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The Ford Foundation as a Transnational Actor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Peter D. Bell
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Extract

”Foundations,” private, nonprofit institutions that make grants for public purposes, depend for their existence on the private accumulation of great wealth and on fiscal and moral incentives for its philanthropic use. Several European foundations, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Krupp Foundation, and the Nuffield Foundation, are now comparable in organization and size to the American leaders. But modern foundations, independently directed and professionally staffed, are principally an invention of twentieth-century industrial society in the United States.1 Of 32 foundations with assets exceeding $100 million, 29 are American.

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Articles
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International Organization , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Summer 1971, pp. 465 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1971

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References

1 According to the 1969 Directory of European Foundations(Turin: Agnelli Foundation)Google Scholar only three European foundations have assets which exceed $100 million, whereas Philanthropic Foundations in the United States: A Brief Description (New York: Foundation Center, 1969), p. 15Google Scholar, reports that there are 29 such American foundations. This booklet states that there are about 22,000 foundations in the United States with estimated total assets of $20.5 billion, at market value, and annual expenditures of some $1.5 billion. About 250 have resources of over $10 million and are termed “large foundations” by the Foundation Center.

2 Data from Lewis, Marianna O., ed., The Foundation Directory (3rd ed.; New York: Russell Sage Foundation [for the Foundation Library Center], 1967), tables 11, 16, and 23 on pp. 27Google Scholar, 39, and 46, respectively.

3 Raymond, B. Fosdick, A Philosophy for a Foundation (New York: Rockefeller Foundation, 1963), p. 1Google Scholar.

4 A rare and evocative attempt to examine the attitudinal proclivities and political effects of foundations is made by Irving Louis Horowitz and Ruth Leonora Horowitz, “Tax-Exempt Foundations: Their Effects on National Policy,” in Science, 04 10, 1970 (Vol. 168, No. 3928), pp. 220–228CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

5 Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., remarks before the Examiner Club, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 7, 1956.

6 Ford, Henry II to Gaither, H. Rowan Jr, November 22, 1948, Report of the Study for the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program, Gaither, H. Rowan Jr, chairman (Detroit, Mich: Ford Foundation, 11 1949), p. 10Google Scholar.

7 Report of the Study for the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program, p. 26.

8 Fosdick, p. 15.

9 The Ford Foundation in the 1960s, Statement of the Board of Trustees on Policies, Programs, and Operations (New York: Ford Foundation, 07 1962), p. 3Google Scholar.

10 Curti, Merle, American Philanthropy Abroad: A History (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1963), p. 581Google Scholar.

11 Horowitz, and Horowitz, , Science, Vol. 168, No. 3928, p. 224Google Scholar.

12 Joseph, C. Kiger, Operating Principles of the Larger Foundations (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1954), p. 62Google Scholar.

13 Francis, X. Sutton, American Foundations and US Public Diplomacy (New York: Ford Foundation, 1968), p. 10. This pamphlet has been reprinted from United States, Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, The Future of United States Public Diplomacy, Symposium, before the Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, 90th Cong., 2nd sess., 1968Google Scholar.

14 E. E. Cox, representative from Georgia, chaired the Select Committee to Investigate and Study Educational and Philanthropic Foundations and Other Comparable Organizations which Are Exempt Federal Income Taxation until his death in December 1952. Quotations arc from Kiger, p. 92.

15 Sutton, p.7.

16 United States, Congress, Foreign Assistance Act of 1969, part IV: “Inter-American Social Development Institute”, P.L. 91–175, 91st Cong., 1st sess., United States Statutes at Large, Vol. 83, pp. 821–824Google Scholar.

17 Kingsley, J. Donald, “Notes on Program Puzzles in the Middle East” (Paper prepared for the Meeting of the International Division, Ford Foundation, Mexico City, 12 4, 1969), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.

18 ”The President's Review,” The Ford Foundation Annual Report: October 1, 1967-September 30, 1968 (New York: Ford Foundation, 1968), p. xviGoogle Scholar.