In the 1950 Report of the Study of the Ford Foundation on Policy and Program, the trustees set forth five "areas of action," according to Richard Magat (2012): economic improvements, education, freedom and democracy, human behavior, and world peace.

[13][14] Since the middle of the 20th century, many of the Ford Foundation's programs have focused on increased under-represented or "minority" group representation in education, science and policy-making.

[4][23][24][25] The board of directors decided to diversify the foundation's portfolio and gradually divested itself of its substantial Ford Motor Company stock between 1955 and 1974.

[31] In 1951, the foundation made its first grant to support the development of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), then known as National Educational Television (NET), which went on the air in 1952.

[32] These grants continued, and in 1969 the foundation gave $1 million to the Children's Television Workshop to help create and launch Sesame Street.

[34]: 1  Among its funding programs were a series of individual awards for people working in adult education to support training and field study experiences.

Throughout the 1950s, the foundation provided arts and humanities fellowships that supported the work of figures like Josef Albers, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Herbert Blau, E. E. Cummings, Anthony Hecht, Flannery O'Connor, Jacob Lawrence, Maurice Valency, Robert Lowell, and Margaret Mead.

In 1961, Kofi Annan received an educational grant from the foundation to finish his studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

[41] In the 1960s and 1970s, the foundation gave money to government and non-government contraceptive initiatives to support population control, peaking at an estimated $169 million in the last 1960s.

Conservative critic Heather Mac Donald contends that the financial involvement of the foundation instead changed the clinics' focus from giving students practical experience to engaging in leftwing advocacy.

[56] Between 1969 and 1978, the foundation was the biggest funder for research into in vitro fertilisation in the United Kingdom, which led to the first baby, Louise Brown born from the technique.

IFP identified approximately 4,300 emerging social justice leaders representing historically disadvantaged groups from outside the United States for graduate study around the world.

Fellows came from 22 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Russia and the Palestinian Territories and studied a wide variety of fields.

"[72] The Ford Foundation seeks to address "the underlying causes that perpetuate human suffering" to grapple with and intervene in "how and why" inequality persists.

In 1950, the U.S. government sought to bolster the Fighting Group's legitimacy as a credible independent organization, so the International Rescue Committee was recruited to act as its advocate.

[75] McCloy knowingly employed numerous US intelligence agents and, based on the premise that a relationship with the CIA was inevitable, set up a three-person committee responsible for dealing with its requests.

For example, Roy wrote that the Ford Foundation's establishment of an economics course at the Indonesian University helped align students with the 1965 coup that installed Suharto as president.

A Washington Post book review by E. Anthony Rotundo, author of "American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era", alleges that Sommers "persistently misrepresents scholarly debate, [and] ignores evidence that contradicts her assertions" about a gender war against boys and men.

[84] In 2003, the foundation was critiqued by US news service Jewish Telegraphic Agency, among others, for supporting Palestinian nongovernmental organizations that were accused of promoting antisemitism at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism.

Under pressure by several members of Congress, chief among them Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the foundation apologized and then prohibited the promotion of "violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state" among its grantees.

This criticism peaked after the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, where some nongovernmental organizations funded by the foundation backed resolutions equating Israeli policies with apartheid.

In 2011, right wing Israeli politicians and organizations such as NGO Monitor and Im Tirtzu claimed the NIF and other recipients of Ford Foundation grants supported the delegitimization of Israel.

[65] The Ford Foundation announced in October 2023 that it would no longer provide grants to Alliance for Global Justice, a charity in Arizona claimed by journalist Gabe Kaminsky in a Washington Examiner investigation to share Palestinian terrorism ties.

"[86] The allegations of terrorism links were proven false[better source needed]; Alliance for Global Justice was found to be funding an organisation that attempts to secure the human rights of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

[91] Source: History of Ford Foundation[92][93] ° Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network, Progressives, the International Rescue Committee and the CIA, M. E. Sharpe, 1995, Routledge, 2015.