Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare.[3][4][5][6] Created in 1936[7] by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 (approx. $550,000 in 2023) gift from Edsel Ford.[4] By 1947, after the death of the two founders, the foundation owned 90% of the non-voting shares of the Ford Motor Company. (The Ford family retained the voting shares.[8]) Between 1955 and 1974, the foundation sold its Ford Motor Company holdings and now plays no role in the automobile company.
Founded
January 15, 1936
13-1684331[1]
To reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement.
United States, Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Asia
Grants, funding
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Ahead of the foundation selling its Ford Motor Company holdings, in 1949, Henry Ford II created the § Ford Motor Company Fund, a separate corporate foundation that to this day serves as the philanthropic arm of the Ford Motor Company and is not associated with the foundation.
The Ford Foundation makes grants through its headquarters and ten international field offices.[9] For many years, the foundation's financial endowment was the largest private endowment in the world; it remains among the wealthiest. For fiscal year 2014, it reported assets of US$12.4 billion and approved US$507.9 million in grants.[2][10] According to the OECD, the Ford Foundation provided US$194 million for development in 2019, all of which related to its grant-making activities.[11]
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Mission[edit]
After its establishment in 1936, the Ford Foundation shifted its focus from Michigan philanthropic support to five areas of action. In the 1950 Report of the Study of the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program, the trustees set forth five "areas of action," according to Richard Magat (2012): economic improvements, education, freedom and democracy, human behavior, and world peace.[12] These areas of action were identified in a 1949 report by Horace Rowan Gaither.[13][14]
Since the middle of the 20th century, many of the Ford Foundation's programs have focused on increased under-represented or "minority" group representation in education, science and policy-making. For over eight decades their mission decisively advocates and supports the reduction of poverty and injustice among other values including the maintenance of democratic values, promoting engagement with other nations, and sustaining human progress and achievement at home and abroad.[12]
The Ford Foundation is one of the primary foundations offering grants that support and maintain diversity in higher education with fellowships for pre-doctoral, dissertation, and post-doctoral scholarship to increase diverse representation among Native Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, and other under-represented Asian and Latino sub-groups throughout the U.S. academic labor market.[15][16] The outcomes of scholarship by its grantees from the late 20th century through the 21st century have contributed to substantial data and scholarship including national surveys such as the Nelson Diversity Surveys in STEM.[17][18][19][20]
° Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network, Progressives, the International Rescue Committee and the CIA, M. E. Sharpe, 1995, Routledge, 2015.
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Major grants and initiatives[edit]
Media and public broadcasting[edit]
In 1951, the foundation made its first grant to support the development of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), then known as National Educational Television (NET), which went on the air in 1952.[32] These grants continued, and in 1969 the foundation gave US$1 million to the Children's Television Workshop to help create and launch Sesame Street.[33]
Fund for Adult Education[edit]
Active from 1951 to 1961, this subsidiary of the Ford Foundation supported initiatives in the field of adult education, including educational television and public broadcasting. During its existence, the FAE spent over $47 million.[34]: 1 Among its funding programs were a series of individual awards for people working in adult education to support training and field study experiences.[35] The FAE also sponsored conferences on the topic of adult education, including the Bigwin Institute on Community Leadership in 1954 and the Mountain Plains Adult Education Conference in 1957. These conferences were open to academics, community organizers, and members of the public involved in the field of adult education.[36][37]
In addition to grantmaking to organizations and projects, the FAE established its own programs, including the Test Cities Project and the Experimental Discussion Project.[34]: 2 The Experimental Discussion Project produced media that was distributed to local organizations to conduct viewing or listening and discussion sessions. Topics covered included international affairs, world cultures, and United States history.[38][39]
Educational theorist Robert Maynard Hutchins helped to found the FAE, and educational television advocate C. Scott Fletcher served as its president.[34]: 8–9
Arts and free speech[edit]
The foundation underwrote the Fund for the Republic in the 1950s. Throughout the 1950s, the foundation provided arts and humanities fellowships that supported the work of figures like Josef Albers, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Herbert Blau, E. E. Cummings, Anthony Hecht, Flannery O'Connor, Jacob Lawrence, Maurice Valency, Robert Lowell, and Margaret Mead. In 1961, Kofi Annan received an educational grant from the foundation to finish his studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.[40]
Under its "Program for Playwrights", the foundation helped to support writers in professional regional theaters such as San Francisco's Actor's Workshop and offered similar help to Houston's Alley Theatre and Washington's Arena Stage.[41]
Contraception[edit]
In its commitment to help population control, the excessive growth of human population, the foundation has donated a lot of money in the Post World War II, especially in the 60s and 70s in both government and non-government contraceptive initiatives. By late 60s at its peak to this cause estimation they have donated almost 169 million dollars.[42][43][44][45]
Despite dropping most of its contraception programs by the 1970s, the Foundation is critical of any limitation of access to abortion. Currently they grant funds to organizations which deal with reproductive rights.[46][47][48][49]
Law school clinics and civil rights litigation[edit]
In 1968, the foundation began disbursing $12 million to persuade law schools to make "law school clinics" part of their curriculum. Clinics were intended to give practical experience in law practice while providing pro bono representation to the poor. Conservative critic Heather Mac Donald contends that the financial involvement of the foundation instead changed the clinics' focus from giving students practical experience to engaging in leftwing advocacy.[50]
Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing through the 1970s, the foundation expanded into civil rights litigation, granting $18 million to civil rights litigation groups.[51] The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund was incorporated in 1967 with a US$2.2 million grant from the foundation.[51] In the same year, the foundation funded the establishment of the Southwest Council of La Raza, the predecessor of the National Council of La Raza.[52] In 1972, the foundation provided a three-year US$1.2 million grant to the Native American Rights Fund.[51] The same year, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund opened with funding from numerous organizations, including the foundation.[51][53] In 1974, the foundation contributed funds to the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project.[54]
New York City public school decentralization[edit]
In 1967 and 1968, the foundation provided financial support for decentralization and community control of public schools in New York City. Decentralization in Ocean Hill–Brownsville led to the firing of some white teachers and administrators, which provoked a citywide teachers' strike led by the United Federation of Teachers.[55]
Microcredit[edit]
In 1976, the foundation helped launch the Grameen Bank, which offers small loans to the rural poor of Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank and its founder Muhammad Yunus were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering microcredit.[56]
In vitro fertilisation[edit]
Between 1969 and 1978, the foundation was the biggest funder for research into in vitro fertilisation in the United Kingdom, which led to the first baby, Louise Brown born from the technique. The Ford Foundation provided $1,170,194 towards the research.[57]
Ford Foundation Fellowship Program[edit]
The foundation began awarding postdoctoral fellowships in 1980 to increase the diversity of the nation's academic faculties.[58] In 1986, the foundation added predoctoral and dissertation fellowships to the program. The foundation awards 130 to 140 fellowships annually, and there are 4,132 living fellows. The University of California, Berkeley was affiliated with 346 fellows at the time of award, the most of any institution, followed by the University of California, Los Angeles at 205, Harvard University at 191, Stanford University at 190, and Yale University at 175. The 10-campus University of California system accounts for 947 fellows, and the Ivy League is affiliated with 726.[59][60] In 2022, the foundation announced that it would be sunsetting the program.[61]
International leadership[edit]
In 2001, the foundation launched the International Fellowships Program (IFP) with a 12-year, $280 million grant, the largest in its history. IFP identified approximately 4,300 emerging social justice leaders representing historically disadvantaged groups from outside the United States for graduate study around the world. Fellows came from 22 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Russia and the Palestinian Territories and studied a wide variety of fields. After IFP's early success with identifying candidates and selecting and placing Fellows, and the success of Fellows in completing their degrees, the foundation contributed an additional $75 million to IFP in 2006. IFP concluded operations in late 2013 when more than 80 percent of fellows had completed their studies. Fellows have been serving their home communities in a variety of ways involving social justice.[64]
Israel[edit]
In April 2011, the foundation announced that it will cease its funding for programs in Israel as of 2013. It has provided US$40 million to nongovernmental organizations in Israel since 2003 exclusively through the New Israel Fund (NIF), in the areas of advancing civil and human rights, helping Arab citizens in Israel gain equality and promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace. The grants from the foundation are roughly a third of NIF's donor-advised giving, which totals about US$15 million a year.[65]
Disability Futures Fellows[edit]
In October 2020, Ford Foundation partnered with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to establish the Disability Future Fellowship, awarding $50,000 annually to disabled writers, actors, and directors in the fields of creative arts performance.[67][68] In 2022, another 20 Disability Futures Fellows received awards.[69]
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Criticisms and reforms[edit]
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Ranked No. 24 on the Forbes 2018 World's Most Innovative Companies list, the Ford Foundation utilized its endowment to invest in innovative and sustainable change leadership shifting the model of grant-making in the 21st century. According to Forbes, "Ford spends between $500 million and $550 million a year to support social justice work around the world. But last year, it also pledged to plow up to $1 billion of its overall $12.5 billion endowment over the next decade into impact investing via mission-related investments (MRIs) that generate both financial and social returns."[70][71] Foundation President Darren Walker wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times that the grant-making philanthropy of institutions like the Ford Foundation "must not only be generosity, but justice."[72] The Ford Foundation seeks to address "the underlying causes that perpetuate human suffering" to grapple with and intervene in "how and why" inequality persists.[72]
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