Shifting power: How the Ford Foundation’s DEI commitment is transforming culture and impact 

In 2014, the Ford Foundation refined its mission to focus on disrupting inequality by addressing its root causes rather than simply its symptoms. That refocus of our mission would be reflected in our grantmaking, but we also wanted to ensure it was reflected within our institution.  

We knew our staff needed to reflect the diverse communities we serve. This wasn’t just about having diverse faces in the room but about ensuring those with diverse perspectives had a voice in shaping solutions to the issues we sought to address. Recognizing this, we began to transform our organization, ensuring diversity at every level, working to embed this principle into everything we do. 

Beyond representation: A commitment to DEI brings in new voices and perspectives 

The Ford Foundation’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion starts at the top, with our leadership: our executive team, our board of trustees, and our program officers, who decide where our funding goes.  

We needed to widen our search for talent to build a more diverse team. We rewrote job descriptions to use gender-neutral language. We removed unnecessary educational requirements that might have limited our applicant pool and no longer assumed elite universities had the best talent. We advertised open roles on websites and platforms serving diverse communities, expanding our reach beyond our usual channels. These changes helped us connect with a broader range of qualified candidates and bring in new perspectives and experiences. 

As a result, we significantly increased the representation of women and people of color—at all levels but especially in leadership. From 2013 to 2023, women’s representation on the executive leadership team jumped from 22% to 67%, and the share of people of color increased from 56% to 78%.   

Shifting culture: A commitment to inclusive policies and practices benefits all staff 

While we’re proud of this progress, we know the numbers only tell one side of the story. To realize the benefits of diversity, an organization’s culture must also be fair and inclusive, fostering an environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute their talents.  

To do this, we’ve regularly surveyed our staff to identify areas for improvement and take action. As we received feedback on what would enable our diverse staff to succeed, we realized that more inclusive policies and practices would benefit not just those staff but everyone. We implemented changes such as expanded support for caregivers, additional benefits to cover IVF and adoption, and more transparent compensation practices to ensure greater equity in pay. These changes helped promote equity and inclusion and create a more supportive and fairer workplace for all employees; overall employee satisfaction increased by 26% over five years.  

We’ve also seen greater output and impact from our work, including a significant increase in our grantmaking and expansion of our operations and program areas. Our DEI efforts are directly supporting our mission of disrupting inequality out in the world. What does that look like in practice? 

Shifting power: A commitment to fairness fuels mission 

Core to our mission is the belief that those most impacted by inequality are the ones who should shape the solutions. As our program staff has come to reflect a wider range of communities, our funding has also shifted to organizations led by and representative of those most impacted by marginalization: 

• Women: Between 2018 and 2023, the share of grantees with majority women boards increased from 37% to 45%, and the share of those with majority women executive leadership increased from 54% to 60%. 

• People of color: During the same period, the share of U.S.-based grantees with majority people of color boards increased from 37% to 54%, and the share of those with majority people of color executive leadership increased from 42% to 60%. 

But it is not just who and what we fund that has changed; our priorities have shifted as well: Our programmatic strategies have become more nuanced and explicit about who needs to be included. For example, as we realized that we had not sufficiently focused on people with disabilities, we took steps to hire people with lived experience and prioritize this funding area, increasing grantmaking from $10 million in 2018 to $22 million in 2023.   

Our strategies have also become more inclusive in each of our programs; for example, our efforts to support workers now centers around those in the care and gig economies who have been traditionally excluded from formal unions. And in 2022, we made a specific commitment to invest in ensuring the perspectives and priorities of trans people are integrated into our work, ensuring that bodily autonomy is respected for all.  

Our ability to achieve our mission has grown as our organization has become more diverse, inclusive, and equitable. We’ve also developed and shared toolkits to help other grantmakers integrate DEI values into their work. We’ve repeatedly seen that centering the priorities of the most underrepresented ultimately leads to better outcomes for all. And that is how inequality is ultimately disrupted.   

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