In late October, the Ford Foundation went public with an ambitious strategy reset, long in the works, that marked its first such overhaul in more than a decade.
An extensive report Ford published alongside the announcement laid out seven funding priorities — including strengthening democratic governance and the rule of law, and building inclusive economies. Ford’s stated aim? To help its grantees navigate what Executive Vice President Nick Turner called “a realm that is best described as dynamic and volatile and unpredictable.”
In an interview with IP’s David Callahan, Ford President Heather Gerken discussed another aspect of the iconic grantmaker’s evolution that will be of great interest to anyone looking to get (or keep getting) Ford money. That is, the foundation plans to make fewer, bigger grants, with an emphasis on multi-year funding.
In a November 9 announcement, Ford laid out what that will mean in greater detail.
First, at least 50% of the foundation’s total annual program grantmaking budget will take the form of multi-year general operating support, over timelines ranging from three to five years. While over 80% of Ford’s grants already provide flexible support, most of these grants are one- or two-year commitments. Ford’s change means leaders at some grantee organizations will be able to spend less time thinking about grant renewals and more about long-term strategic planning.
Ford also announced that starting in 2028, it will commit 5% of its annual program budget to “institutional strengthening” resources — including financial resiliency, leadership development, and safety and security support — that will be available to grantees, regardless of grant size, type or term. According to Ford, the figure represents an eightfold increase in what it calls “dedicated capacity funding.”
Multi-year general support and institutional strengthening were key pillars of Ford’s Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) initiative, a 10-year effort to support grantees in a less restricted and more holistic way that also served as a model for other funders. Last year, the foundation announced it would wind down the program, although it noted that Gerken, who took the helm last November, was looking to carry it into its “next iteration.” The next iteration, it seems, has arrived.
“BUILD is not going to be a separate program, which is what it had been before,” Gerken told me. “It’s just going to be part of our DNA.”
Significant grantmaking changes at any foundation require stakeholders to make difficult trade-offs, and Ford’s new approach will mean some existing grantees will lose support over time. The good news is that the BUILD model suggests that many grantees, backed by multi-year general support and institutional strengthening resources, will be well positioned to build financial sustainability and adapt to fast-moving conditions on the ground — even if they end up falling off Ford’s grants list.
“This refresh was not driven by outside consultants; it was entirely done within the foundation by the people who know and love the place,” Gerken said. “We were able to come up with innovative work to better serve our grantees and the sector.”
Reinforcing BUILD’s message: the importance of multi-year, flexible funding
Ford launched BUILD in 2015 as a $1 billion commitment to help social justice organizations expand their long-term resilience through flexible funding, multi-year support, and institutional strengthening.
It was a refreshing counter-narrative to the status quo. As many readers know all too well, funders’ penchant for project-based support often forces applicants to jump through hoops that aren’t necessarily in their best strategic interests, and one- to two-year grant cycles mean nonprofit leaders, constantly running on the grant application treadmill, have less time to engage in long-term planning.
When Gerken joined the foundation, she brought a deep affinity for BUILD. “When I first met the trustees, the first thing I said to them, other than you should support democracy and rule of law work, is you should build on BUILD,” she said. “As someone coming from the outside world, it was clearly the right way to do grantmaking.” Conversations with leaders at BUILD organizations reinforced that view. “Whenever I meet a grantee,” she said, “they are clearly far more able to meet this moment than grantees who are dependent on project-based support or fundraising year to year.”
Ford Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer Noorain Khan, who was Gerken’s first hire and previously served as the national president of the Girl Scouts of the USA, shared a similar perspective. “Having been on the other side at a nonprofit, your heart skips a beat when you have multi-year, unrestricted funding with institutional strengthening,” she said.
Over the last decade, BUILD has disbursed nearly $2 billion in flexible grants to 591 grantee partners in more than 51 countries. A recent analysis commissioned as a follow-up to Ford’s 2025 BUILD evaluation found that 70% of U.S.-based grantees experienced both increases in revenue and strengthened financial reserves. “The learnings,” Gerken said, “made us confident that we could make a big move.”
Despite BUILD’s documented successes and Ford’s longstanding role as a sector bellwether, flexible funding and multi-year support still haven’t reached critical mass across the broader philanthrosphere. Some funding leaders prefer to support projects that directly align with their focus areas. Others fear that if a market downturn erodes the foundation’s endowment, previous multi-year commitments will account for a greater percentage of their diminished grantmaking budget and hamstring their ability to make other grants.
While Gerken can’t directly speak to other grantmakers’ decision-making, she believes Ford can move the Overton window when it comes to BUILD’s brand of trust-based giving. “The more we’re able to show that you can put it [flexible, multi-year funding] into your DNA, I think it’s more likely that other people will follow our lead,” she said.
A key component of Ford’s new strategy is expanding the length of its grants
Until Ford’s latest announcement, the BUILD package of flexible funding, multi-year support, and institutional strengthening constituted about 40% of its grantmaking. News that it is increasing multi-year, flexible funding to at least 50% may not seem like a particularly dramatic development — until you consider the benefits of longer funding timelines paired with the expansion of institutional strengthening to all grantees.
“We had a pretty good track record of 80%-plus of our non-BUILD grants being general support, but many of those grants were one or two years,” Khan said. By extending grants to three to five years, she envisions organizations will “get into a cadence with their program officers and think long term about their resilience.” Those conversations will include discussions around the targeted institutional strengthening supports that were previously available only to BUILD partners.
Ford expects its shift toward longer grant terms will also affect how program officers engage with grantee leaders. Those overseeing a portfolio of one- to two-year grants typically spend less time working with grantees on long-term resilience and more on what Gerken called “the million details of the grants you’re working on.” Extended grant terms free up program officers to lean into deeper strategic partnerships with grantees.
Across its portfolio, Ford staff and grantees have conversations focused on lessons learned, adapting to new circumstances, and how change happens, rather than focusing solely on grantees’ individual activities or performance metrics. This engagement model is a powerful counterargument to the narrative that funders can’t — and won’t — provide unrestricted support because such support can’t be tied to measurable, project-oriented outcomes.
“There are plenty of ways to hold yourself accountable and engage in real-time evaluation without forcing your grantees to put themselves in a bucket and generate things that are there just to give you numbers,” Gerken said.
All active BUILD grants and commitments “are continuing as planned throughout their natural life cycles,” Khan said. Once those grants wind down, BUILD, as an initiative, will be no more, but it will live on “as we institutionalize these principles in how we work at Ford and with our strategies looking ahead.”
Ford aims to strengthen the larger nonprofit ecosystem
After Gerken joined Ford, she went on a listening tour and spoke with foundation and nonprofit leaders around the world. “It became crystal clear to me the sector at large is suffering,” she said, which prompted her to consider ways Ford could expand its support for its grantees and the broader nonprofit and philanthropic ecosystem.
In response, the foundation created an office of innovation, helmed by Khan. “Noorain is thinking about what the nonprofit sector needs at the moment,” Gerken said. “What can we build? What can we provide centrally?” Ford also announced its new director of grantmaking excellence, Luc Athayde-Rizzaro, who will report to Khan and is tasked with operationalizing the foundation’s new grantmaking approach and strengthening staff capacity.
The foundation’s latest announcement also noted that, beginning in 2028, it will support what it calls “independent capacity-building networks and technical assistance providers” that offer services including legal support, digital security, financial health, and leadership services directly to organizations.
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Khan said the kinds of providers that could receive support include groups like current Ford partners Nonprofit GPS, an initiative that provides tools and professional support to nonprofit leaders, and PILnet, which aims to connect organizations with high-quality legal services. Gerken, meanwhile, cited the Rapid Assistance Security Initiative, a special fund Ford developed in partnership with NEO Philanthropy, for U.S.-based grantees who were facing immediate physical security challenges.
“It’s critical that these kinds of organizations also get resources, because we know that civil society around the world needs to have this kind of support,” Khan said. “That’s how we’re thinking about the future — not just Ford Foundation grantees, but everyone.”
Open questions remain
As Ford looks inward to how it interacts with grantees and outward toward strengthening an embattled philanthrosphere, many questions remain. For one thing, it’s still hard to say whether Ford’s strategy will substantially move the needle in tamping down the drivers of authoritarian populism and creating a political environment where liberal values can thrive. Zooming into the foundation’s grantmaking, time will also tell how many Ford grantees may lose support under its new model.
Speaking to IP’s David Callahan after the big announcement, Gerken and Turner were tight-lipped about which areas of grantmaking, exactly, would be cut. That said, the foundation’s decision to expand institutional strengthening support could help concerned nonprofit leaders build the capacity to withstand the potential cessation of funding.
As for the new crop of organizations that will receive access to that support, plus multi-year, unrestricted funding moving forward, one imagines many will see an increase in revenue and strengthened financial reserves, which would obviously be a very good thing. Assuming this scenario comes to pass, Ford may be tempted to raise its 50% multi-year, flexible support floor in the coming years.
What’s less likely, at least from my vantage point, is that those successes, no matter how compelling, will nudge other funders en masse toward multi-year, unrestricted funding. If the pandemic, BUILD’s documented impact, and Trump’s funding cuts didn’t push the sector to adopt a fundamentally more trust-based posture, I doubt Ford’s latest moves will do the trick. (I would love to be wrong.)
Gerken, of course, can’t control what other funders do, though one hopes Ford’s leadership position in the sector will, in fact, spur others to shift their practices. What she and her team can do — and have done, in many cases — is create conditions in which a larger part of Ford’s grantee base has the tools to build short-term responsiveness and long-term resilience.
“We did not start the refresh thinking about how we do grantmaking,” she said. “We thought we were going to focus on the ‘what,’ but the ‘how’ arose organically in our discussions with foundation leaders and grantees. I’m appreciative of how people were able to step back and figure out how we can meet this moment, not just in what we fund, but how we fund it.”
