Opinion: Ford Foundation Needs to Tighten Belt and Clarify Its Mission

The financial overreach that led the Ford Foundation to offer buyouts to a third of its staff has also fostered a “confused philanthropic mission” that could render the organization irrelevant, asserts a Wall Street Journal opinion column

Mark Hemingway, a staff writer for National Review Online, says the foundation has become overtly liberal, taking on “a number of causes that seem more political than philanthropic” and focusing on race and class issues.

Luis Ubinas, the foundation’s president, “may be well qualified to deal with Ford’s fiscal problems,” Mr. Hemingway wrote. “What’s not clear is whether he has a well-defined strategy for clarifying its mission and ending its scattershot approach to grant making.”

Read The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s coverage of the Ford Foundation staff cuts.