Expanding Livelihood Opportunities for Poor Households
Where We Work
We support activities in the United States, Mexico and Central America, the Andean Region and Southern Cone, Eastern Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, and India, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
In the United States, our work will focus first in Central Appalachia, then expand to a location in the Black Belt region of the U.S. South, and later to a location in the colonias along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas.
Grantees have been selected for the Central Appalachia region. We are in the process of identifying potential grantees in the U.S. South. We will begin a process to identify grantees in the colonias after October 2010.
What We Fund
In the United States, we are developing and testing a comprehensive approach to sustainable livelihood development in specific rural regions of high poverty.
We focus on value chains as strategies to create wealth in rural areas within a triple-bottom line development framework. If this approach is successful, it can be adopted by organizations working in other regions and scaled up for impact.
Additional Selection Criteria
Potential grantees will be selected based primarily on:
- Location within at least one of the three target regions
- Interest in working in value chains in one of the three regions
- Ability to work within a triple-bottom line development framework
- Willingness to participate in a learning group of grantees and interested parties to develop a model capable of being adopted in other regions of high poverty and taken to scale
To Apply for a Grant
Follow these steps:
- Review the Initiative(s) most relevant to your work.
- Read our Grant Application Guide, which describes our grant-making process.
- If you determine that your work aligns with our priorities, submit a Grant Inquiry. (While we welcome submissions, please keep in mind that our funds are limited in relation to the large number of worthwhile inquiries we receive. In a typical year, less than 1 percent of unsolicited inquiries result in a grant.)
Please Note:
It is important that you use our grant inquiry form—and refrain from contacting program officers directly. Given the volume of inquiries we receive, this allows us to log, track and respond quickly to your application.
Fellowships
The vast majority of foundation grants go to organizations. We provide a very limited number of fellowship opportunities for individuals through the Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowships Program, which aims to diversify the faculties of American colleges and universities.
The foundation does not have any other active fellowship opportunities at this time.
Share