Exceptional

Profile: Ewing Marion Kauffman
When he won the franchise to
create a new baseball team for
Kansas City, Kauffman set out to
invest in developing and nurturing
young players.
To counter the
impression that this was a
one-man band, Kauffman
named his fledgling
company Marion Laboratories Inc. In its
first year of sales, the business turned
over US$36,000 and made a net profit
of US$1,000. Even in those early days,
Marion Laboratories was underpinned
by two basic philosophies: “Those who
produce should share in the results or
the profits,” and “Treat others as you
would like to be treated.” By 1989, when
Kauffman’s Marion Labs merged with
Merrell Dow to form Marion Merrell Dow, it
had grown to become a global diversified
health care giant with nearly US$1b in
sales and a staff of 3,400.
In 1968, Kauffman bid for and won the
franchise to create a new baseball team
for Kansas City, at a time when local civic
pride was smarting due to the Kansas
City Athletics’ recent move to Oakland,
California. He named his new team the
Kansas City Royals and set out to propel it
to the same success he had achieved in his
business. The team invested in developing
and nurturing young players and, with
Kauffman at the helm, the Royals
“An entrepreneur
must learn that
you can’t do it
all yourself.”
won six division titles, two American
League pennants, and a World Series
championship in 1985.
Today, there is more to Kauffman’s
legacy than families coming together for
a ball game at Kansas City’s Kauffman
Stadium — the only ballpark in the
American League to be named after a
person. Kauffman left his community
and the world with one of the country’s
largest private foundations, the Ewing
Marion Kauffman Foundation, devoted to
entrepreneurship and education with an
asset base of approximately US$2b.
Building on education
Kauffman, a quintessential innovator,
wanted his foundation to be innovative, too,
and to fundamentally change outcomes
in people’s lives. His goal: to help young
people, especially those from underserved
backgrounds, get a quality education so
they could reach their full potential.
“If the youth of tomorrow are not
educated, what’s going to be the situation
with our leaders of tomorrow?” he said,
“Because they are going to be the leaders
of the future.”
When asked why he chose to focus
the Foundation on education, he
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