The Ford Foundation Is the Model for the Corrupted NGOs Methodically Destroying Western Civilization
Guest Post from Jane Shaw Stroup at Master Resource.
You’ve probably heard that Henry Ford II resigned from the board of the Ford Foundation because it had veered far away from its donor’s intent. In his 1976 resignation letter, Ford (grandson of Ford Sr.) wrote:
In effect, the foundation is a creature of capitalism—a statement that, I’m sure, would be shocking to many professional staff people in the field of philanthropy. It is hard to discern recognition of this fact in anything the. foundation does. It is even more difficult to find an understanding of this in many of the institutions, particularly the universities, that are the beneficiaries of the foundation’s grant programs.”[1]
What had the foundation been doing? Essentially it had gone rogue.
True, the elder Ford had been eccentric and viciously antisemitic, but he changed the world with his autos, he paid workers well, and he hired disabled veterans, the elderly, and the handicapped. He revived a Detroit suburb, Inkster, during the Great Depression by hiring many of its largely black population, paying them $6 a day even if he only had routine chores for them. He started the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
By 1976, the foundation had become the largest charitable foundation in the world, and was leaning toward Democratic Party politics. One of its projects supported the Democratic Party by funding a voter registration drive in Cleveland to elect a Democratic mayor, Carl Stokes. Another gave money to the staff of Robert Kennedy after his assassination—even though former staff members such as Frank Mankiewicz and Peter Edelman were lawyers earning up to $500,000 a year.
Henry Ford II asked McGeorge Bundy (Ford’s president) to support the Henry Ford Hospital. Bundy refused. Only when Henry Ford II’s wife, Cristina, interceded with Robert McNamara, a prominent trustee, did McBundy agree to a one-time $100 million donation in 1973. That appears to be the foundation’s last gift to the hospital. In 2024, the hospital started on a funding campaign and the Ford Foundation is nowhere in sight.
Finally, in 1974, the foundation authorized a 530-page report on energy by S. David Freeman (later the head of the government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority).[2] The report set energy conservation as “a matter of highest national priority.”[3] It elevated government planning and control over the oil and auto industries. It proposed appliance energy efficiency standards, mortgage subsidies for people who bought homes that met the standards, pushed for car miles-per-gallon standards, and promoted pollution taxes. (Our sluggish dishwashers are an example of what this report led to.)
The Freeman report also mused that “a political decision must be made: to restrain windfall profits by price controls; to tax some of them away and spend the proceeds in ways that will benefit the poor; or to do nothing.“[4]
By the way, you won’t read about Henry Ford II’s disaffection in the history page on the Ford Foundation’s website.[5] However, the New York Times published portions of his resignation letter, including the quotes above.
Other Foundations Went Rogue, Too
The Ford Foundation was not alone. Others that turned against their creators include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Pew Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Robertson Foundation, the Buck Foundation, and the Barnes Foundation.
We have this full picture because one person brought the examples together. He was the late Martin Morse Wooster, who studied philanthropic organizations for years for the Capital Research Center. Wooster died in 2022 in a hit-and-run accident, but he left rich histories of American foundations in a book that went through four editions.
The final edition (published in 2017) is called How Great Philanthropists Failed and You Can Succeed in Protecting Your Legacy. [6] As the title indicates, Wooster not only identified the ways the founders of these organizations lost control but advised wealthy readers who might be contemplating a foundation how to avoid their predecessors’ mistakes. And he showed all potential donors, small or large, the pitfalls that almost inevitably occur over time.
Let’s look at two other examples of foundations that went astray:
The MacArthur Foundation is famed for its mostly left-wing “genius awards” (ten on the left for every one on the right, wrote Wooster). Who would have thought that it was built on the money of a capitalist who turned around a bankrupt insurance company in the Depression, making it a great success, partly by hiring handicapped workers and discounting rates? John MacArthur then grew his fortune by developing land in New York and Florida. He was a giant proponent of private enterprise and, as Wooster says, “pugnacious.” MacArthur opposed the planners who wanted to block his land developments in Florida (“they think alligators are more important than people’”) and he refused to give money to politicians.[7]
Who would have thought that the Pew Charitable Trust, created by the money from Howard Pew, an entrepreneur in the oil industry (founder of Sun Oil or Sunoco), would abandon its origins? The Pew Trust has supported a plethora of social causes, among them “environmentalists who favored restrictions on oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness,” Wooster observed. [8] Surely, Howard Pew would have been stunned.
These are just a couple of examples. But Wooster’s book is not only about foundations that ended up disparaging the capitalistic sources of their money. It’s about donor intent.
Barnes Foundation: A Sad Tale
One of the most disturbing illustrations of foiling the intent of the donor is the Barnes Foundation. Albert C. Barnes was a leftist liberal who supported the New Republic and the earlier Masses magazine. An entrepreneurial genius in the medical field, over the years he built one of the world’s most outstanding collections of modern art. But he wanted students of art, not the public, to see it—and especially not members of the art establishment. When he exhibited his early collection in 1923, art critics called the works “trash” and the “creations of a disintegrating mind” (not Barnes’ mind; rather, the works of artists like Chaim Soutine). Today, the Barnes collection is worth about $25 billion.
To make a long story short, the Philadelphia art establishment had its revenge after Barnes died in 1951. Using court cases and public pressure, the establishment eventually forced the foundation to leave its home location, a small suburb of Philadelphia, and house the artwork in a public Philadelphia museum. The story is complicated, but you can get an idea of the course of things by the name of a documentary about Barnes’ experience, “The Art of the Steal”. The movie, on Youtube, is unforgettable.
Not every foundation has turned on its creator, and Wooster praises those that didn’t. He goes on to argue that there are two ways a wealthy philanthropist can prevent such takeovers:
Spend your money as effectively as possible while you are alive.
Set a sunset date for your foundation.
There’s much more to this book, of course, and much more to the entire issue of donor intent. But this is my start.
Notes
[1] “Excerpts from Henry Ford Letter, “New York Times, January 12, 1977.
[2] Energy Policy Project of the Ford Foundation, A Time to Choose: America’s Energy Future (Cambridge, MA : Ballinger Publishing. 1976). S. David Freeman was the lead author.
[3] Energy Policy Project, 329.
[4] Energy Policy Project, 8.
[5] Ford Foundation, “Our Origins.
[6] Martin Morse Wooster, How Great Philanthropists Failed and You Can Succeed in Protecting Your Legacy (Washington, D.C.: Capital Research Center, 2017).
[7] Wooster, 63.
Editor’s Note: This article is just the beginning of the problems with foundations today. These non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been corrupted to the core by their bureaucrats and/or the trust-funder descendants of their founders. They have abused tax-exemption to such a degree that few even dare to investigate. They have also thoroughly corrupted government as we have learned with the USAID scandal. Because money talks, they are the source of the rot that has invaded every institution today. If Donald Trump wants to truly make a difference on behalf Western Civilization for the long-term he will attack this problem forcing reform.
#Foundations #NGOs #OIl #NaturalGas #MasterResource #Ford
When I served on the Board of a college and a member of a church finance committee, I became interested in and involved in decision making regarding the importance of honoring "Donor Intent". I then started reading and subscribing to Philanthropy Magazine and other sources. The more I dug down the worse the violations of "Donor Intent" became. The examples you use of Pew (I grew up living near Philadelphia when Sun Ship Building was still in business, also Sunoco), Ford and Rockefeller are also striking. Three great American's (similar era as Westinghouse, Edison, Carrier) that provided a path for American excellence. The Leftist leaders of their organizations are thriving off the generous wealth and in fact, promoting and working against the best interests of the country loved by the creators of the enormous wealth. It is a travesty and dishonor of the industrial Titans that were so generous and well meaning. Other NGOs that are sadly leftist and once had good intentions are the Sierra Club, NRDC, EDF Planned Parenthood and many more activists. From my checking, these foundations that grow their tax sheltered wealth now have multiple $$Billions of dollars to use against President Trump's agenda to Make America Great Again. They are Generous supporters of Democrats too. America could in fact become a major producer of products and industrial output were it not for Democrats and these rogue NGOs. Sadly, they have more cash to use against American industry than many top U.S. companies. Once America built ships, produced more autos than any other country, invented commercial nuclear power generation and much more. Now the NGOs seem to wish to put us into the 19th century....Hard for me to understand why?