David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Ford Foundation. Through most of its modern history beginning in 1950, the Ford Foundation was the nation's largest philanthropic foundation. In 1999, its assets, $11.4 billion, were surpassed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ($17.1 billion) and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation ($13.0 billion). In 1998 the Ford Foundation made grants totaling $453.4 million, aimed at strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation, and advancing human achievement.

The foundation was established in 1936, in part to save the Ford family from having to sell the Ford Motor Company to pay taxes on the estates of Henry Ford and his son Edsel. It was transformed from a small Michigan philanthropy in 1950 when it inherited 88 percent of the company's stock from their estates. Paul G. Hoffman, former head of the Marshall Plan, was president from 1951 to 1953. By 1976 the foundation no longer held Ford company stock and no family members remained on the Board of Trustees. The greatly enlarged foundation spun off the Fund for the Advancement of Education, the Fund for Adult Education (a pioneer in educational television), and the controversial Fund for the Republic. It was a leader in promoting public interest law, civil rights, ballet and repertory theater, Third World agricultural development, and environmental protection.

The foundation's New York headquarters, a twelve‐story structure near the United Nations completed in 1967, has been designated a historical landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The foundation also has fourteen offices in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Russia. Susan V. Berresford, who joined the foundation in 1970 as a program assistant, became its seventh president in 1996, succeeding Franklin A. Thomas, who had held the post for seventeen years.
See also Philanthropy and Philanthropic Foundations.

Bibliography

Richard Magat , The Ford Foundation at Work: Philanthropic Choices, Methods, and Styles, Plenum Publishing 1979.
Francis X. Sutton , The Ford Foundation: The Early Years, Daedalus 116, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 41–91.

Richard Magat

David and Lucile Packard Foundation private philanthropic institution that funds nonprofit organizations. It was founded in 1964 by David Packard (1912-96), co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Co., and his wife Lucile (1914-87). Headquartered in Los Altos, Calif., the foundation focuses on three program areas: conservation and science, with an emphasis on protecting and restorating the oceans, coasts, and atmosphere; population, with an emphasis on slowing world population growth and supporting reproductive health; and children, families, and communities, with an emphasis on children's education and health care. The Packard Foundation also supports various organizations in N California, provides funds to advance organizational effectiveness in its grantees, and works to improve private philanthropies.