Nonprofit leaders were quick to laud a major shift in grant making by the Ford Foundation to focus on fighting inequality — in part because very few charities worry that the new approach will cause them to lose money.
Praise also came for foundation president Darren Walker’s promise to double grants for general operating support, which he outlined in a letter Thursday to grantees.
“Operating support is the lifeblood of nonprofits,” said Denise Scott, executive vice president for programs at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, which was created in part with a grant from Ford in 1980 and now bills itself as the largest community-development finance organization in the country. “Hopefully, others will follow.”
Ford, which controls $12.1 billion in assets, making it the nation’s second-wealthiest private philanthropy, plans to devote about $1 billion to support nonprofits’ basic needs over the next five years. The plan, Mr. Walker says, is to gravitate away from project-based support and to build “durable” institutions that work to dismantle inequality based on race, gender, wealth, and other factors.
Ford acknowledges the shift will result in both winners and losers.
“Almost certainly, providing deeper, more intensive support will result in fewer grants and, most likely, fewer grant recipients,” Mr. Walker wrote.
Programs that will attract Ford’s attention will work toward a more equitable distribution of wealth, stronger support of schools and other public institutions, a more open government, free expression, opportunities for young people, and fewer injustices based on race, ethnicity, and gender.
Grantees Line Up
Grantees were eager to show they fit Ford’s new profile.
Dan Glickman, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Congressional Program, which received $650,000 from Ford this year, according to the foundation’s website, said one of his organization’s main goals is to promote civility in Congress, which in turn can help lawmakers make progress on issues like women’s rights.
“I think we’ll fit right in,” Mr. Glickman said.
Michael Scolamiero, executive director of the Miami City Ballet, which received $500,000 from Ford last year, pointed to the company’s Ballet Bus and Ballet Beyond Borders programs as examples of how it has reached out to communities that historically haven’t had access to formal dance instruction.
On trips to Latin America last year, the company scouted out 35 students from Brazil, Chile, and Columbia who traveled to the United States to study on scholarships provided through the company’s international program. And the Ballet Bus program has provided transportation and training to 25 students from poor areas in the Miami-Dade region this year, Mr. Scolamiero said.
“They’re denied the possibility of cultural participation,” he said, explaining why he thinks the ballet’s mission is in sync with Ford’s new strategy.
Tony Banout, vice president for institutional advancement at Interfaith Youth Core, has a framed copy above his desk of the first grant acceptance letter his group received from the Ford Foundation in 2002.
That $35,000 in initial general operating money helped the nonprofit grow into an organization with a budget of nearly $6 million. General support, he said, gives nonprofits a financial cushion that allows them to make long-term plans.
He says the group, which received $200,000 from Ford last year to train college students in its Interfaith Leadership Institutes, works to help students understand people of different faiths.
“The task before us is to ensure that Americans of all religious persuasions and nonbelievers are not misjudged or victims of bigoted actions,” he said. “Ford’s pivot is concordant with that thrust of our work.”
Praise for Ford’s move came from other corners as well.
“Many people look to Ford, and in particular to Darren Walker, to take a bully-pulpit role,” said Rob Reich, a political-science professor at Stanford University. “This strategy should be evaluated not only in terms of its grant making but in what effect it has in the broader foundation community.”
Many Unknowns
But it remains to be seen which groups receive Ford’s support, and many aspects of the foundation’s plan won’t be clear until it refines its strategy over the coming months.
“If a foundation has a big organizing principle, like inequality, people can always see themselves in that,” said Gara LaMarche, the president of Democracy Alliance, a network of liberal donors. “But having a big organizing principle does not tell you where the grants are going to go.”
William Schambra, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a Chronicle columnist, held a similar view. While the increase in general operating support is a big, welcome change, he said, it is not clear exactly how Ford will marshal its resources differently under the plan.
“At some point, you have to fund someone to do something,” he says. “You can imagine that program officers at Ford are all figuring out ways they can slightly recast the description of their favorite grantees to fit this new regime.”
Nonprofits that receive support from Ford will not only have to enlist in the fight against inequality, said Mr. Walker. They will also have to demonstrate they are financially viable.
Shortly after he became president in 2013, Mr. Walker says he met with the leader of a well-known social-justice organization that had received support from Ford for decades. The leader said the group was insolvent.
Mr. Walker, who declined to identify the nonprofit, said the foundation would no longer support it.
“There are some organizations that have been underperforming and are not likely to become high-performing organizations,” he said in interview. “That, too, is part of the assessment.”
Staffing at nonprofits interested in help from Ford may matter as well.
Speaking at a Council on Foundations conference in April, Mr. Walker said that diversity is “embedded” in organizations that are well suited to last. As the foundation sifts through potential grantees, he said it will consider whether they have minorities or members of other underrepresented groups in leadership roles.
“That’s a very different set of inputs than saying, ‘I’m going to fund your program,’ " he says, adding that it “will ultimately lead to some challenging decisions.”
