Stories

Two years ago, we launched our social bond to provide relief to nonprofits during the pandemic. We check in with some of these organizations, now thriving as they continue their fight for workers’ rights, racial justice, vaccine equity and more.

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.

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.

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.

AMAN supports over 17 million Indigenous people across Indonesia, protecting against threats to their land from extractive industries and supporting education, food sovereignty, and traditional culture. Through a BUILD grant, AMAN was able to create a technology infrastructure to connect disparate communities—key to surviving COVID-19.

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.

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.

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.

In the midst of one of history’s most tumultuous years, president Darren Walker sat down with 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl to talk about the challenges facing the world and how we must reimagine philanthropy to answer the call for justice.

We talk to Giselle Leung from the Global Impact Investing Network, about how investors are playing a key role in the response to COVID-19, and promoting equity in the process.

In 1973, a logging company approached the Dayak Iban indigenous community in Sungai Utik with an offer to buy its land in Indonesia. When its members turned down the offer, they thought their forests would be safe. What they didn’t expect was a nearly 50-year battle to protect their land rights.

In Indonesia, the convergence of policy and technology is improving the lives of millions of people.

Access to the Internet is critical for freedom of expression in modern societies and for enjoying cultural, social, and economic rights. Government's role in protecting this human right includes not blocking free speech, but also providing the disenfranchised with a voice.

Habitat III—the United Nations conference on housing and sustainable urban development—will take place in Quito, Ecuador this October.

The worst-hit countries were Brazil, Colombia, and the Philippines, and nearly 40 percent of victims were members of indigenous groups. 

Just and inclusive cities put people first, and put equity and social justice at the center of policy and design.

an excerpt from The Shrinking Space for Civil Society: Philanthropic Perspectives From Across the Globe, a new report from the European Foundation Centre (EFC)

Unlike traditional scholarships based primarily on academic achievement, social justice fellowships use non-traditional ways to recruit talented individuals and extend higher education opportunities to leaders from marginalized communities.

With the announcement of our new programs, we know many of you have questions. We answer some of them here.

Today, the Ford Foundation’s two-year transition is over. Darren Walker explains the details of FordForward.

Grantee works with government to ensure residents of low-income communities are empowered to participate in the planning of residential areas.

We are making some big changes—but what will never change is our commitment to supporting those closest to the problems, engaging collaboratively with every sector, and pursuing the cause of justice and dignity for all people.

In anticipation of Showtime's premier of The Years of Living Dangerously, a documentary series supported by the foundation, Steve Rhee, who works on community rights over natural resources and climate change from our office in Jakarta, discusses the human impact of climate change.