The Ford Foundation has revamped its grant making to make it more relevant to what it calls “the next generation of social change.”
Under the plan, Ford, the nation’s second-wealthiest foundation, is not making any big changes in the types of charities it supports, but it is planning a more determined effort to spur collaboration and efficiency among its grantees.
It has also promoted a veteran evaluation expert to a senior position designed to ensure that Ford is analyzing what works and what does not.
Ford’s grant-making programs will now be categorized in eight general areas: human rights, freedom of expression, democratic and accountable government practices, expanded access to economic opportunities, high-quality education, sustainable development, sexuality and reproductive health and rights, and social-justice philanthropy.
The changes at Ford, which take effect on October 1, mark the first formal effort by its new president, Luis A. Ubiñas, to make adjustments in the foundation’s operations.
He joined Ford as president in January 2008 after working at McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, and told the staff about the new plan a year ago, but announced it to the public only last week.
Responding to Recession
While the new plan is a major focus of foundation officials who are now putting structural changes in place, perhaps more important is how the foundation plans to respond to changes caused by the economy.
The foundation’s assets dropped by 30 percent last year, to $9.5-billion, which means that it would give a lot less this year if it committed the same share of assets as it did in 2008. So the foundation plans to give 6.5 percent of its assets in both 2009 and 2010, up from the 5 to 6 percent of its endowment it has typically distributed. However, Alfred Ironside, the foundation’s director of communications, stresses that this commitment is “variable on how the market plays out.”
Unlike some big grant makers, Ford has not laid off any employees. It reduced its operating expenses by $22-million last year so that it would have more money available for grants, says Mr. Ironside. No stone was left unturned, he says: “Every kind of efficiency was considered, from travel costs to copiers to the temperature in the building.”
At the same time, foundation staff members have been figuring how best to adopt structural revisions that encourage greater collaboration. In an interview, Mr. Ubiñas made clear that, though the foundation has made structural changes in its grant making, “our mission wasn’t to reinvent the foundation,” he says. “Our mission was to ask: Given that we’re the Ford Foundation, how do we stay on the cutting edge, how do we work with the most innovative, high-impact individuals and organizations?”
The answer, Mr. Ubiñas says, lies in setting more concrete goals for each of its grant-making priorities and making clear to the public how much it plans to commit to achieve those goals. In the past, Ford has announced its grants, but not made a concerted effort to show how much goes to each cause.
For instance, he says that the foundation has pledged “in excess of $30-million” to voting-rights efforts between now and the end of 2010, including preparations for the forthcoming census.
Global Teamwork
The foundation has made a determined effort to avoid the isolation that can cause grant makers to miss important connections among the work done by grant recipients. For example, while individual program officers might have handled issues like immigrant rights or eliminating bias against people with HIV or revamping criminal-justice programs, those foundation officials will now work together in global teams that report to a single Ford official who is responsible for several related subjects.
And while Ford had previously included evaluation procedures in individual grant contracts, in October it tapped Rick McGahey, a program officer in economic development, to serve as its first-ever director of impact and evaluation. Before he joined the foundation, Mr. McGahey was a managing vice president at Abt Associates, a research and evaluation firm in Cambridge, Mass., where he directed its work on childhood development, education, social welfare, and work-force development.
“We’re not dealing with these issues as amorphous aspiration, but have very detailed operating strategies,” says Mr. Ubiñas. He says that these strategies will provide grant seekers and others with “clarity as to what our priorities are, clarity as to where our funding is heading, and an understanding that when we say we’re doing something, we’re doing it at scale.”