Darren Walker, President
Five years after committing $1 billion to impact investing, we evaluate the performance of our Mission Investments portfolio and share the lessons we’ve learned to deliver even more impact in the years to come.
Hilary Pennington, Executive Vice President of Programs
Two years ago, Ford launched our social bond to provide relief to nonprofits during the pandemic. Here’s what we learned and how philanthropy must continue to ensure grantees’ resilience.
Hilary Pennington, Executive Vice President of Programs
For centuries, cultures across the world have recognized the fluidity of gender and celebrated gender nonconformity. To advance justice and truly achieve equality, we need to understand the systems and structures throughout history that have boxed people into false binaries and expand our definition of gender.
Hilary Pennington, Executive Vice President of Programs
BUILD started as an experiment to reimagine philanthropy and has become our most impactful grantmaking to date. Our hypothesis that nonprofits would thrive with longer, larger, and more flexible grants had not only been proven—it defied our expectations. We share what we've learned so far in a new report.
Darren Walker, President
As Russia escalates its attacks on Ukraine, we are being confronted once again with the defining conflict of our time: the great contest between authoritarian rule and democratic values. Ukraine holds a warning for the world over and we must act now to protect the future of global democracy.
Adria D. Goodson, Director, Global Fellowship Program
What does it take to advance justice around the world? Leaders unafraid to take on the challenges ahead. More than a year into the Ford Global Fellowship, we reflect on what we’ve learned from our Ford Global Fellows on how to help leaders survive—and thrive—during this historical moment.
Darren Walker, President
The intersecting crises of climate change and inequality threaten to make an outmoded vision of perpetuity, at best, obsolete—and, at worst, destructive. We must join together, with urgency and purpose, to ensure the work of justice lives on in perpetuity, as does the planet on which our very survival depends.
Kevin Currey, Program Officer, Natural Resources and Climate Change
Farah Sofa, Program Officer, Indonesia
A powerful alliance of Indigenous peoples and local communities are showing the world a path to environmental justice with the best technology for carbon capture—their forests.
Ford Foundation
Around the world, Black feminists are leading intersectional movements for social justice—but they are drastically underfunded. The new Black Feminist Fund will support this powerful global community long overlooked by philanthropy. The fund’s three founders outline why now is the time to back Black feminists.
Ford Foundation
When a South Africa organization suddenly found itself without a leader, its top researcher stepped up and steered the organization through the crisis—all with a little help from BUILD.
Víctor López Illescas, Program Officer, Mexico and Central America
In Guatemala, Indigenous and local groups have proven that when they manage forests, it cuts emissions that contribute to climate change and strengthens the local economy—a model for countries around the world. Can this forest concession system survive forces trying to silence their achievements?
Hilary Pennington, Executive Vice President of Programs
