Ford Foundation

In 2012, stating that it is not a research library, the foundation transferred its archives from New York City to the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York.[27]

In 1951, the foundation made its first grant to support the development of the public broadcasting system, then known as National Educational Television (NET), which went on the air in 1952.[28] 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.[29] The Corporation for Public Broadcasting replaced NET with the Public Broadcasting Service on October 5, 1970.[30]

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.[31]

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.[32]

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.[33]

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.[34] The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund was incorporated in 1967 with a US$2.2 million grant from the foundation.[34] 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.[35] In 1972, the foundation provided a three-year US$1.2 million grant to the Native American Rights Fund.[34] The same year, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund opened with funding from numerous organizations, including the foundation.[34][36] In 1974, the foundation contributed funds to the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project[37] and the Latino Institute.

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.[38]

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.[39]

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.[40]

In 1987, the foundation began making grants to fight the AIDS epidemic[41] and in 2010 made grant disbursements totalling US$29,512,312.[42]

In 2001, the foundation launched the International Fellowships Program (IFP) with a 12-year, $280 million grant, the largest in its history. IFP is entering its concluding phase. The final cohort has been selected, and the program will conclude in 2013. Fellows represent historically disadvantaged groups from outside the United States. IFP has identified nearly 4,350 emerging leaders. More than 80 percent have completed their studies and are now serving their home communities.[43]

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.[44]

In June 2020, Ford Foundation decided to raise $1 billion through a combination of 300 and 50- year bonds. The main aim was to help nonprofits hit by the pandemic.[45]

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."[46][47] 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." [48] The Ford Foundation seeks to address "the underlying causes that perpetuate human suffering" to grapple with and intervene in "how and why" inequality persists.[48]

In 2007, the Ford Foundation co-founded the independent Native Arts and Culture Foundation by providing a portion of the new foundation's endowment out of the Ford Foundation's own. This decision to repatriate a portion of the Ford Foundation's endowment came after self-initiated research into the Ford Foundation's history of support of Native and Indigenous artists and communities. The results of this research indicated "the inadequacy of philanthropic support for Native arts and artists", and related feedback from an unnamed Native leader that "once big foundations put the stuff in place for an Indian program, then it is not usually funded very well. It lasts as long as the program officer who had an interest and then goes away" and recommended that an independent endowment be established and that "[n]ative leadership is crucial".[49]

The foundation was accused of being funded by the US government.[50][51] John J. McCloy, the foundation's chairman from 1958–1965, knowingly employed numerous 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.[52][53] Writer and activist Arundhati Roy connects the foundation, along with the Rockefeller Foundation, with supporting imperialist efforts by the U.S. government during the Cold War. Roy links the Ford Foundation's establishment of a economics course at the Indonesian University with aligning students with the 1965 coup that installed Suharto as president. [54]

In 2005, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox began a probe of the foundation. Though the foundation is headquartered in New York City, it is chartered in Michigan, giving that state some jurisdiction. Cox focused on its governance, potential conflicts of interest among board members, and what he viewed as its poor record of giving to charities in Michigan. Between 1998 and 2002, the foundation gave Michigan charities about US$2.5 million per year, far less than many other charities its size.

American author, conservative philosopher, and critic of feminism Christina Hoff Sommers, criticized The Ford Foundation in her book The War Against Boys (2000) as well as other institutions in education and government.[55] Sommers alleged that the Ford Foundation funded feminist ideologies that marginalize boys and men. A Washington Post book review by E. Anthony Rotundo, author of "American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era," counters that Sommers "persistently misrepresents scholarly debate, [and] ignores evidence that contradicts her assertions" about a gender war against boys and men.[56] Spanish judge Francisco Serrano Castro made similar claims to Sommers in his 2012 book The Dictatorship of Gender.[57] These criticisms argue that the Ford Foundation is advancing a liberal agenda.

In 2003, the foundation was critiqued by US news service Jewish Telegraphic Agency, among others, for supporting Palestinian nongovernmental organizations that were accused of promoting antisemitism at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. Under pressure by several members of Congress, chief among them Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the foundation apologized and then prohibited the promotion of "violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state" among its grantees. This move itself sparked protest among university provosts and various non-profit groups on free speech issues.[58]

The foundation's partnership with the New Israel Fund, which began in 2003, was frequently criticized regarding its choice of mostly liberal grantees and causes. This criticism came to light after the 2001 Durban Conference, where some nongovernmental organizations funded by the foundation backed resolutions equating Israeli policies as apartheid, and later, against those groups which support the delegitimization of Israel. In response, the foundation adopted stricter criteria for funding.[44]