In 1968, the number-one song could have been the theme song for The Wege Foundation incorporated the year before: “All you need is love.” Peter Wege started the Foundation out of his love for the Earth and all its people. In the book he wrote in 1998, Economicology, he summarized his philosophy: Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the people you can, just as long as you can.

Forty years later, Peter was asked why he’d started The Wege Foundation. He answered, “I felt the need to set aside financial assets for the future needs of the community in which we live.” But Peter Melvin Wege also wanted to honor his parents and the legacy of humanitarianism his father had instilled in Metal Office Furniture—today’s Steelcase Inc.

Writing out his dreams for the foundation on a legal pad in 1967, Peter Wege said it best himself:
In the annals of history, no one has found a way to perpetuate a name better than creating a foundation. My father and mother are worthy of this honor. (Pictured above during World War II, his parents Peter Martin and Sophia Louise read letters from their pilot son—pictured on the table between them—while serving overseas.) It also honors the descendants of that marriage.

[ 1911, Peter Martin Wege, and a pocket full of patents ]

Peter M. Wege never takes credit for his four decades of philanthropy, but always gives it back to his father Peter Martin as the genius who created The Wege Foundation’s assets. It all started in 1911 when the 42-year-old Peter Martin, an experienced sheet-metal worker with a pocket full of patents, moved from Ohio to Grand Rapids in order to start his own business.

A brief news article in a 1912 edition of the Grand Rapids Press announced: The Metal Office Furniture Company was organized last night. The company is capitalized at $75,000 and will build a factory…to manufacture office furniture and desks of metal. From that simple beginning, Peter Martin Wege’s Metal Office Furniture Company, renamed Steelcase in 1954, grew into the largest manufacturer of office furniture in the world.

[ Peter Wege writes about his father: ]

Peter Martin Wege was a man who understood the working man. He felt that if a man and wife worked hard for their survival, they should have a decent home, enough to sustain them with the necessities of life, and a chance for their children and grandchildren to have that also. That is why my father’s family came to this country from Germany in the 1860s.

Peter Martin Wege believed that a man should be able to go as far as his physical and mental capacities could take him. He also believed in a government, such as our own that would provide for those who were destitute and otherwise unable to care for themselves.

In the days of the Depression of 1929 and the resulting years of economic hardship, the company he founded would take care of as many workers as it could without the dissolution of the company. In other words, he believed in the responsibility companies had to provide for their workers until there was no hope. Then the government should provide sustenance until the family could recover. In order to perpetuate this philosophy, I think it’s fitting The Wege Foundation should in perpetuity honor his name.

[ 40 Years of Doing All the Good it Can ]

On March 19, 1968, The Wege Foundation held its first annual meeting in a Grand Rapids law office. Peter Wege gave 28 shares of Steelcase common stock and $5,000 cash to the Foundation’s bank account. The minutes stated the “purpose of this Charitable trust” as receiving funds “exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, and educational purposes.”

The Five Pillars Peter Wege would later name as The Wege Foundation’s Mission—Education, Environment, Arts & Culture, Health Care, and Human Services—were inherent in those original goals. The minutes recording the Foundation’s first three gifts affirm three of those Pillars. Aquinas College, $2,861; Foster Parents, $720; the American Cancer Society, $300.

July 13, 2007, The Wege Foundation celebrated the 40th anniversary of its incorporation in the state of Michigan. With honor and credit to Peter Martin and Sophia Louise Wege, The Wege Foundation continues to do all the good it can, in all the ways it can, to all the people it can, for as long as it can.