October 18, 2007 | Read Time: 6 minutes
A philanthropy leader speaks out on the importance of diversity within his organization, stressing themes
like fairness, opportunity, and effectiveness. While such calls to arms are commonplace in the nonprofit world today, this one was issued in 1972 by McGeorge Bundy, when he was president of the Ford Foundation.
“He made a statement to the public, to our grantees and to the leaders of the organization about the importance of diversity, not just in our own ranks but in the organizations that we were supporting,” recalls Susan V. Berresford, who joined the foundation in 1970 and has been its president since 1996. “That was the beginning, and we’ve been working at it ever since.”
That the foundation has taken seriously the mission of diversifying its own staff is apparent in the data that it rigorously collects. In 1973, 7 percent of Ford’s professional staff members were members of minority groups. By this year, that number had risen to 31 percent. Women made up just 23 percent of the staff in 1973; now, 52 percent of Ford’s professional staff is female.
During Ms. Berresford’s tenure, the foundation has also attempted to diversify the nationalities of its staff members employed at both its New York headquarters and its 14 offices worldwide. “We wanted to make sure that we had people with nationalities other than American,” says Ms. Berresford. “As a global institution, that makes sense for us.”
Next year, Ford will make yet another stride in its effort to diversify its staff. When Ms. Berresford retires as president in January 2008, she will be replaced by Luis A. Ubiñas, the first Hispanic person to lead the organization.
The Ford Foundation’s Board of Trustees has undergone a similarly far-reaching transformation in the decades since Mr. Bundy’s statement of purpose. In 1973, 6 percent of the board’s members were members of minority groups, a number that rose to 40 percent by 2007. And 62 percent of the trustees are women, up from 13 percent in 1973.
Diversity on the board is essential, notes Ms. Berresford, since it is the board’s responsibility to monitor the foundation’s progress at attaining and maintaining a staff that is as diverse as possible.
“Once a year, the board gets an extremely detailed breakdown by country of origin, job rank, gender, and ethnic group,” she says. “They review the figures to see if there is any kind of an imbalance.”
Long-Range Planning
The secret to achieving far-reaching diversity thoughout an organization is careful planning, says Ms. Berresford. “We look at every job opening, including forecasting openings a few years in advance, and ask ourselves, ‘What is the composition we’d like to see?’” she says.
Recently, she says, the grant maker has begun a discussion about how its hiring might be affected by changes in the American work force over the next decades. For example, Ford can begin to respond now to predicted trends in access to education, says Ms. Berresford, by directing its grant making in strategic ways. “The affordability of education and the accessibility of higher education are higher on our agenda than they’ve ever been,” she says.
But when it comes to diversity, the Ford Foundation has done more than merely lead by example. With its financial reach — the nation’s second-largest private grant maker, Ford has assets of more than $12-billion and gives away more than $550-million each year — the foundation has also steadily nudged the nonprofit world to embrace diversity.
Ford’s grant applicants are asked about the makeup of their own staffs and boards, and how their programs engage individuals from different backgrounds and perspectives — and they may find that support from the foundation is contingent on that composition. “If you draw from broader pools of talent and have diverse talent, you’ll have better information and be more credible in more communities,” says Ms. Berresford.
Establishing a deep pool of grantees with diverse staffs and boards — Ford makes approximately 2,500 grants per year — is also in the foundation’s interest, says Ms. Berresford. When recruiting for its staff, the grant maker taps not only professional associations that include members of minority groups, for example, but also its vast network of grantees.
Carol Goss, president of the Skillman Foundation, a grant maker in Detroit, has worked with Ford on several economic-development projects and says she has been consistently impressed by the seriousness with which Ford approaches the issue of diversity. For example, she says, in discussions between the two grant makers about which local groups to involve in redevelopment work, Ford staff members always insist that an effort be made to include groups that are run by low-income people and members of minority groups.
“They always lead us back to the discussion of who is doing the work on the ground in minority neighborhoods. When they take that role, it makes a difference,” Ms. Goss says. “They’re a major philanthropic organization with a great deal of influence.”
But not everyone likes how Ford has sought to be diverse.
William A. Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, in Washington, argues that Ford focuses on outward appearances of diversity, while its trustees and grant recipients are largely homogenous when it comes to their thinking.
“It would be wonderful if Ford sought genuine diversity on its own board and on the boards of its grantees, according to differences in points of view, life experiences or backgrounds, and in particular if that were to include representation by the poor and marginalized,” says Mr. Schambra. “That may be what Ford thinks it’s encouraging by seeking minority representation, but that insultingly and patronizingly assumes that skin color correlates directly with or maybe even determines point of view and life experience.”
Spreading Influence
Despite such concerns, the Ford Foundation’s influence has also been felt through former employees who have gone on to work for other nonprofit groups, taking with them the foundation’s commitment to diversity.
Mary McClymont spent 12 years as a human-rights program officer at Ford before leaving in 2000 to become chief executive of InterAction, a coalition of relief organizations that has its headquarters in Washington. She arrived at her new job, says Ms. McClymont, with deep commitment to diversity. “It permeated the environment at Ford,” she recalls.
With the goal of helping InterAction’s 165 member organizations diversify their own staffs, she set about developing diversity recruitment manuals and checklists that the charities could use to guide their hiring and monitor their progress. She also encouraged InterAction’s members to document their successes recruiting and retaining minorities in “best practices” case studies.
“All of it was propelled by what I’d learned at Ford,” says Ms. McClymont, who returned to the foundation last year as vice president of its peace and social justice program. “I’d become a person who was convinced that an organization is more effective with diverse points of view and perspectives. I’d lived that and seen that at the Ford Foundation.”
