Ford Foundation Pledges $1B to Mission-Related Investment

Investment with a clear benefit to society is increasingly claiming imaginations across the world amid the challenges the world faces in 2017. The Ford Foundation, an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization, gave impact investment a significant boost when it announced that it is committing up to $1 billion from its $12 billion endowment over the next 10 years to the nascent investment field known as mission-related investing (MRI).

The commitment is one of the largest ever made to MRIs and the largest by a private foundation.

“We are making this commitment because we believe MRIs have the potential to become the next great innovation for advancing social good,” Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, said. “We need to expand our imaginations and our tools if we want to tackle the large-scale problems facing the world today. We can’t neglect the tremendous power of markets, including the capital markets, to contribute—and with [this] announcement, we are putting a significant amount of our money where our mission is.”