Ford Foundation giving: Familiar patterns and uplifting surprises
This month we are reporting on the Ford Foundation. One of the best known of America’s great foundations, it has a tremendous heritage of giving that dates back until 1936. Today, it has an endowment of other $12bn and disburses around $500m in grants each year.
Throughout the Ford Foundation’s history , education has been at the forefront of its activities and today it is a significant funder of universities - both in the US and internationally. We undertook a review of its university giving over the past 10 years and, in our view, it’s a story of familiar patterns and uplifting surprises.
So according to our research - drawn from data on the Ford Foundation website - over the past 10 years Ford has disbursed 1,510 grants totalling $358m in funding to 286 universities and higher education institutions in 39 countries. 65% of that giving goes to US institutions (which is less than the Gates Foundation) while 35% heads to overseas institutions.
It’s a story of familiar patterns because some of the giants of the US education are the biggest beneficiaries. For example, Harvard - the third biggest recipient - received $18.8m from Ford over 10 years - and is also the recipient of the most individual awards – 74 in total. It is also the case that 8 out of the top 10 beneficiaries are US institutions. The other two are the University of Cape Town - invariably one of the main international beneficiaries of big foundation giving - and Wits University.
That said, there are some interesting facts that emerge. Asian universities are the second biggest beneficiaries with Chinese universities receiving 72% of all giving in the region.
The third biggest regional beneficiary is Latin America, although African universities receives a very similar amount. So the top five country beneficiaries are:
US (65%) - $228m
China (8%) - $28m
South Africa (7%) - $24m
Brazil (4%) - $12.9m
Egypt (2.5%) - $8.7m
Looking at giving outside the US, this geographic spread of beneficiaries appears to be different from other big funders. Typically, you might expect European universities to feature higher. But they don’t, reflecting the ethos of Ford, perhaps, to make interventions which can have a meaningful impact.
For more details on our study, go to university giving by the Ford Foundation.