Earlier this year,?Ford Foundation?president Luis A. Ubi?as announced his plan to leave the foundation this September. In a message to foundation staff, Ubi?as said, ?One of the hardest things for a leader is to know when to step down. I believe it is when he has given as much as he can to the institution he leads. After a period of profound transformation, both in our society and at the Ford Foundation, that moment has come for me.??
In a wide-ranging interview with Rahim Kanani of the Skoll World Forum, Ubi?as reflects on his tenure at the foundation, the state of philanthropy today, measuring and evaluating long-term progress, critical lessons in leadership, and much more.
Rahim Kanani:?When you first arrived at the Ford Foundation six years ago, was the position of president what you expected it to be?
Luis A. Ubi?as:?I had a couple of advantages that allowed me to know and appreciate Ford even before I officially began as president. First, the foundation was a transformative force in my own life. From its support for Head Start to its work to ensure college access, Ford?s work has made the life I have led possible. So I was intimately familiar with the importance and impact of its work, in a very fundamental way, and that was an enormously helpful touchstone for me and has remained so. I also had the chance, in the months prior to my official arrival, to travel to some of our regional offices. These visits to China and Mexico showed me the depth of our work and relationships we have on the ground, and I never forgot how valuable it is that we continue to work close to the problems we seek to address. ?Last, I conducted over 200 interviews with domestic and international stakeholders from across the Ford ecosystem to understand both the challenges and opportunities I would face as I entered the job.
The knowledge I gained from all of these interactions was invaluable to me and helped guide my expectations and aspirations for the role I was about to assume.
Rahim Kanani:?We talk about the first 100 days in the context of the U.S. presidency, but in your case, what were some of the first policies or practices you wanted to implement in order to move the foundation forward and set the stage for your tenure?
Luis A. Ubi?as:?Shortly after I began, we undertook a strategy setting process to ensure that the Ford Foundation?s grant making was clearly focused on addressing the challenges of the next generation. Our goal was to produce a set of impact-oriented strategies that looked forward while also building upon Ford?s nearly 75-year history of leading social change around the world. Right from the start, we were determined to conduct a collaborative process, and we consulted with more than 4,000 leaders and partners in every sector, from nonprofits and government to business and academia. The result was a comprehensive set of new strategies for the foundation guided by clear goals, ways of working and partnership requirements. Just as important, the effort drove a profound recommitment to the mission and values that have long defined the Ford Foundation.
This process was led internally at every step by Ford?s own staff, and I think it did the most to set the stage for my tenure. In essence, we were working very hard to ensure that all our resources?our staff, funding, and reputation?were aligned in the most effective way to achieve our mission. It has made an enormous difference in the way we do our work.
Rahim Kanani:?Throughout those 6 years, what were some of the key initiatives you spearheaded, and what kind of impact have they had?
Luis A. Ubi?as:?Every part of the strategy setting effort I just described was done exactly for this reason?to help us achieve our mission and increase the impact of our work. I?m very proud of the early results, even while knowing that the nature of our long-term work means some results will take many years or even decades to reveal themselves. Our campaigns?More and Better Learning Time and Girls Not Brides, among others?are helping to shape national and global dialogues and are already making a difference to millions on the ground. We expanded funding to civil rights organizations, helping them to emerge from the recession stronger than before. We funded immigration reform when the issue seemed dormant, so that our grantees would be ready if the issue reemerged, which of course it has. We?ve become a leading funder of LGBT rights. We joined with both Republican and Democratic governors from across the country to begin to change how social safety net benefits are delivered to the poor. We worked in places as diverse as Brazil and South Africa to add asset building to conditional cash transfer programs. JustFilms and our work in media are bringing social justice issues into the consciousness of millions. ArtPlace is renewing our commitment to arts venues around the country, in both rural and urban areas, anchoring regional development with arts facilities.? I could go on, but the lesson learned was that clear goals, well thought out strategies and operating discipline yield results in philanthropy as they do in other sectors.
Rahim Kanani:?Is there one particular effort or program that you look back upon and are most proud of?
Luis A. Ubi?as:?You know, it?s almost hard to believe now, but when I was selected to serve as president of the foundation in 2007, the economic crisis was still off on the horizon. And that ensuing Great Recession had a profound impact on our work and the work of nearly everyone else. But as I look back, I?m very proud that we did more than simply respond to the economic crisis?we saw it as an opportunity to build for the future, to ensure our resources were focused where they could do the most good: in the field with grantees. We restructured our operations, moving tens of millions of dollars per year from internal spending into our external program budget, bringing our own operating spending back to 1993 levels. We reformed our operating practices to be more responsive and supportive to grantees. We made current every major technology system to ensure we had the best tools available for our work. We reinvested more than 80 percent of the endowment, adding return while reducing volatility. In the process we moved from an endowment low in early 2009 of $8 billion to nearly $11 billion today. We renovated nine of our ten international offices and our New York office to make them convening centers. All of this took enormous courage and commitment ? from our staff and our Board ? and I?m deeply proud that my successor can hit the ground running, continuing the work of this great institution.
Rahim Kanani:?Looking at giving more broadly, if you were to give us the 30,000 foot view, how would you characterize the state of philanthropy today?
Luis A. Ubi?as:?The philanthropic sector is a fundamentally changed place, with an array of new and more established philanthropic organizations and approaches. This broadening of approaches is an important and powerful shift. The scale and complexity of the problems we are seeking to solve really demand a diversity of givers, approaches and strategies for change. What each of us owes the sector is a focus on results, clarity about our own strategies and candid discussions about what we?re learning. The collective result of that diversity and experimentation holds great potential for progress.
But in addition to the impact of our work, I have also thought a lot about how we do our work. Having come from the private sector, I?m sensitive to the old stereotype that nonprofit organizations have good intentions but will never be a source of managerial excellence or innovation. The insidious effect of that stereotype is that many simply assume that nonprofits cannot be expected to perform at the level of their corporate counterparts.
I reject that outright. I have been deeply impressed by many of the nonprofit leaders we?ve partnered with, not simply because of their values or aspirations, but because of the managerial expertise and leadership they bring to their organizations. It?s also why I am so deeply proud of the process our staff led right here at Ford. We pushed right back against the mistaken notion that large nonprofit organizations are somehow unmanageable or too complex to run efficiently. We?ve shown that even a global foundation, with more than 75 years of history, activities in dozens of countries and $11 billion in assets, can be nimble in the way that our world today demands.
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