This report originated in a request to me from the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation in the summer of 1975. The trustees, aware that there would be a change of leadership at the Foundation before 1980, wanted to make a running start in the process of planning for the future. Their first step was to make a study of the great national and international needs that might lie ahead in the next decade and a half, and where and how the Foundation might address them. They sought advice both within the Foundation and outside it, and they engaged in long discussions of their own.

Although the exercise was directed toward planning for the future, the trustees also wished to review our past, not exhaustively but at least well enough to have a clear sense of what the Foundation had been up to in the quarter century of its existence as a national and international institution. In this connection, the chairman of our board, Alexander Heard, asked for a canvass of the Ford Foundation's experiences, successes, and failures during the last twenty five years...(focused) on the broad objectives sought, the means pursued to achieve them, and the results.

As policymakers for the Foundation, the trustees are ultimately responsible for the work of the staff, and they quite properly demand that we account for what we have done and explain what we would like to do. But I think it is fair to say that conversations between the Foundation's staff and its trustees are forthright. So the report dealt with shortcomings, unrealized hopes, miscalculations, and downright blunders, as well as with what we regard as achievements. The writer of the report and those who assisted him also were free of constraints they might have felt if they were washing the Foundation's linen in public.

The review served its purpose well, and some trustees and staff members urged that we make it available publicly. We have decided to do so because it is as faithful a representation of what the Foundation thinks about itself as one can get in the circumstances. The changes made for this expanded public version consist mainly of eliminating institutional shorthand and spelling out references to matters that are familiar to insiders but that might be obscure to general readers. We also have omitted one or two comments that might unhelpfully reflect on the work of others.

This publication is meant as another step in a continuing effort to account for our work. We are required by law to record publicly what we have done. But it is a lot less clear to the public how we work, and therein, i believe, lies the chief value of this report. The review shows how our objectives have been identified and also how varied kinds of action have been chosen. Along with careful and collegial designs, the reader will find choices that resulted from accident or personal inclination. These matters are illustrated by references drawn from our experience over nearly three decades.

CONTENTS
Reviewing the record:
     Objectives.
     Strategies and modes of operation.
     Results.

Processes of philanthropic management:
     Choosing objectives - The influence of individuals, Events, Evolution.
     Planning and evaluation.
     Instruments.

Strategies:
     Building and improving institutions - New or existing institutions?, Dependency,
     Reinforcement ... reform ... redirection, Established and nonestablished institutions.
     Generating knowledge for understanding and action - The rationale for research
     and fact-finding, Characteristics of research support. 
     Developing individual talents. 
     The multiplier effect.      
     An independent contribution to public policy - Public-policy issues, Public policy
     processes.

Case Studies:
     Case 1.   Reproductive biology: Leadership/partnership.
     Case 2.   Universities: New Agendas - Graduate education, Urban research
                    and training, Public-policy programs, International studies, Business
                    education.
     Case 3.   Legal defense for the poor: A running start.
     Case 4.   Arms control: The continuing urgency.
     Case 5.   Instructional television: Massive oversell.
     Case 6.   Gray areas/community development - Corporations: Philanthropy 
                    as social reform -- Program origins, Gray areas, Community
                    development corporations.
     Case 7.   Federal executive training: The higher generalism.
     Case 8.   Resident theatres/Ballet Companies: Financial discipline.
     Case 9.   American studies in Europe: A changing cultural climate.
     Case 10. Cooperative education: Expanding a concept.
     Case 11. Housing: Concreteness and abstraction - Housing inventory,
                   Open housing.
     Case 12. School finance reform: latecomers.
     Case 13. European management education: Transplanting experience.
     Case 14. International language programs: Reflections of development views.
     Case 15. Civil rights litigation: Wellspring of judicial history.
     Case 16. Social science development in Latin America: Self-reliance for progress.

Appendix: 
     A selected chronology of the Ford Foundation fields of foundation activity.

1. Higher education (general).
2. University based programs -- International training and research, Engineering education, Humanistic scholarship, Business education.
3. Early learning and secondary education.
4. Public television.
5. The arts.
6. Government performance.
7. Law and the administration of justice.
8. Poverty and the disadvantaged.
9. Civil rights, civil liberties, race relations.
10. Women's programs.
11. Resources and the environment.
12. Economic and social research in the and Europe.
13. International affairs.
14. The less-developed countries.
15. Limited programs - Journalism, Aging, Science, Hospitals and medical education, Michigan philanthropies, Drug abuse, Philanthropy.

Annual program expenditures.
Expenditures by field.
Index.

This report originated in a request to me from the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation in the summer of 1975. The trustees, aware that there would be a change of leadership at the Foundation before 1980, wanted to make a running start in the process of planning for the future. Their first step was to make a study of the great national and international needs that might lie ahead in the next decade and a half, and where and how the Foundation might address them. They sought advice both within the Foundation and outside it, and they engaged in long discussions of their own.