Darren Walker is a zeitgeist-setter in the philanthropic world. As president of the Ford Foundation — one of the world’s largest charities, with a $16 billion endowment — he's been at the forefront of interrogating the relationship between philanthropy and capitalism. Walker has done as much as anyone to articulate the awkwardness of trying to solve social problems using resources in many cases generated by causing them. His 2019 book, “From Generosity to Justice,” urged foundations to work on addressing the root causes of inequality, rather than just giving money away, and to give recipients more say in how they spend grants. Ford also just put out a "pandemic recovery playbook" calling for more worker protections, workplace diversity and inclusion, and combating political polarization, among other goals. This interview was conducted via email. You were just in Bentonville, Ark., for a ‘Heartland Summit.’ Is there a need to communicate differently to the middle of the country, or what are their unique issues that you think need addressing? We cannot move the needle on entrenched, enduring inequality in this country if we leave out rural and working class communities. Ford’s engagement and investment in the Heartland includes strengthening and supporting the people and places that are the engine of this nation. This means investing in affordable, locally-rooted, forward-thinking and sustainable infrastructure, advancing the needs of workers, supporting local journalism and civic engagement, and advocating for key public health initiatives and advancements. We need to bridge the increasing gap between coastal cities and the rural communities that have increasingly felt left behind due to decades of disinvestment. You also just put out a playbook for an equitable recovery from the pandemic. What does equitable recovery look like to you and how does it fit into what you’ve been doing? We will surely see the reverberations of this pandemic for generations to come, but it is not too late to decide how these impacts will shape our collective futures. In order to achieve a truly equitable recovery to the pandemic, we need to go beyond relief and short-term fixes. The only viable way forward is to lay the foundation for a true, reformative recovery that is inclusive of all people. We need to prioritize workers by expanding access to opportunity and making them owners so they have equity in the businesses that employ them, protect our environment and quality of life, and put the needs of the people who we depend on to dig us out of these crises first. Did your decision to spend more last year change anything about how you give and where you give? More generally, how would you say the pandemic changed Ford, as an institution and in terms of its approach to philanthropy? Do you think those changes will endure even when the pandemic subsides? Without a doubt, the onset of the pandemic unearthed stark inequalities that have persisted for decades, and the critical role philanthropy plays in providing urgent assistance in the most dire situations – from COVID-19 to the crisis in Ukraine – became clearer than ever. At Ford, we joined a number of peer foundations in our pledge to give more flexible funding to the organizations at the frontlines of this crisis. Those decisions saw real and immediate impacts, which is why we renewed our BUILD initiative to deploy $1 billion in flexible funding to social justice organizations over the next five years.
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