The Ford Foundation

Where the money goes

• General and core support for social justice advocacy organizations
• Immigrant justice, civil rights, and racial equity movement infrastructure
• Gender and reproductive equity, feminist funds, LGBTQI+ organizations
• Worker power, anti-monopoly, economic mobility, and criminal justice reform
• Public interest technology, digital rights, and investigative journalism
• Arts and culture with an equity frame, including Detroit and regional initiatives

Typical grant

Median grant is $120,000 with the middle half between $50,000 and $250,000, so most of the 10,731 grants are modest institutional support checks. The seven-figure and eight-figure awards go almost entirely to pooled funds, funder collaboratives, and national anchor institutions such as Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Blue Meridian, ACLU, and NAACP LDF. Repeat giving is heavy: the same organizations appear across years, and several receive two separate grants in a single year.

Their words

Phrases from their own grant descriptions, worth speaking back to them.

• “GENERAL SUPPORT AND CORE SUPPORT FOR INSTITUTIONAL STRENGTHENING”
• “CORE SUPPORT”
• “INSTITUTIONAL STRENGTHENING”
• “MOVEMENT”
• “GLOBAL SOUTH”
• “NARRATIVE”

Positioning adjacent work

• Frame the ask as core support for institutional strengthening, not a discrete project budget line.
• Connect research to a named funded theme: worker organizing, public interest technology, gender equity, or narrative change.
• Ask $100,000 to $250,000 for a first relationship; seven figures goes to pooled funds and anchors.
• Emphasize movement partners and Global South collaborators rather than academic outputs alone.