What is the Dignity and Justice Fund?

The Dignity and Justice Fund is a pooled grantmaking fund designed to make high-impact grants to advance social justice and equity globally. The Fund was established by the Ford Foundation as a vehicle to align philanthropic resources from donors outside of the foundation with the Ford Foundation’s strategic goals. The Dignity and Justice Fund is a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund (NVF), a U.S. based, 501(c)(3) public charity.

What is the vision and mission of the Dignity and Justice Fund?

The Dignity and Justice Fund supports social justice and equity through targeted grantmaking across a broad range of issue areas including technology and society; gender, racial, and ethnic justice; creativity and free expression; and more.

Core to the Dignity and Justice Fund’s approach is creating a pooled fund that does not receive funding from the Ford Foundation but does leverage the foundation’s programmatic expertise to inform and guide the fund’s grantmaking strategy. Towards this end, Ford Foundation will contribute in-kind staff support to the fund. The fund is designed to make grants efficiently to nonprofit partners with minimal administrative burden.

What is the governance structure of the Dignity and Justice Fund?

The Dignity and Justice Fund is guided by an advisory board of Ford Foundation leaders. The advisory board helps the project achieve impact by making strategic recommendations, including identifying, vetting, and recommending grantee partners, and providing subject matter expertise. As the Fund’s fiscal sponsor, NVF holds ultimate fiduciary and legal responsibility for the Fund and its grantmaking, including ensuring compliance with all financial and legal regulations.

How do projects supported by the Dignity and Justice Fund get selected?

Grantees of the Dignity and Justice Fund are recommended to the board of New Venture Fund by the Fund’s advisory board, which consists of members of the Ford Foundation leadership team. The recommendations may include input from other technical and subject matter experts to guide the fund’s grantmaking strategy.