News & Insights
From grantmaking updates to sharing what we’re learning from our community, grantee partners, and peers, we invite you to learn more about our ongoing work here.
Celebrating Kate: A Season of Recognition
Twenty-five years ago, Kate Levin Markel joined the McGregor Fund. As she prepares to step down at the end of this year, she is being honored during a richly-deserved season of recognition.
News & Insights
From grantmaking updates to sharing what we’re learning from our community, grantee partners, and peers, we invite you to learn more about our ongoing work here.
Celebrating Kate: A Season of Recognition
Twenty-five years ago, Kate Levin Markel joined the McGregor Fund. As she prepares to step down at the end of this year, she is being honored during a richly-deserved season of recognition.
Highlighting the Work of Our Grant Partners
Thank you Girl Scouts of Southeastern Michigan - GSSEM!
Today, Kate received a Tough Enough Award from GSSEM, as someone “whose leadership, youth advocacy, and community impact reflect what it means to be ‘Tough Enough’ to be a Girl Scout.”
Kate and her fellow honorees also discussed how youth organizations, employers and philanthropies can meet young people where they are in a changing world of work. In response to asking what she wished someone had told her as she started her career:
“There are some core tenets of what makes for a happy or productive person, and those things seem to be universal and don't change…all things that the Girl Scouts program has long understood and modeled for decades.
It’s just so important for young people to understand that they have something special in them, that they have to understand what their passion is. They have to feel confident to pursue that passion. They need really loving, trustworthy adults around them who will catch them when they fall and tell them to get back up. As older folks, it's incumbent on us to make sure that young people continue to have those opportunities.
The Girl Scouts is such a wonderful legacy organization, and it has not stood still. There are other organizations in community who also want to be there for our young people, and I think the responsibility we all have is to really think, 'How do we resource that?' There's no shortage of people who want to be there for young folks.”
#GSSEM #GirlScoutStrong #ToughEnough
“Food sovereignty is not so much about access; it’s more about...power, and that’s the gap that this project fills...we can empower ourselves and get our own support."
Read more in BridgeDetroit from Jerry Ann Hebron, Executive Director of Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, and other members of a coalition of Detroit urban farmers building a new community food and resilience center in the North End.
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📣 In April, McGregor Fund President Kate Levin Markel announced that she would leave her role at the end of the year. The Fund’s Transition Committee has now begun work to steward the process of welcoming a new president.
Two executive search consultant firms, both women-led and with local and national executive search expertise, have been chosen to lead the search:
📌 The Hunter Group LLC (based in Metro Detroit)
📌 BoardWalk Consulting (based in Atlanta)
Project leads Blaire Miller and Crystal Stephens will work together throughout the search process, conducting a listening tour of McGregor Fund grant partners and other key stakeholders, and engaging with candidates. The intention is to to identify the next president of the Fund by the end of the calendar year. Kate will continue in her role until a new leader is identified and onboarded.
As the Fund enters this next chapter, we are committed to a transition process that is inclusive, thoughtful and transparent. Stay tuned for additional updates.
Read more here:
mcgregorfund.org/mcgregor-fund-announces-executive-search-team/
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Closing out Black Philanthropy Month with questions from our friends at Funders Together for Housing Justice:
"We invite philanthropy to locate itself.
➡️ What are you blocking because communities cannot afford the harm?
➡️ What are you building because what we need does not yet exist?
➡️ What are you reforming because people need relief today?
➡️ What are you willing to transform so that generations from now, the same relief is no longer necessary?
Black communities have always understood giving as an act of collective possibility.
The question before institutional philanthropy is whether we are willing to invest with the same courage."
Read the full piece here: tinyurl.com/2kmf26tp
#ManyVoicesOneMovement #BlackPhilanthropyMonth
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Congratulations to Kate Levin Markel, President of the McGregor Fund, on being awarded the Spirit of Philanthropy Award for the 2026 National Philanthropy Day. Kate is one of the honorees we’re celebrating at our National Philanthropy Day Awards Ceremony & Dinner on November 12 at The Henry Ford.
For more than two decades, Kate Levin Markel has helped shape a model of philanthropy defined by trust, equity, partnership, and deep responsiveness to community needs. As President of the McGregor Fund since 2015, after previously serving as Program Officer and Program Director, she has strengthened and expanded the foundation’s commitment to values-driven, community-centered philanthropy rooted in racial and economic justice, nonprofit partnership, and long-term systems change. A Detroit native, Kate brings a uniquely broad and thoughtful perspective to her leadership, shaped by experience across the private sector, public service on the staff of former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, and years consulting with foundations throughout Southeast Michigan. These experiences have informed a leadership style that is both strategic and deeply grounded in the realities facing communities and nonprofit organizations.
To view Kate’s full biography, along with our other honorees, visit afpdetroit.org/national-philanthropy-day/award/.
Nominated by Ryan Hertz of Lighthouse MI.
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🎉The McGregor Fund Centennial Celebration was overflowing with warmth and joy! We’re so grateful to our grant partners and friends who gathered to mark the Fund’s first 100 years.
❤️From heartfelt remarks and focused conversations to joy-filled toasts and dancing, it was a beautiful afternoon to honor our shared commitment to justice, joy and thriving for all Detroiters.
🫶Many thanks to the many local and small businesses that made this event possible, including:
PMG Agency
The Whitney
12th & ViV
Angela Davis Entertainment
Detroit Hives
Event Source
EZ Charger Rental
Herc Rentals
Kyle Powell Photography
KOC Luxury Flush
Leave It To Meeka
MaryLaura Mau Arts & Consulting
Mercury Sound & Lighting
Shield Security
The Greenhouse in Sycamore
Traverse Transportation
Urban Art Orchestra
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McGregor Fund Founders
More than 100 years ago, the McGregors devoted their lives to community service – Tracy as an agency founder and social entrepreneur ending homelessness and unemployment for Detroit men, and Katherine as the founder and benefactor of an orphanage in Highland Park. Their proximity to people experiencing hardship and trauma informed their charitable giving and Tracy’s role as a civic leader.
McGregor Fund Founders
More than 100 years ago, the McGregors devoted their lives to community service – Tracy as an agency founder and social entrepreneur ending homelessness and unemployment for Detroit men, and Katherine as the founder and benefactor of an orphanage in Highland Park. Their proximity to people experiencing hardship and trauma informed their charitable giving and Tracy’s role as a civic leader.
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