From the President

Stepping Down

March 2013

Read the foundation’s press release.

One of the hardest things for a leader is to know when to step down. I believe it is when he has given as much as he can to the institution he leads. After a period of profound transformation, both in our society and at the Ford Foundation, that moment has come for me. I will step down as president of the foundation this September.

Leading the Ford Foundation is truly one of the great opportunities to serve. I have had the privilege of that service for over five years. It has been deeply gratifying. Together, we traversed a time of profound transformation, and the foundation has emerged stronger. In 2007, when I was selected to serve as the president of the foundation, the world was a different place. The global economic crisis was just on the horizon; in the United States, the deepest recession since the great depression had not yet begun. We had not yet elected our first African American president, and, internationally, two wars were raging. Soon, unemployment would seem to have no ceiling and financial markets no floor.

At Ford we responded to the new global reality with urgency. We redesigned what we did and how we did it, building a social justice focused program with clear goals and ways of working. We worked more collaboratively and more deeply on substantially fewer initiatives. We introduced a generation of organizations utilizing digital and social media tools to harness the power of new technology for the benefit of social justice causes. At the same time, we built for the future. We restructured our operations, moving tens of millions of dollars per year from internal spending into our external program budget, bringing our own spending back to 1993 levels. We renovated nine of our ten international offices and our New York office to make them social justice convening centers. We made current every major technology system to ensure we had the best tools available for our work. We changed our operating practices to be more responsive and supportive to grantees. We reinvested more than 80 percent of the endowment, adding return while reducing volatility and, in the process, moved from a low in early 2009 of $8 billion to nearly $11 billion today.

Of course, the most important thing we did over the last half decade was to deepen the focus of our program on serving poor and marginalized communities and people around the world. Our campaigns—More and Better Learning Time, ArtPlace, Girls Not Brides, among others—have entered the national and global dialogues and are making a difference to millions on the ground. We funded immigration reform when the issue seemed dormant, so that our grantees would be strong and vibrant when it reemerged, as it has. We expanded funding to civil rights organizations, so that they would emerge from the recession stronger not weaker, and they have. We have identified and, by an order of magnitude, expanded funding to human rights organizations in the southern hemisphere, so that they can become global leaders, and they will. We became a leading funder of LGBT rights. We joined with governors, Republican and Democrat, to begin to change how social safety net benefits are delivered to the poor. We worked from South America to South Africa to add asset building to conditional cash transfer programs. JustFilms and our work in media—both public and private—are bringing social justice issues into the consciousness of millions.

In the process, I have learned so much. I learned that even an organization with the depth of history of the Ford Foundation could be nimble and have the capacity for transformation. I learned that the unmet desire for social justice was so deep in our society that meaningful progress could be made. I learned how partners, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the World Bank, hungered to engage with us. Much of my learning occurred in the field. I traveled with you from Amazonian villages to immigration detention camps in the American Southwest, from the poorest urban communities in Nigeria, Brazil and India to vast stretches of urban desolation in Detroit. I sat with you, and I listened to you, and I learned from you. Our programs, our allocation of resources and the urgency of our actions over the past half decade have all been informed by what you, our grantees and the many people we have met along the way taught me and us.

I cannot emphasize enough the appreciation I have for all of you and for our Board for allowing me to take this journey with you. It took courage on the part of the Board to embark on and implement change on this scale. It took exceptional talent and faith on the part of all of you to accomplish what you have accomplished. And from our grantees, our partners, who have been so supportive of our new way of working, it took belief that the enduring values of our institution would emerge stronger than ever even as we changed how we worked.

As I have often said, it has been my privilege to work with you. The Ford Foundation was transformative to my early life. From its support for Head Start to its work to ensure college access, Ford’s work has made the life I have led possible. To be able to give back to an institution which has been so instrumental in my life has been an honor.

Over the next six months, as we carefully prepare for transition, I will see many of you in New York and around the world. I look forward to the opportunity to thank you personally for allowing me to join you on this journey.

Sincerely,

Luis A. Ubiñas
President
Ford Foundation