Ford Foundation to Award $19-Million to Help Leaders of Local Charities

By VIKKI KRATZ

The Ford Foundation this week is announcing a new awards program to support local non-profit leaders, as well as to identify the characteristics that make them successful.

The six-year, $19-million program — Leadership for a Changing World — will offer 60 non-profit leaders or teams of leaders $100,000 each over two years to support their work. In addition, they will be eligible to receive up to $30,000 to pursue educational opportunities.

“Some of the most creative things that are going on are by people who work and live closest to the problem,” says Melvin Oliver, vice president for asset building and community development at the Ford Foundation. “The Ford Foundation needed to do more to amplify the work that people are doing in local efforts.”

Ford has asked the Advocacy Institute, a Washington organization that trains charities on how to bring about social and political change, to run the program.

Award recipients submit a detailed plan to the Advocacy Institute outlining how they will spend the money. The money must be used to advance their work, and not more than 20 percent may be spent on capital expenditures, such as computers, without the Advocacy Institute´s approval.

Sharing Ideas

The leaders will also attend semiannual meetings where they can share ideas.

“These folks will be a resource for each other,” says Mr. Oliver. “One of the big differences of this program compared to other programs is that we´re not trying to catapult these leaders into new positions. That may happen, but we want to make sure they are more effective now.”

Researchers from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University will be interviewing award recipients and watching them at work, with the goal of understanding how community leadership develops. Of particular interest to the researchers: how local leaders bring together people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds, as well as how they overcome geographic divides, to work together for a common cause. “Leadership studies generally focus on the ‘great man’ type of leadership — the businessman type,” Mr. Oliver says. “We believe there are alternatives. We believe that the kind of leaders we´ll identify will evidence some common attributes.”

Ford is accepting nominations for the first 20 leaders through January 5, 2001. Winners will be announced in October 2001.

For more information, or to nominate a leader, write to Leadership for a Changing World, Advocacy Institute, 1629 K Street N.W., Suite 200, Washington 20006-1629; (202) 777-7560; http://www.leadershipforchange.org.