Our response to COVID-19

Read the latest updates

  • Ford issues first-of-its-kind social bond of up to $1 billion to support social justice sector and more
  • Ford spearheads a philanthropy pledge with 700+ foundations to support nonprofits with flexible funding
  • Ford launches $75-million NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund
  • Ford joins forces to raise $20 million to support low-wage workers impacted by pandemic

Disrupting systems to advance social justice

We believe inequality is at the root of nearly every injustice. To create meaningful, lasting change, we focus on nine interconnected areas.

Why inequality?

Shifting the conversation

Dig into the newest collection of stories of change, hope and resilience from our community

Building on 80 years of impact

We have supported the work of some of history’s greatest minds, helped build pivotal institutions and seeded big ideas that have fueled groundbreaking movements.

Our history

  • Jason Mraz sits on a stoop and serenades Big Bird, Elmo, and friends on Sesame Street.

    Year:1969

    Sesame Street is created to teach the world kindness

    In 1969, Ford joined the Carnegie Foundation and a small team of investors to back a new idea for a unique, educational TV show for children: Sesame Street. For more than 50 years, Sesame Street has remained on the air, holding a special place in everyone’s hearts and helping generations of kids become smarter, stronger, and kinder.

  • Year:1976

    Muhammad Yunus pioneers the idea of microfinance

    Muhammad Yunus came to Ford with a vision to provide Bangladesh’s low-income communities with small loans to gain financial power and security. This work developed into the Grameen Bank—which today has more than 8 million borrowers across Asia, of which 97 percent are women—and earned Yunus a Nobel Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom.

  • Lourdes Rivera, senior vice president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, speaks during a press conference surrounded by people holding sign.

    Year:2015

    The Center for Reproductive Rights wins a critical Supreme Court case

    The Center for Reproductive Rights, which Ford helped to establish in 1992, won the Supreme Court case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, 579 US, prohibiting Texas from placing medically undue restrictions on the delivery of abortion services. With our support, the organization has become a formative player that has strengthened laws and policies to protect women’s rights in more than 50 countries.

Find us at the Center for Social Justice

The Ford Foundation is located in New York City at the Center for Social Justice—a hub for social good and the courageous people who devote their lives to achieving it.

About the center

Ford Foundation Gallery

Indisposable: Structures of Support After the ADA

17 September 2020 – 14 August 2021

The gallery will exhibit virtually through 2020

Learn more