michigan (CEDAM). Over the years Coffman has received multiple awards including Michigan State Housing Development Authority’s Counselor of the Year, CEDAM’s Community Advocate of the Year, West Michigan Fair Housing Center’s Annual Award, and the Michigan State Bar Association’s Frank J. Kelley Consumer Advocacy Award.
Coffman received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), founded in 1930 as an independent, private foundation by breakfast cereal innovator and entrepreneur Will Keith Kellogg, is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. Guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive, WKKF works with communities to create conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work and life.
The Kellogg Foundation is based in Battle Creek, Michigan, and works throughout the United States and internationally, as well as with sovereign tribes. Special attention is paid to priority places where there are high concentrations of poverty and where children face significant barriers to success. WKKF priority places in the U.S. are in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans; and internationally, are in Mexico and Haiti. For more information, visit www.wkkf.org