The Ford Foundation has elected Henry Ford III as a board member. He is the great-grandson of Edsel Ford, who created the foundation in 1936. It is the first time in more than 40 years that a Ford family member serves as a trustee.
Ford, 38, will serve a six-year term. He credited Darren Walker, the foundation’s president, with “keeping an open line” to the family since Walker began in his position in 2013. “Ever since Darren became president, he’s done a really good job reaching out to the family,” Ford said in an interview. “He’s given us updates and kept us involved in the foundation.”
The last Ford to serve as a trustee, Henry Ford III’s grandfather Henry Ford II, orchestrated the foundation’s expansion into international affairs, a move to New York City in 1953, and divestment in holdings of Ford stock all before a public disagreement on the grant maker’s direction, which led to his resignation in 1977. Upon stepping down, he said that after 33 years as a trustee, the foundation had become a “cause of frustration, and sometimes plain irritation,” largely because the grant maker had become critical of capitalism which was the source of the family’s fortune and which funded the foundation.
Focus on Detroit
Since Walker took over, the foundation has become more involved in the Detroit area, where the Ford family set up massive auto plants that drove that city’s economy for generations.
The grant maker’s reinvestment in Detroit began in 2013 when it contributed to a group of foundations that invested hundreds of millions to help the city emerge from bankruptcy, support retired city employees, and protected the Detroit Institute of Arts collection.
In 2015, the legacy foundation held its first board meeting in the Motor City in decades. Henry Ford III, who lives in the Detroit area, says Walker invited family members to dinner with the board and to meetings to discuss the foundation’s work.
In 2017, the foundation opened an office in Detroit and selected city native Kevin Ryan to manage it. The foundation says it makes more than $30 million in grants to organizations in and around Detroit each year, including a $12.5 million annual payment for the Grand Bargain aimed at helping the city.
Ford said his election as trustee was a “symbol of the much improved relationship” between the family and the foundation.
“The family has always had an interest in the foundation. It’s part of our heritage and our legacy,” he said, adding that “foundations are a critical part of the overall growth, evolution, and improvement of society.”
Rethinking Wealth
The new board member, who started working for the Ford Motor Company in 2006 and has served in a variety of roles, is a member of the corporate strategy team. He is now part of a 15-member board that includes business leaders, including Ursula Burns, chief executive of VEON, and Chuck Robbins, chief executive of Cisco Systems, but is run by a majority of nonprofit executives.
In a 2015 essay entitled “Toward a New Gospel of Wealth,” Walker encouraged philanthropy leaders to reimagine their role based an article by Andrew Carnegie called “Gospel of Wealth.” In that essay, a guide for American philanthropy for decades, Carnegie argued that in a capitalist system, some people will always be left behind, and philanthropy’s job is to improve their lot.
Walker, in turn, suggested philanthropy’s job is to change the systems that create inequities rather than simply administer a salve. To that end, the foundation in 2017 committed to direct 10 percent of its endowment, or about $1 billion over a decade, to investments that contribute to its social mission.
Ford, the incoming trustee, said he “fully agreed” with the move.
“The foundation has taken a really smart and progressive stance on serving its grantees,” he said.
