Qasasa

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[1] 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.)[2]The foundation sold itsFord 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.[3] For fiscal year 2011, it reportedassets of US$10.0 billion and approved US$413 million in grants.[4] The grants support projects that focus on reducing poverty and injustice; promoting democratic values; and advancing human knowledge, creativity and achievement.[5]

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History
The foundation was established on January 15, 1936,[1] in Michigan by Edsel Ford (president of the FordMotor Company) and two other executives "to receive and administer funds for scientific, educational and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare".[6] During its early years, the foundation operated in Michigan under the leadership of Ford family members and their associates, and supported the Henry Ford Hospital and the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, among other organizations.After the deaths of Edsel Ford in 1943 and Henry Ford in 1947, the presidency of the foundation fell to Edsel's eldest son, Henry Ford II. It quickly became clear that the foundation would become the largest philanthropy in the world. The board of trustees then commissioned the Gaither Study Committee to chart the foundation's future. The committee, headed by California attorney H. Rowan Gaither,recommended that the foundation become an international philanthropy dedicated to the advancement of human welfare and "urged the foundation to focus on solving humankind's most pressing problems, whatever they might be, rather than work in any particular field...." The board embraced the recommendations in 1949.[1]
The board of directors decided to diversify the foundation's portfolio and graduallydivested itself of its substantial Ford Motor Company stock between 1956 and 1974. This divestiture allowed Ford Motor to become a public company.
In 2012, the foundation transferred its archives from New York City to the Rockefeller Archive Center[7] in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
[edit]Major grants and initiatives
Based on recommendations made by the Gaither Study Committee and embraced by thefoundation's board of trustees in 1949, the foundation expanded its grant making to include support for higher education, the arts, economic development, civil rights, and the environment, among other areas.
The foundation in 1951 made its first grant to support the development of the public broadcasting system, then known as National Educational Television (NET), which went on the air in1952.[8] These grants continued, and in 1969 the foundation gave US$1 million to the Children's Television Workshop to help create and launch Sesame Street.[9] The Corporation for Public Broadcasting replaced NET with the Public Broadcasting Service on October 5, 1970.
The foundation's first international field office opened in 1952 in New Delhi, India.
Throughout the 1950s, the foundation provided artsand humanities fellowships that supported the work of figures like Josef Albers, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Herbert Blau, E. E. Cummings, Flannery O'Connor, Jacob Lawrence,Maurice Valency, Robert Lowell, and Margaret Mead. Under its "Program for Playwrights", the foundation helped to support writers in professional regional theaters such as San Francisco's Actor's Workshop and offered similar...