Ford Foundation Annual Report 2000 Ford Foundation Annual Report 2000 October 1, 1999 to September 30, 2000 Ford Foundation Offices Inside front cover 1 Mission Statement 3 President’s Message 14 Board of Trustees 14 Officers 15 Committees of the Board 16 Staff 20 Program Approvals 21 Asset Building and Community Development 43 Peace and Social Justice 59 Education, Media, Arts and Culture 77 Grants and Projects, Fiscal Year 2000 Asset Building and Community Development Economic Development 78 Community and Resource Development 85 Human Development and Reproductive Health 97 Program-Related Investments 107 Peace and Social Justice Human Rights and International Cooperation 108 Governance and Civil Society 124 Education, Media, Arts and Culture Education, Knowledge and Religion 138 Media, Arts and Culture 147 Foundationwide Actions 155 Good Neighbor Grants 156 157 Financial Review 173 Index Communications Back cover flap Guidelines for Grant Seekers Inside back cover flap Library of Congress Card Number 52-43167 ISSN: 0071-7274 April 2001 Ford Foundation Offices • MOSCOW { NEW YORK BEIJING • NEW DELHI • • MEXICO CITY • CAIRO • HANOI • MANILA • LAGOS • NAIROBI • JAKARTA RIODEJANEIRO • • WINDHOEK • JOHANNESBURG SANTIAGO • United States Africa and Middle East West Africa The Philippines Andean Region Makati Central Post Office and Southern Cone Headquarters Eastern Africa Nigeria P.O. Box 1936 320 East 43rd Street P.O. Box 2368 Chile Kenya 1259 Makati City New York, New York Lagos, Nigeria Avenida Ricardo Lyon 806 P.O. Box 41081 The Philippines 10017 Providencia Nairobi, Republic of Kenya Asia Vietnam Santiago 6650429, Chile 340 Ba Trieu Street Middle East and North Africa China Hanoi, Socialist Republic International Club Office Building Russia Egypt of Vietnam Suite 501 Tverskaya Ulitsa 16/2 P.O. Box 2344 Jianguomenwai Dajie No. 21 5th floor Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt Beijing, China 100020 Latin America and Caribbean 103009 Moscow, Russia Brazil Southern Africa India, Nepal and Sri Lanka Praia do Flamengo 154, 8° andar 55 Lodi Estate South Africa 22207 900 Rio de Janeiro, R.J. New Delhi, India 110 003 P.O. Box 30953 Brazil Braamfontein 2017 Indonesia Mexico and Central America Johannesburg, South Africa P.O. Box 2030 Apartado 105 71 Jakarta 10020, Indonesia Namibia (suboffice) 11560 Mexico, D.F., Mexico P.O. Box 20614 Windhoek, Namibia Mission Statement The Ford Foundation is a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide. Our goals are to: ̈ Strengthen democratic values, ̈ Reduce poverty and injustice, ̈ Promote international cooperation and ̈ Advance human achievement This has been our purpose for almost half a century. A fundamental challenge facing every society is to create political, economic and social systems that promote peace, human welfare and the sustainability of the environment on which life depends. We believe that the best way to meet this challenge is to encourage initiatives by those living and working closest to where problems are located; to promote collaboration among the nonprofit, government and business sectors, and to ensure participation by men and women from diverse communities and at all levels of society. In our experience, such activities help build common understanding, enhance excellence, enable people to improve their lives and reinforce their commitment to society. The Ford Foundation is one source of support for these activities. We work mainly by making grants or loans that build knowledge and strengthen organizations and networks. Since our financial resources are modest in comparison with societal needs, we focus on a limited number of problem areas and program strategies within our broad goals. Founded in 1936, the foundation operated as a local philanthropy in the state of Michigan until 1950, when it expanded to become a national and international foundation. Since its inception it has been an indepen- dent, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization. It has provided more than $10 billion in grants and loans. These funds derive from an investment portfolio that began with gifts and bequests of Ford Motor Company stock by Henry and Edsel Ford. The foundation no longer owns Ford Motor Company stock, and its diversified portfolio is managed to provide a perpetual source of support for the foundation’s programs and operations. The Trustees of the foundation set policy and delegate authority to the president and senior staff for the foundation’s grant making and operations. Program officers in the United States, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Russia explore opportunities to pursue the foundation’s goals, formulate strategies and recommend proposals for funding. 2 ford foundation annual report 2000 President’s Message Recent years of prosperity in the United States expanded foundations’ assets along with those of so many others, bringing increased attention to the ways that philanthropists use their resources. This is all to the good, as it encourages broader reflection on philanthropy’s social purposes and whether philanthropic individuals and institutions contribute to the common good. Moreover, many of the decisions foundation boards and staff make in periods of sustained growth reveal the expanse of their vision, their attitudes toward institutional longevity and their concept of philanthropy in the modern world. The Ford Foundation’s recent approach to these matters can be seen in a progression of three decisions beginning in 1996, when I became president. For several years, the board and staff took advantage of expanding resources both to fortify long-standing fields of work and to initiate exploration in new areas. We deepened our ongoing work on poverty, human rights, governmental reform, strengthening the civil sector, educational and cultural programs. At the same time, we decided to create new programs related to religion in society and to the media’s role in education and civic life. As a result, our program officers often had more grantees in their port- folios and made larger than usual grants. In some cases they were able to provide organizations with endowment grants or long-term support, giving them a degree of financial independence. Among the endowment recip- 3 ients were Africare, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Resource Economics, the India Foundation for the Arts, and the East-West Center. After several years of continued portfolio growth, we made a second deci- sion: to fund a series of large, one-time grants for new initiatives. With these grants, we put sizable sums behind promising projects without adding new foundation staff or creating long-term dependency on the foundation that could be risky for grantees when a market correction occurred. We asked foundation staff and people outside the organization to help us A foundation-supported program in southern Mexico, Alternativa generate these initiatives. Solidaria Chiapas, A.C., helps indigenous women learn about microenterprise, health and nutrition. president’s message Many of their first suggestions surprised us. People urged that we devote large sums to problems on which we had never worked—support- ing medical research to cure dread diseases, reforming a foreign country’s notoriously bad prison system or creating new information technologies to reach remote communities. Although each of these had appeal, they soon were overtaken by other promising ideas in areas where we felt we had a comparative advantage. The first was a $52-million initiative with the Center for Community Self Help in North Carolina. With our funding, the center is working with the Federal National Mortgage Association and banks across the United States testing ways to increase homeownership among low-income and minority families. Ford’s $50 million guarantees $2 billion of loans to new low-wealth homeowners. Since homeownership is a key way to accumu- late assets in the United States, all the participants found this opportunity very intriguing. The initiative included $2 million for evaluation of the project over 10 years. A second major investment of $26 million supports Project GRAD and its expansion in Houston and other sites around the United States. Project GRAD is an unusually successful systemic public-school-reform project with strong results in test scores, improved school atmosphere, high-school graduation rates, reduced teen pregnancy and higher college enrollment. Since most school-reform projects are “boutiques” with weak results, the idea of expanding Project GRAD to 100,000 students in six U.S. cities was very appealing. We are pleased to be partners with Lucent Technologies, Prudential, Verizon, The United Way, the Jane and Michael Eisner 4 Foundation, the federal government and many others in this program and its evaluation. A third investment involved endowment challenge grants totaling $40 mil- lion to 28 artistic and cultural groups across the United States. Most of the money went to groups that had not previously received Ford support. All had shown special creativity that was redefining excellence in theater, dance, poetry, museums and other fields, and each was poised to take on a capital drive to support this new work. The grantees will work together during the five-year program, exchanging experience and know-how. The importance of cultural institutions to intellectual life, freedom of expression and community vitality in the United States drew us to this A North Carolina family at their home purchased with a mortgage obtained