Ford Foundation President Darren Walker Believes Nonprofits Should Take More Risks
Leading the Ford Foundation, one of the largest private nonprofits in the U.S. with an endowment of around $16 billion, isn’t an easy job to step away from. “Part of the challenge is it’s just so alluring to stay in the position,” said Darren Walker, the foundation’s outgoing president, yesterday (Sept. 23) while speaking at the Concordia Summit in New York. Earlier this year, Walker, 65, announced plans to retire by the end of 2025. His departure will cap a prolific 12-year tenure that boosted the philanthropic organization’s endowment by nearly $6 billion and pivoted much of its focus towards justice and inequality.
Walker, 65, is ready to let someone else take the reins to reap the benefits—and challenges—that come with his role. “These jobs are intoxicating, and they can also be corrupted because you can actually begin to believe all of the things that people tell you on a daily basis,” he said. “For me, you always want to leave the party before the host wants you to leave.”
Before his appointment as president in 2013, Walker acted as vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation, worked at the Harlem-based Abyssinian Development Corporation and had a decade-long career as a corporate lawyer. Fulfilling Ford Foundation’s mission meant the executive occasionally had to reflect on the ins and outs of the organization itself. Walker pointed to the foundation’s involvement in movements against private prisons as an example. At one point, the nonprofit was simultaneously investing in for-profit prisons and attempting to end the practice. (Walker helped divest the fund from private prisons, according to a July interview with Time.) Such paradoxes can require “an interrogation of our practices, our own policies,” he said.
How can the philanthropic sector improve?
Despite the relative independence afforded by foundations compared to for-profit corporations that must answer to clients and stakeholders, Walker said he doesn’t believe philanthropic organizations fully take advantage of these freedoms.
“There’s no doubt that we don’t do enough risk-taking,” he said. During the pandemic, he fought to double the foundation’s grantmaking to more than $1 billion. The ability to talk about risk and to be transparent about initiatives that didn’t work out is also important. “There is no other sector that has more available risk capital than philanthropy, and unfortunately, we leave so much of it on the table,” he said.
Under Walker’s leadership, the Ford Foundation has nearly doubled its grants to communities of color to $206 million from $111 million a decade ago, while grants aiding women and girls rose to $124 million from $88 million. Much of Walker’s approach towards justice and philanthropy can be explained by a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quote that the Ford Foundation head often references: “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”
A search committee composed of members of the Ford Foundation’s Board of Trustees will oversee finding the organization’s next president—but they won’t be finding another Walker. The philanthropic leader recalled the Ford Foundation’s first all-hands meeting held after his departure was announced, where the foundation’s board chair said it would be difficult to find someone to fill his shoes. “I corrected him for the last time, I said, ‘Darren is taking his shoes with him,'” recalled Walker. “Twelve years ago, you thought my shoes were right. We need some new shoes.”