Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a $25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. 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. Between 1955 and 1974, the foundation sold its Ford Motor Company holdings and now plays no role in the automobile company.
In 1949, Henry Ford II created Ford Philanthropy, a separate corporate foundation that to this day serves as the philanthropic arm of the Ford Motor Company and is not associated with the Ford Foundation.
For many years, the Ford Foundation's financial endowment was the largest private endowment in the world; it remains among the wealthiest. For fiscal year 2023, it reported assets of $16.8 billion and expenses of $852 million.
Mission
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 : economic improvements, education, freedom and democracy, human behavior, and world peace. These areas of action were identified in a 1949 report by Horace Rowan Gaither.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 has decisively advocated and supported 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.
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. 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.
History
The foundation was established on January 15, 1936, in Michigan by Edsel Ford and two other executives "to receive and administer funds for scientific, educational and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare." It was a reaction to FDR's 1935 tax reform introducing 70% tax on large inheritances. During its early years, the foundation operated in Michigan under the leadership of Ford family members and their associates and supported the Henry Ford Hospital and the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, among other organizations.After the deaths of Edsel Ford in 1943 and Henry Ford in 1947, the presidency of the foundation fell to Edsel's eldest son, Henry Ford II. It quickly became clear that the foundation would become the largest philanthropic organization in the world. The board of trustees then commissioned the Gaither Study Committee to chart the foundation's future. The committee, headed by California attorney H. Rowan Gaither, recommended that the foundation become an international philanthropic organization dedicated to the advancement of human welfare and "urged the foundation to focus on solving humankind's most pressing problems, whatever they might be, rather than work in any particular field". The report was endorsed by the foundation's board of trustees, and in 1953 it voted to move the foundation to New York City.
At the height of the Cold War, the Ford Foundation was involved in several covert operations. At least one of these involved the Fighting Group Against Inhumanity, a CIA-controlled group based in West Berlin that undertook various missions in the East Zone, including intelligence-gathering and sabotage. In 1950, the U.S. government sought to bolster the Fighting Group's legitimacy as a credible independent organization, so the International Rescue Committee was recruited to act as its advocate. With the support of Eleanor Roosevelt, the Ford Foundation was persuaded to give the Fighting Group a grant of $150,000. A press release announcing the grant pointed to the assistance the Fighting Group gave to "carefully screened" defectors to come to the West. The National Committee for a Free Europe, a CIA proprietary, actually administered the grant.
From 1958 to 1965, the Foundation's chairman was John J. McCloy, who in 1942 had founded the Office of Strategic Services, a secretive intelligence agency that became the Central Intelligence Agency. McCloy knowingly employed numerous US intelligence agents and, based on the premise that a relationship with the CIA was inevitable, set up a three-person committee responsible for dealing with its requests. The CIA channeled funds through the Ford Foundation as part of its efforts to influence culture.
Writer and activist Arundhati Roy has said that the foundation, along with the Rockefeller Foundation, supported imperialist efforts by the U.S. government during the Cold War. For example, Roy wrote that the Ford Foundation's establishment of an economics course at the Indonesian University helped align students with the 1965 coup that installed Suharto as president.
The board of directors decided to diversify the foundation's portfolio and gradually divested itself of its substantial Ford Motor Company stock between 1955 and 1974. This divestiture allowed Ford Motor to become a public company. Finally, Henry Ford II resigned from his trustee's role in a surprise move in December 1976. In his resignation letter, he cited his dissatisfaction with the foundation holding on to its old programs, large staff and what he saw as anti-capitalist undertones in the foundation's work. In February 2019, Henry Ford III was elected to the Foundation's Board of Trustees, becoming the first Ford family member to serve on the board since his grandfather resigned in 1976.
For many years, the foundation topped annual lists compiled by the Foundation Center of US foundations with the most assets and the highest annual giving. The foundation has fallen a few places in those lists, especially with the establishment of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. As of May 4, 2013, the foundation was second in terms of assets and tenth in terms of annual grant giving.
In 2012, the foundation declared that it was not a research library and transferred its archives from New York City to the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
In 2020, the Ford Foundation issued a bond offering earlier in the year that allowed it to raise $1 billion and thus "substantially increase the amount of money it distributes."
Grants and initiatives
Media and public broadcasting
In 1951, the foundation made its first grant to support the development of the Public Broadcasting Service, then known as National Educational Television, which went on the air in 1952. These grants continued, and in 1969 the foundation gave $1 million to the Children's Television Workshop to help create and launch Sesame Street.Fund for Adult Education
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. Among its funding programs were a series of individual awards for people working in adult education to support training and field study experiences. 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.In addition to grantmaking to organizations and projects, the FAE established its own programs, including the Test Cities Project and the Experimental Discussion Project. 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.
Educational theorist Robert Maynard Hutchins helped to found the FAE, and educational television advocate C. Scott Fletcher served as its president.
Arts and free speech
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.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.
Reproductive rights
In the 1960s and 1970s, the foundation gave money to government and non-government contraceptive initiatives to support population control, peaking at an estimated $169 million in the last 1960s. The foundation ended most support for contraception programs by the 1970s.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 toward the research.