Larger than Life

How do you communicate the values, legacy and personality of a company’s “larger than life” founder throughout an organization, and even a community?

Our clients at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation were trying to solve this question when they reached out to Grapevine Designs for answers.

Ewing Marion Kauffman, the late entrepreneur and philanthropist, founded the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., in the mid 1960’s. With an asset base of approximately $2 billion, it is one of the largest private foundations in the United States.

Mr. Kauffman was a transformational leader. He wanted his foundation to be innovative—to really help people change their lives. His focus on education and entrepreneurship is the basis for the ongoing success of this Foundation.

To that end, when Lacey Graverson, Creative Services manager, was challenged to showcase Mr. K’s kindness in a meaningful and creative way, a solution involved one of his favorite past times as well – playing cards!

Grapevine’s Chris Rosburg was a part of the creative planning;
“We knew the Kauffman Foundation was celebrating the 100th anniversary of Mr. Kauffman’s birthday in 2016 and suggested the playing card idea where we could highlight 100 Acts of Generosity in his honor. The ability to customize the face of each card was huge. The Kauffman Foundation took this idea and really ran with it – setting up an internal team to come up with 100 Acts of Generosity, both large and small, that people could complete in 2016.”

The result? The initial run of cards was 3000 packs that were given away to students, associates, community members, business and civic leaders, vendors and entrepreneurs, both in the Kansas City community and at events across the United States. The feedback was so positive, that a re-orderquickly followed for an additional 1000 packs.