Hoovering Up Henry Money: Free Money Versus Free Enterprise

Hoovering Up Henry Money: A Guide to Ford Foundation Grants (full series)
Free Money Versus Free Enterprise | Revolutions and Bullhorns
Crime and Democracy | Shaping the News

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The Ford Foundation, a hunk of Ford Motor founder Henry Ford’s fortune, is one of American philanthropy’s heftiest cashes of cash. According to its latest publicly available IRS filing, the Ford Foundation reported net assets in excess of $13.9 billion and cumulative annual grants exceeding $700 million.

What does it take to win Henry’s money?

He died in 1947, and it has been more than a half century since the family had the votes to control the foundation. So, this isn’t the much-maligned “dark money” you read about, but instead dead money, zombie billions under the direction of little-known left-wing ideologues such as Ford Foundation president Darren Walker.

At the helm since 2013, Walker announced last month that he would retire after 2025.

At the end of 1976, Henry Ford II, the founder’s grandson and then-chairman of the eponymous auto firm, became what was at the time the last of the family to resign from the Ford Foundation board of directors.

“I’m not playing the role of the hardheaded tycoon who thinks all philanthropoids are socialists and all university professors are Communists,” he wrote, in his sharply worded resignation letter. “I’m just suggesting to the trustees and the staff that the system that makes the foundation possible very probably is worth preserving.”

Free Money Versus Free Enterprise

The advice didn’t take. Overt opposition to capitalism remains a fine way to load up on Henry’s loot.

For example, Law for Black Lives (L4BL) is a fiscally sponsored project of NEO Philanthropy. NEO received a $300,000 grant for the L4BL in August 2023, part of $8.8 million in total grants sent from Ford to NEO during 2023 and the first seven months of 2024.

The description provided by Ford philanthropoids for the L4BL grant says it was meant “to cultivate a pipeline of community-based social justice lawyers.”

Pro Tip: Those seeking Henry’s money are advised to regurgitate lots of left-wing phrases such as “social justice,” as this correlates highly with receiving a grant. A sustained barrage can be found on the mission statement on the Law for Black Lives website, which defines the nonprofit as “a Black-led, queer, abolition minded, multiracial, feminist and anti-capitalist movement.”

Similarly, “Dismantling Racial Capitalism” is the headline of a September 2024 event sponsored by the Action Lab, recipients of at least $285,000 in Ford grants since the start of 2023. In one of the grant descriptions, a Ford staffer managed to twice fit in the phrase “social justice.”

The main web page for the Center for Economic Democracy claims they are “building a post-capitalist world that puts people and the planet first.” Ford staffers thought post-capitalism was worth a $300,000 “general support” grant in February 2024.

Ford gave the Sunrise Movement Education Fund $150,000 in October 2023, part of $650,000 cumulative donations from Ford to Sunrise since June 2020.

Beginning in 2019 Sunrise became the main promoter of the Green New Deal, a grab bag of hard-left climate and economic proposals aptly described by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a “radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy.” An independent analysis provided by the American Action Forum estimated it would cost U.S. taxpayers as much as $90 trillion over 10 years, or more than triple the $27.4 trillion annual GDP of the American economy.

The main page of the Sunrise Movement website features multiple images of young demonstrators. One shows three of them with a bullhorn, with a caption proclaiming an unlikely objective: “Strategy 1: We’re making the Green New Deal popular.”

Allied Media Projects has received grants totaling more than $2.4 million from Ford since the beginning of 2023.  One Allied project during the period was earmarked by Ford for a “field guide” with the title “Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism’s Temporal Bullying.”

So don’t ask the keepers of the Ford fortune for any nickels to support the system that birthed it.

Instead of promoting free enterprise, try promoting free money!

“Core support for Decolonizing Wealth’s Case for Reparations Fund to advance the case for economic reparations for black and indigenous people in the United States,” is the description Ford attached to a March 2023 grant shipped to Allied Media Projects. On its main page, Allied’s Decolonizing Wealth Project refers to reparations as “racial reparative giving.”

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice has received at least $500,000 from Ford since 2023. A video playing at the top of the nonprofit’s main page shows pro-reparations street demonstrations and other images with the same theme. “We demand reparations for slavery,” proclaim signs held by several participants.

Similarly, a “push for reparations” was included in the Ford grant description for an October 2023 donation of $100,000 to Project Truth and Reconciliation. And the Episcopal Diocese of New York received $50,000 in January 2024 for what Ford described as their “work with reparations and economic justice.”

Those grasping for Ford funding should play up that “economic justice” euphemism. At least four dozen other times since January 2023 the Ford Foundation has incorporated that phrase (or variants) into grant descriptions and/or sent money to groups using it on their website. Put together, these grants totaled more than $24.3 million.

Examples of recent grant writing in this category included Make the Road States ($3.5 million), ISAIAH ($2.5 million), Florida Rising Together ($1.9 million) and the Local Progress Policy Institute ($1.2 million).

The mission of the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) is to “organize Korean and Asian Americans and immigrants to achieve social, racial, and economic justice.” Apparently impressed by the comprehensive virtue signaling, the Ford Foundation sent a grant for more than $1 million to the nonprofit in November 2023 and earmarked it for “social, racial and economic justice.”

This was a relatively huge financial boost. During the year ending June 2023, NAKASEC reported total revenue of just over $7.2 million, almost $3.3 million more than the nonprofit had pocketed in any other year. As recently as 2016, total revenue was barely more than $1 million.

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In the next installment, bullhorn-blaring demonstrator attract Ford Foundation funding.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/hoovering-up-henry-money-part-1/