Ford Foundation Announces $50 Million in Grants Around New Program Structure

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The Ford Foundation, the nation's largest grant-making philanthropy, today announced allocations of $50 million to three program activities that signal growing foundation interest and investments in promising approaches to long-term problems.

The grants and loans announced today follow a yearlong reorganization under the leadership of Ford's new president Susan V. Berresford. Berresford succeeded former president Franklin A. Thomas last April.

The reorganization consolidates into three program areas a broad range of programs previously administered in eight separate units. The three new program areas were introduced at a news conference at the Ford Foundation's headquarters in New York with the new vice presidents who will lead each division:

• Melvin L. Oliver, formerly of UCLA, will lead Asset Building and Community Development
• Bradford K. Smith, from Ford's office in Rio de Janeiro, will lead Peace and Social Justice
• Alison R. Bernstein, who directed a Ford program in New York, will lead Education, Media, Arts, and Culture

Berresford said the reorganization is consistent with Ford's longstanding mission. "We remain true to our historical mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, to promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement." Berresford added that the new structure would enable the foundation to respond effectively to the challenges of a changing world.

"The unprecedented depth, scale, and pace of change in societies around the world is having a profound impact on communities' ability to manage that change and address basic problems," she said. "Ford has resources and a long-term view that can help to develop new ideas and approaches to problems such as poverty, the need for strong civil society, as well as the need for quality education in a rapidly changing world."

The $50 million in grants will be expended over a two-year period to support the following:

1. Building Assets for Low-Income People and Communities

Grants totaling $20 million will create or expand development finance institutions engaged in lending and investment in low-income communities.

"The Foundation is supporting organizations that are using fresh approaches to address the persistent under-investment in many of the nation's most disadvantaged communities," said Melvin Oliver, vice president for the Asset Building and Community Development program, which will administer the awards. "These grants will help create and expand business assets, improve natural resources, and build family savings."

Oliver said one grant will test the impact of establishing 2,000 Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) in 30 low-income communities around the country. IDAs are savings accounts in which people's deposits are matched by public or private funds, and where withdrawals are restricted to investments in home ownership, starting or expanding a business, and higher education.

Another grant will help a conservation group based in the Pacific Northwest develop and launch the nation's first bank holding company to promote environmentally sound economic development. Oliver also outlined grants for development banks and lending programs in countries such as Kenya and Poland.

"Addressing poverty and disadvantage in today's world," said Oliver, "requires recognizing that many poor people, families, and communities have assets on which to build. Ford's work supports efforts by individuals, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit corporations that help people and communities mobilize an array of resources to improve their well being."

2. Strengthening and Expanding Philanthropy

Grants totaling $15 million will create and strengthen foundations around the world that provide funding for civic organizations.

Bradford K. Smith, vice president for Peace and Social Justice, said the Ford Foundation will join other foundations in providing start-up support to the Kenya Community Development Foundation and the Central Highlands Community Foundation in the Appalachian Region. Among the foundation's other grantees will be the India Foundation for the Arts and The Foundation Center in New York.

"Philanthropy is growing around the world because most societies, like our own, value compassion and altruism and are searching for new solutions to long-term societal problems" said Smith. "This initiative will endow newly created foundations at home and abroad to increase the resources available for local economic development, women's rights, the arts, and other concerns. It will also strengthen existing foundations and expand public access to information about the field of philanthropy."

3. Revitalizing Area Studies and International Scholarship

Grants totaling $15 million will help revitalize university and college-level research and teaching that is focused on particular places, languages, and cultures that have not been adequately studied, and the global processes that increasingly affect all regions of the world.

Through a two-stage national competition, the Ford Foundation will support more than 30 higher education institutions in the United States to promote new teaching and scholarship in International Area Studies. Another set of grants will support international collaborations between scholars in the humanities and social sciences through a special Worldwide Fund for Area Studies. Alison Bernstein, vice president for Education, Media, Arts, and Culture, said, "The United States must strengthen its understanding of other places, languages and cultures and the larger global processes that affect us all. Such understanding may be especially critical to counter a tendency toward isolationism and to understand the various cultures within our borders."

The initiative will also strengthen the capacity of key organizations such as the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies to produce new scholarship which will inform policy debates about issues of regional and global significance.

Susan Berresford said: "Ford philanthropy focuses on the development of solutions to society's problems rather than simply attempting to alleviate their symptoms. The truest form of democratic society enables and empowers people to help themselves."

"Foundations can play a vital role by supporting people who are working on serious problems with fresh ideas. Foundations can help them test those ideas at increasing levels of scale, quickly extending the benefits of experience and learning to interested publics. That is consistent with the spirit of innovators whose fortunes capitalized the world's foundations. We believe our grants reflect that intention and promise."

The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has worked with courageous people on the frontlines of social change worldwide, guided by its mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

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