Various media outlets cover the Ford Foundation’s commitment of $1 billion of our endowment toward mission-related investments.

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Published in The Wall Street Journal | April 5, 2017

Ford Foundation carves out $1 billion to invest in civic mission

By Dawn Lim

The Ford Foundation is setting aside up to $1 billion to advance social change, the first time it will deploy investment dollars to promote its civic mission while also seeking to deliver market returns.

The pledge, a chunk of its $12 billion endowment, is one of the largest-ever commitments by a private foundation to impact investing, a strategy that seeks to achieve both environmental and social good alongside financial gains.

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Published in Bloomberg

Ford Foundation to put $1 billion of endowment in impact funds

By Emily Chasan

The Ford Foundation is committing $1 billion of its endowment over the next 10 years to money managers who invest in affordable housing and financial services for people in developing countries.

The move marks a shift by the New York-based nonprofit, from investing its $12 billion endowment in traditional assets to funds aligned with its mission that also aim to earn market-rate returns, the foundation said in a statement Wednesday.

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Published in Forbes 

Advancing social good With mission-related investing: Ford Foundation pledges $1B

By Dina Medland

Investment with a clear benefit to society is increasingly claiming imaginations across the world amid the challenges the world faces in 2017. Today the Ford Foundation, an independent, nonprofit grantmaking organization, gave impact investment a significant boost when it announced that it is committing up to $1 billion from its $12 billion endowment over the next 10 years to the nascent investment field known as mission-related investing (MRI).

The commitment is one of the largest ever made to MRIs and the largest by a private foundation.

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Published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy

Ford Foundation to Put $1 Billion From Endowment Into Social Investments

By Alex Daniels

The Ford Foundation announced today that over the next 10 years it will allocate up to $1 billion of its $12 billion endowment to financial investments that complement its grantmaking goal of reducing inequality.

The amount being committed is significant: No other foundation has publicly pledged to tie such a large sum to mission-related investing. The move comes two years after Ford shook up the nonprofit world by announcing that virtually all of its grantmaking would go to address financial, racial, gender, and other forms of inequity.

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Published in Stanford Social Innovation Review

Unleashing the power of endowments: The next great challenge for philanthropy

By Darren Walker

For the better part of two decades, the world of philanthropy has been engaged in an important, sometimes contested, conversation about “impact”—both how we measure it and how we deliver it. More recently, this discussion—in the Ford Foundation’s halls and throughout our sector—has focused on how to create impact through the capital market, specifically through impact investing.

As with most foundations, our own impact-related work—our support for individuals, institutions, and ideas—has remained almost entirely separate from the way we steward our endowment. While most of our work is grantmaking, the vast majority of our assets are actually financial investments.