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Ford Foundation reconnects with Ford family after long hiatus

Signalling an important renewed partnership, a Ford family member is joining the board of the New York-based Ford Foundation for the first time in more than 40 years The foundation's board voted Thursday to accept Henry Ford III, son of Edsel Ford II and a rising executive at the automaker, to the foundation's board. The Ford Foundation in recent years has contributed mightily to Detroit's revitalization, notably by leading philanthropic support for the Grand Bargain during Detroit's bankruptcy. But adding a Ford family member to the board can only enhance the partnership between the city and the foundation, a relationship that once was all but dormant. Henry Ford III is the great-great-grandson of auto pioneer Henry Ford. Now 38, Ford III joined the Ford company in 2006 in labor relations, moved through a variety of assignments in sales and other departments, and now works as manager of the corporate strategy team at the company's headquarters in Dearborn. Known as Sonny within the family, Ford III is a former teacher. He earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management. “We are thrilled to welcome Henry Ford III to the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees,” said Darren Walker, president of the foundation. “In recent years we’ve made a series of major investments to help southeastern Michigan, building on years of commitment to the region in which we were founded. "Henry has been an advocate for these efforts, and I am delighted he will bring his dedication to social justice to his board service. Although we were established to be an independent institution, our recent efforts in southeastern Michigan have marked a reconnection with the Ford family, coming full circle with Henry’s election to our board.” In an interview Thursday, Ford said he was delighted to join the board. "I think it means that along with Kevin Ryan, who runs the Detroit office for the Ford Foundation , he and I will continue to bring a perspective to the foundation about what is happening in the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit and be able to relay important information and give the board a perspective about the environment here," he said. Ford said that Walker had reached out to him late last year to ask if he'd be interested in joining the foundation's board. "And I said yes, I was absolutely interested in doing that," Ford said. "I had several conversations with the nominating and governance committee and multiple conversations with Darren and some of my family members" to reach agreement. Combined with the automaker's purchase last year of the historic Michigan Central Station and its plan to establish a campus in Detroit's Corktown district around the station, Ford's role with the foundation enhances the family's and company's already huge presence in Detroit. Edsel Ford, son of the original Henry Ford, created the Ford Foundation in 1936, funding it with Ford company stock. With the growth in the value of the stock, the foundation became one of the largest and wealthiest philanthropic entities in the world. After the deaths of the original Edsel and Henry Ford, the foundation's headquarters moved to New York and gradually divested of its Ford stock. Edsel Ford's son, Henry II, served as a trustee of the foundation for decades but resigned in 1976 over a host of complaints, notably his belief that the increasingly liberal-leaning foundation was ignoring the role that free-market capitalism played in the nation's success. After that, the Ford Foundation more or less ignored its hometown of Detroit, concentrating instead on its worldwide philanthropy. Back home in Detroit, the family had created the Ford Fund to serve as the philanthropic arm of the automaker independent of the namesake foundation in New York. So distant did the relationship become between Detroit and the foundation that then-Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox in the early 2000s explored the possibility of legal action against the foundation for not living up to its mission to support Detroit. Partly in response to that, Susan Berresford, then president of the foundation, explored ways to reconnect the foundation with its hometown. In the mid-2000s, that resulted in the creation of what became the New Economy Initiative, an initial $100-million commitment by multiple foundations to promote new business activity in metro Detroit. Then, in 2013, Walker, by then the president of the foundation, proved instrumental in underwriting Detroit's Grand Bargain during the bankruptcy in which multiple foundations contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up municipal pensions and safeguard the art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Ford Foundation itself gave $125 million to the effort, the largest gift of any of the foundations. In 2017, the Ford Foundation opened a new office in Detroit to guide its new philanthropy here. The office has engaged in multiple efforts, including support for Detroit's Strategic Neighborhood Initiative, a city effort to promote revitalization in the neighborhoods. Contact John Gallagher at 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com . Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep . Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter .