The Ford Foundation is a private foundation based in New York City and created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford. It was funded originally by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford but by 1947 after the death of the two founders, the foundation owned 90 percent of the non-voting shares of the Ford Motor Company. (The Ford family kept the voting shares to themselves.) The foundation sold its Ford holdings and now plays no role in the automobile company. For years, the foundation was the largest and one of the two or three most influential foundations in the world, with a global reach and special interests in education, the arts, and Third World development.
The foundation makes grants through its headquarters and ten international field offices. For fiscal year 2011, it reported assets of US$10.0 billion and approved US$413 million in grants. The grants support projects that focus on reducing poverty and injustice; promoting democratic values; and advancing human knowledge, creativity and achievement.
Read more about Ford Foundation: History, Support of The African Gender Institute, Ford Foundation Building, Controversy, Presidents
Famous quotes containing the words ford and/or foundation:
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)