Books and Studies

Pathways to Higher Education: A Ford Foundation Global Initiative for Promoting Inclusiveness in Higher Education

Case studies of how universities worldwide are aiding marginalized groups to enroll and graduate.

Strategies for Improving Public Education: A Foundation Returns to School

A grant maker’s reflections on our Constituency Building for Public School Reform initiative. The 13-year effort helped build coalitions of informed constituents to collaborate and mobilize to bring about needed changes in public schools.

Delivering on a Promise

Celebrating 70 years of the foundation's contributions to improving lives, this booklet contains a comprehensive pull-out timeline marking key moments in Ford history. Essays from Board Chair Kathryn Fuller and President Susan Berresford highlight the foundation's diverse approaches to grant making: finding leaders, supporting social movements, building institutions and creating opportunities.

Ford Foundation: 70 Years

This pull-out timeline accompanying Delivering on a Promise highlights the foundation's historic accomplishments across a range of areas including development finance, civil rights and arts and culture.

Inclusive Scholarship

This volume brings together four decisive reports, the first by Nathan I. Huggins; the second by Robert L. Harris Jr., Darlene Clark Hine and Nellie McKay; the third by Robert G. O'Meally and Valerie Smith; and the final by Dianne M. Pinderhughes and Richard Yarborough, which examine 25 years of African American studies.

Liberal Education and Civic Engagement

This study surveys and assesses recent efforts by U.S. colleges and universities to cultivate in their students the intellectual skills and values conducive to lives of "civic engagement."

From The Ground Up: Building Assets Through Development Finance

This publication articulates our development finance grant-making strategy. To emerge from poverty, low-income people need reliable sources of adequate income, strategies to minimize risk, and the ability to build, manage and control financial assets. At the Ford Foundation, we believe that building upon people’s existing resources and capacities is the starting point in a process that leads to economic security that can be maintained over generations. Also available in Spanish and Chinese.

Comenzando desde la base: Generación de activos a través de las finanzas para el desarrollo

Spanish translation of From the Ground Up: Building Assets Through Development Finance

From The Ground Up: Building Assets Through Development Finance (Chinese)

Chinese translation of From the Ground Up: Building Assets Through Development Finance.

Asset Building for Social Change: Pathways to Large-Scale Impact

An in-depth examination of the Assets program's grant-making activities that have achieved a significant scale. This paper is the result of an effort to discern patterns of successful scaling up from among the program's portfolios worldwide.

Close to Home

This publication presents 13 case studies of human rights work that is making life better for people in the United States. Activists, funders and policy makers will find in this volume new points of view and valuable tools for seeking positive social change in their communities and in the world.

Ford Foundation: Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program

To articulate the aspirations and values behind this restructured program, we decided to rename our Education, Media, Arts and Culture program Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom and craft a new statement communicating our sense of the context in which we work. This publication conveys our revised thinking in this program area. Available in Spanish.

Fundación Ford Conocimiento, Creatividad y Libertad

Spanish translation of Ford Foundation: Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program.

Peace and Social Justice: Building a More Secure and Equitable World Through Governance, Civil Society, and Human Rights

This brochure provides a comprehensive review of our Peace and Social Justice program.

Place in the World, A

One of a pair of papers on tenure issues related to forest lands written by Forest Trends at the invitation of the Ford Foundation. This paper provides a historical review of the literature and conversations concerning property rights. A companion paper entitled Deeper Roots identifies the key strategies used by local groups and NGOs to advance community tenure interest.

Deeper Roots

One of a pair of papers on tenure issues related to forest lands written by Forest Trends at the invitation of the Ford Foundation. This paper identifies the key strategies used by local groups and NGOs to advance community tenure interest. A companion paper entitled A Place in the World provides an historical review of the literature and conversations concerning property rights.

Borrowed from the Future

Drawing on nearly 30 years of experience in attempting to design and develop mechanisms for community-based enterprises, Dr. Jason Clay identifies some of the many obstacles that thwart their success. He also provides 10 guidelines for shaping community-based natural resource management in the future.

Celebrating Indonesia

The story of the Ford Foundation's half century in Indonesia resonates with the great motifs of nation-building, development and modernization that shaped international relations in the second half of the 20th century. It is also a chronicle of one of the leading philanthropic organizations in the United States as it sought to play an effective and relevant role in a rapidly changing world.

Globalization, Health Sector Reform, Gender and Reproductive Health

Papers commissioned by the Ford Foundation's Reproductive Health Affinity Group (RHAG) to explore how changes in macro-economic and social policies affect women's reproductive health and rights.

Building Assets to Reduce Poverty and Injustice

An introduction to the basic ideas that form the framework for our Asset Building and Community Development Program.

Asian American Women

This publication places the issues Asian American women face in the broader economic, legal, political, and/or historical contexts of American society and describes specifically how Asian American women are affected.

Ford Foundation Grantees and the Pursuit of Justice

This publication highlights the law-related work of Ford Foundation grantees around the world.

Collaborations that Count

As state governments take on responsibility for issues formerly overseen at the federal level—including welfare programs and civil rights protections—the perspectives of vulnerable populations need to be heard at state level. This report explores the foundation's initiative to strengthen links between communities and policy analysis at the state level.

Many Roads to Justice

This in-depth report examines the activities of Ford-supported grantees in the area of law. Case studies from around the world showcase how law-based strategies can be used to further positive social change and advance human rights. Includes analyses of initiatives in China, the Philippines, Africa and other regions.

Youth Service Conference Report

This report summarizes a set of discussions about the experience of national and community service in countries in every part of the world. The discussions took place at the Worldwide Workshop on Youth Involvement as a Strategy for Social, Economic and Democratic Development organized by the Ford Foundation in January 2000 in Costa Rica and included Ford Foundation staff and participants from 15 countries.