Ford Motor Company Fund and Community Services

Ford Motor Company Fund Vision:

To be recognized as the global leader in corporate philanthropy that builds a better world through community engagement, education and driver safety programs.

Investing in communities is more than the right thing to do; it’s also smart business. Our global company is only as strong as the local communities where our employees and customers live and work, and it is in our mutual interest that we work together with communities to make meaningful contributions in their quality of life.

It is in that spirit that Ford Motor Company Fund and Community Services supports programs and initiatives that help build vibrant and sustainable communities. Recently, we expanded our program to partner with our dealers and a diverse range of nonprofit organizations to enhance quality of life, with a focus on U.S. cities where Ford has a presence, such as Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Nashville, Phoenix, San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego. We’re calling these our “Operation Goodwill” cities.

Our efforts support some of the most vulnerable citizens in the U.S. The goals of the Fund are the same as they were when Henry Ford II founded it 60 years ago: to support local and national programs that effect change in our communities and improve the quality of life.

Ford Motor Company Fund and Community Services builds communities through volunteerism and partnerships with nonprofit organizations that focus on education, preserving America’s heritage and driver safety. The following are examples of some of our most significant or new programs.

Community Initiatives

  • In 2009, we launched the Ford Mobile Food Pantries program to help social service organizations in southeast Michigan collect and distribute food to those in need. In the first year, we provided three Ford Transit Connect vans for food deliveries. We have since expanded the program significantly and expect to donate 16 vans for food collections and deliveries by the end of 2011. Overall in 2010, Ford contributed $210,000 to this program.
  • For the 10th consecutive year, Ford Motor Company and Newman’s Own®, Inc., are partnering with Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger-relief organization, to provide Ford refrigerated trucks loaded with Newman’s Own food products to U.S. communities in need. This unique “Partnership for Hunger Relief” began when Paul Newman reached out to Bill Ford in an effort to improve the distribution of produce and other perishable food to those facing hunger in rural America. Today, a fleet of 98 refrigerated Ford trucks and vans now reaches into all 50 states. To date, our donated trucks have delivered more than 130 million meals to families across the country, particularly in hard-to-reach, underserved communities. Our total donations for this program in 2010 came to $380,000.
  • In 2010, the Fund continued to support organizations and initiatives that preserve America’s culture heritage, including the Gettysburg Museum & Visitor Center and a new two-year exhibit at Mount Vernon that showcases artifacts from the Washington collection. In addition, we continued funding to make possible the premier of a new classical piece by composer Joseph Schwantner in all 50 states in 2010. We also teamed again with the Smithsonian Institution and the Cincinnati Museum Center to offer Freedom’s Sisters, a touring exhibition that honors the legacy of 20 influential African-American women.
  • Ford employees and Ford Motor Company Fund are major supporters of the United Way in the U.S., giving nearly $7 million in 2010 to support numerous community-based social services organizations.
  • Ford also has a long history of working with disabled American veterans. As a major contributor to the Jesse Brown Memorial Youth Scholarship Program, for example, Ford provides scholarships to students who volunteer at local Veteran’s Administration medical centers. For 16 years, Ford has also been a sponsor of the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic, which brings hundreds of disabled veterans to the mountains of Colorado to participate in adaptive sports, including skiing, snowmobiling, sled hockey and rock wall climbing. In 2010, Ford donated $200,000 to purchase seven new vehicles for the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Transportation Network and provided $25,000 to the DAV’s youth volunteer scholarship program.

Driving Safety Programs

Driving Safety Programs

Illinois High School students learning how to recover a vehicle from situations such as ice, rain, snow, or slippery surfaces in the Ford Driving Skills for Life course.

  • The Fund supports teen safe driving through its award-winning Ford Driving Skills for Life program, a safe-driving curriculum that has trained millions of U.S. teenagers through web-based and in-person driving sessions since the program was launched 2003. Developed by Ford, the Governors Highway Safety Association and a panel of safety experts, the free program educates teens with a combination of ride-and-drive events, educational materials, customized in-school events and an interactive website. The program, which has received numerous awards, including the World Traffic Symposium Award, is offered in more than 30 cities in the United States and was expanded into Asian markets in 2008 and into Puerto Rico in 2010.We also recently expanded the program through a partnership with the National FFA Organization (formerly Future Farmers of America). (The National FFA honored Ford in 2010 with its Distinguished Service Citation for outstanding contributions to the FFA and agricultural education. Ford is the largest corporate sponsor of scholarships in the National FFA scholarship program.)
  • Corazón de mi Vida is a national bilingual initiative on child passenger safety developed by Ford Motor Company Fund and Community Services in partnership with the Latino Children’s Institute and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Through this initiative, Latino families, child care providers and the Spanish-speaking community in El Paso, Phoenix and San Antonio are informed about the important role that safety seats and safety belts play in saving children’s lives. Through continued support from Ford, more than 2,875 child safety seats have been distributed, more than 380 bilingual child safety seat technicians have been trained and our safety messages have reached approximately 2.2 million people.

Education Programs

  • The Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies uses an academically rigorous curriculum to provide high school students with 21st-century learning experiences to enhance real-world skills. Since its inception in 2004, more than 100,000 students in 27 states have participated in the program, which relies on collaboration among high schools, community organizations, higher education institutions, government entities and businesses. The program has been awarded the National Governors Association’s first Public–Private Partnership Award for innovative educational programming, among other awards.
  • The Henry Ford Learning Institute is a national nonprofit organization that supports high schools that are focused on creativity and innovation, integrated with college-preparatory courses in math, science, social studies and language arts. The first charter school – Henry Ford Academy (HFA) – was opened in 1997 in Dearborn, Michigan. Since then, three other HFA schools have opened in Detroit, Chicago and San Antonio, Texas, as part of a network of schools.
  • The Ford College Community Challenge invites 32 partner universities and colleges to develop student-led programs that tackle a specific social problem. The five winning projects each use a $50,000 Ford grant to build sustainable communities in an innovative way. Recent projects include a unique automated bike lock and kiosk in Georgia; a winterization project to benefit low-income senior citizens in northern Michigan; and business support to a Detroit bakery that employs formerly homeless and incarcerated men.
  • Ford “Blue Oval” Scholarships are awarded to individual students through organizations such as the Hispanic College Fund, the American Indian College Fund, the United Negro College Fund, the Jesse Brown memorial Youth Scholarship Program and the Society for Automotive Engineers Educational Foundation. In 2010, more than 500 individual scholarships were awarded.
  • The Ford Driving Dreams Through Education Program, launched in 2010 in partnership with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), aims to address the high school dropout rate among Hispanic students. Ten LULAC councils are receiving support to implement local programs that help students stay in school.

Other Company Programs

In addition to the above, Ford supports a wide variety of other organizations through corporate contributions and sponsorships. Highlights from 2010 include the following:

  • For more than 20 years, Ford has been involved in helping find a cure for juvenile diabetes. See the juvenile diabetes case study for more information.
  • Ford has also been a long-time supporter in the fight against breast cancer. For 17 years, Ford has been a National Series Sponsor of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure® series and has dedicated more than $110 million to the cause in donations and in-kind gifts. Ford’s commitment goes well beyond the October race; it lasts 365 days a year and focuses on raising awareness, support and donations for this cause, including customized apparel that is sold on fordcares.com. This specially designed clothing and accessory line, called “Warriors in Pink,” is dedicated to those fighting this disease, and 100 percent of net proceeds go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Since 2006, we have sold more than $6.5 million of the Warriors in Pink products. In addition, more than 75,000 Ford employees and thousands of dealership employees are involved in races and supporting the cause in their local communities. In 2010, we launched a month-long initiative on Facebook, donating $1 to Komen for every new fan who joined the Warriors in Pink Facebook page; the initiative generated $81,122 in funding and 81,122 new fans.
  • Ford volunteers raised $508,000 for the March of Dimes. Ford CEO Alan Mulally and outgoing UAW president Ron Gettelfinger served as national co-chairs of the organization’s annual March for Babies campaign. The combined efforts of the UAW/Ford teams resulted in a 62 percent increase in money raised over the 2009 events. Over the past five years, the UAW/Ford team has raised more than $1.5 million.
  • Ford and the UAW continued our longstanding partnership with the American Red Cross to host 210 blood drives at various office and plant locations across the country, collecting more than 7,860 pints of blood in 2010.
  • Ford volunteers raised more than $140,360 for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in 2010.