skip to content
KKR ESG & Citizenship Report

Invested in Communities

Our citizenship platform aims to empower our employees, our portfolio companies, and our Firm to help create healthier, more resilient communities.

Content

Successful companies are only as strong as the communities in which they operate, and our shared communities have never needed more support than in this last year. We strive to create healthy, inclusive, thriving places through our investments, philanthropic grants, and community leadership.

An Unprecedented Commitment

2020 was a year that demanded more from us all. In response, KKR launched our $50 million COVID-19 Relief Effort to better support our portfolio companies, inspire our employees, and positively impact our communities. Together, through our Citizenship efforts, we are working to build a healthier, more resilient world.

HIGHLIGHTS

20,000+ hours

Contributed to nonprofits around the world since 2016

200+ small businesses

Supported through KKR Small Business Builders

$50 million

Committed to the KKR COVID-19 Relief Effort

Our Evolving Impact

We launched our Citizenship platform in 2016, knowing that we needed to show up in a more intentional and effective way. For the past five years, we have worked to define the areas where we can be most impactful and have strengthened our offerings for employees to get connected and engaged.

The pandemic and resulting crises have forced us to evolve and intensify our offerings and commitment. Because the needs of our communities are new in both their scale and depth, we recognized that our efforts must be more strategic and impactful than ever before.

In April 2020, through commitments from our Firm, leaders, and employees, we launched the KKR COVID-19 Relief Effort, a $50 million philanthropic fund designed to support those most affected by the crisis and the resulting economic dislocation.

The Relief Effort aims to meaningfully improve the lives of people around the world through four key pillars: supporting portfolio company employees; engaging our employees as leaders and change-makers; assisting small businesses; and providing strategic grants to leading nonprofits.

Focusing Our Efforts

The KKR COVID-19 Relief Fund makes strategic community grants across three areas: Communities, Opportunities, and Heroes.


Communities: Providing Support for Vulnerable People and Places

As the coronavirus outbreak and the resultant economic dislocation continue to take a devastating toll on lives and communities, we are investing in the critical services and support that will help people survive today and thrive tomorrow. From food security and safe housing to education support and mental health services, our grantees are on the front lines of change and ensuring help is on hand for those who need it most.


Opportunities: Creating Pathways for Workforce Recovery

The companies in our portfolio employ hundreds of thousands of people around the world, giving us a deep understanding of and an appreciation for the importance of a strong, capable workforce. COVID-19 has completely changed what it means to have a job or go to work. Our grantees are supporting innovative programs focused on safely getting people back to work, retraining them for the jobs of tomorrow, and ensuring that all people have the opportunities they need and deserve.


Heroes: Helping Public Servants and Frontline Workers

KKR’s ultimate clients are the frontline workers, first responders, and teachers who have been at the center of keeping our communities safe during the pandemic. These individuals are not only clients, but also the cornerstones of where we live and work. During this unprecedented time, we are working to give something back to them after months and months of sacrifice and suffering. Our grantees in this focus area are providing everything from food for frontline workers to mental health counseling for teachers to better training and support for first responders.

Supporting Small Businesses

For more than 40 years, KKR has strived to build better companies and better futures for our investors. At our core, building better is what we aim to do. We believe in the power of business to drive strong economies, provide local jobs, and support thriving communities. All big businesses were once small businesses, and while KKR’s day-to-day focus is investing in and growing large companies, we recognize the critical importance of small businesses. And due to the impacts of COVID-19, many of them are in crisis.

In response, we launched KKR Small Business Builders, a key pillar of our COVID-19 Relief Effort. KKR Small Business Builders aims to support entrepreneurs and their small businesses around the world. The grants are designed to help business owners sustain their enterprises, maintain or create jobs, and spur economic opportunity as they respond to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and recover from economic dislocation. The program was built with an emphasis on impact and equity, and prioritizes companies that are pivoting their business in response to the pandemic, are operated by historically underrepresented groups, or are providing important community services.

KKR Small Business Builders supports companies in three key ways:

  1. Access to Capital: We provide access to capital through a series of $10,000 grants to selected small businesses in our communities.
  2. Technical Expertise: We offer technical support to small business owners through a range of mentoring and coaching opportunities with KKR employees.
  3. A Network of Support: Through our partners at Hello Alice, we connect small businesses to a network of resources and a thriving online community of entrepreneurs.

Deepening Our Employees’ Impact

Our people are our biggest asset, which is why we support not only their career development but also their desire to create positive social impact. Through the following four components of the KKR Cares Platform, we offer programs and opportunities that encourage and inspire employees as they engage with nonprofits and their communities.

Impact Around the World

Across the globe, our nonprofit partners are directly involved in their communities.

CareMessage

CareMessage was launched in 2012 to address a major barrier to providing care to underserved populations: the ability to communicate health information to patients. CareMessage leverages technology and online communications to help fulfill the essential health needs of underserved populations, and has grown to become the largest patient engagement platform for underserved populations in the United States. Supported initially by our Firm in 2019 through our Social Enterprise Accelerator, in 2020 CareMessage received a grant from KKR to help enable its COVID-19 care and vaccine information distribution. To date, CareMessage has provided information to millions of people throughout some of the hardest-to-reach communities.

Teach To Lead

In India, 75% of kids will not go to college and more than half of ten-year-olds have trouble reading. Education inequity in the region has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. Teach For India is responding with strengthened leadership in education, and is building a movement of leaders from the nation’s best universities and workplaces to serve as full-time teachers to children from low-income communities in under-resourced schools. Through KKR’s support, Teach For India has worked with teachers to enhanced their digital teaching and has improved the learning experience of more than a thousand students.

Bede House

Bede House is a local, community charity operating in London that brings people of varied backgrounds, circumstances, skills, and experiences together to create opportunities for those most in need. Because of KKR’s support, Bede House has been able to build the strong infrastructure necessary to cope with rapid change and uncertainty during this time. Our support has helped Bede House amplify its programming across a range of important activities during the pandemic, including responding to the immediate increase in poverty rates as well as increasing education and employment prospects for people in its community.