10/23/2026
This week, the Ford Foundation, under the leadership of President Heather Gerken, released a new strategy built around one question: What does democracy require now?
Fifty-six years ago, part of Ford's answer was the Joint Center.
In 1970, Ford's founding grant of $820,000, about $7.2 million in today's dollars, was an investment in building an institution to support the first generation of Black elected officials after the Voting Rights Act. A few years later, Ford helped us become fully independent.
We became the infrastructure behind those officials and the organizations that serve them: providing training, mapping a path into the systems that controlled resources for their communities, collecting data no one else was tracking, and producing research on where power actually sat. We even had the foresight to place paid college interns with newly elected officials, seeding the next generation while supporting the first.
Today, the same needs still define our work, and we are grateful that Ford continues to invest in it. Much of Ford's framework describes what we do every day. The question this moment puts to all of us is what the next generations of Black leadership will need to strengthen democracy for everyone. It is a question the Joint Center has been answering for 56 years.
We are proud to share How We Meet This Moment, a new report by Ford Foundation President Heather Gerken laying out our institution's strategic roadmap for the years ahead.
Our belief in human rights and inherent human dignity is coded into our DNA. From racial justice to disability rights, we remain unwavering in our commitment to protecting democratic values, fundamental freedoms, and inclusive economies that empower people to shape their own futures.
Everyone deserves a voice in shaping the rules and tools with which to build better lives and stronger communities.
Read the full report here: fordf.org/MeetThisMoment
