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Ford Foundation to Close Offices in Hanoi and Moscow

 

The Foundation's painful decision to close the Hanoi and Moscow offices as part of its effort to adjust to the dramatic reduction in the value of its endowment has triggered expressions of sadness, regret and concern particularly from former field office staff members. We post below President Ubiñas' announcement followed by a sample of the reactions we have received. You are encouraged to add your own thoughts, recognizing the painful choices currently confronting the Foundation.

From the Chronicle of Philanthropy

April 29, 2009

By Ian Wilhelm

After losing almost one-third of its assets during the last year, the Ford Foundation has announced it will close its offices in Russia and Vietnam. “Given our obligation to our grantees worldwide, and the people they serve, we have been forced to make some very hard choices to bring about further savings,” Luis A. Ubiñas, the foundation's president, wrote in an e-mail message he sent to Ford employees on Tuesday. “It is with great regret that I share the news that the foundation will be winding down its operations in Vietnam and Russia by the end of September.” The move will eliminate 30 staff positions and save the organization at least $4-million in its fiscal 2010, which starts October 1, Alfred Ironside, the foundation's director of communications, told The Chronicle. He said Ford chose the two offices, both of which opened in 1996, because their closures would be “considered least disruptive to staff and operations.” In his e-mail message, Mr. Ubiñas wrote that the foundation last year was able to reduce its operating expenses by $22-million thanks to cost-cutting efforts, but that amount was not enough to prevent drastic moves and layoffs. Mr. Ubiñas, a former business consultant who joined Ford in 2008, said the staff members in the Hanoi office and Moscow office were informed of the decision in person by foundation officials Tuesday morning. The foundation recently announced changes in its grant making,saying it would not alter the types of causes it supports but would try to spur collaboration and efficiency among its grantees. The decision to shut down the offices was unrelated to those changes. As for its Russian and Vietnamese programs, the foundation is “enormously proud of the work” of the staff and grantees, said Mr. Ubiñas, and he praised them for helping to build stronger nonprofit groups and improved human rights and economic development in their respective regions. He also said that Ford would continue to operate two signature programs in the regions: the International Fellowships Program, which provides scholarships for graduate study to people from developing countries, and a project to ease the health and environmental damage caused by Agent Orange, a chemical herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Ford, the second wealthiest American foundation, will continue to have a global presence with 10 other overseas offices in Indonesia, South Africa, and elsewhere Despite the closing of the foreign offices, Ford, which has its headquarters in New York, still needs to trim its budget, Mr. Ubiñas said. “We are all affected, both personally and professionally, by the severity of this global recession,” he said. “At the foundation, our challenge is to make the decisions required of us to ensure that our grant budgets are as robust as possible in this time of need and that our costs are structured to meet our long-term needs.”

 

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in these pages are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the LAFF Society.

Comments (1)
Web Editor 5/8/2009 7:30:00 AM
From Oscar Salemink As I understand it, Vietnamese persons and institutions will continue to benefit from two Ford Foundation programs: the International Fellowship Program; and the "Agent Orange" initiative. The IFP is a global program targeting citizens in many countries, not just those where Ford Foundation has an office or is making grants. The "Agent Orange" initiative is a so-called FF "signature program" led by the former FF Representative in Hanoi, Dr. Charles Bailey, and supported by Ms. Susan Berresford, former FF President, who acts as convenor of the US-Vietnam Dialogue Group of Agent Orange/Dioxin http://www.fordfound.org/programs/signature/agentorange/dialoguegroup. This program is an attempt to mitigate the serious, long-term consequences of US chemical warfare in Southeast Asia, perhaps trying to right the wrongs of the past, but it is in my view not - or hardly - dealing with the rapid and deep social, economic and cultural changes in Vietnamese society today. However that may be, it seems hardly conceivable that the current FF President, Luis Ubinas, would close down a signature program started by and still actively supported by his predecessor, Susan Berresford. But perhaps there is something going on which is wider than just Ford Foundation, namely the corporatization of philanthropy - not just in the US but worldwide. The emergence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and prior to that, the Soros Foundation and his Open Society Institute, led directly by "activist" industrialists, bankers and stock brokers, has changed the philanthropic landscape. "Businesslike" management and concentrated large-scale investments focusing on limited targets emulated the "lean and mean" style of corporations in the 1990s and later. Boards of Trustees of older foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur, elected Presidents who would carry out such agendas (let us not forget that also the Rockefeller Foundation has scaled down its office in Bangkok and its "Mekong" inititiative involving funding programs in Vietnam). The characterization of Ford Foundation President Mr Luis Ubinas as a former McKinsey Director - without much experience in philanthropy - is significant in this regard as he brings with him a style which clashes (according to stories that I receive from within the Ford Foundation) with a signature approach of the Foundation as I knew it when I was program officer in Vietnam: a focus on people who operate within institutions and who are connected through networks; an emphasis on building knowledge and innovation; and a long-term commitment to grantees. That kind of "investment" in people and knowledge has gone out of fashion, it seems. Work on culture, work in social sciences, grants that help people and institutions build their capacity to take on larger societal responsibilities -- that approach seems to be on the wane, not just in Vietnam but worldwide (see http://www.fordfound.org/about/new-generation/core-issues/). After all, how can you measure results if your targets are not so narrowly defined as, say, building bridges or distributing antiretroviral drugs. I guess that this looks like an assault on a new programming direction by a disgruntled former FF program officer, and maybe it is, but I am afraid that this is much bigger than the Ford Foundation, the philanthropy sector, or even the US. What has been happening over the last decade(s) has been the worldwide “neoliberalization” of entire sectors of society, in the wake of Reaganomics and Thatcherism. Public utilities like energy, transport and even security services were (and are being) privatized, health and education are partly privatized (in some countries) or made to work according to “market principles” or “business principles” in which values are reduced to figures and (financial) targets, and people and the professional values, knowledge and ethics they embody become disposable. Worldwide, such changes have been imposed on countries by IMF, World Bank and regional development banks; by other development donors; by WTO, TRIPS and (within Europe) the EU. Within countries and institutions, such changes were imposed by new CEOs, university presidents and other leaders who substituted professionals by “managers”, and substantive – often local - knowledge by managerial skills that purportedly can be applied anywhere in the same way. The stated goal is, of course, to increase “efficiency” through more emphasis on measurable targets. Put another way, the kind of process leading to the FF closure of the Hanoi office and of particular lines of work in culture, humanities and social sciences, overseen by a product of “high managerialism” (McKinsey), resembles the restructuring taking place at my privately-founded but publicly-funded university in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. That restructuring (which has been going on for quite some time now) is currently “managed” by a University President who has no clue about science or education but whose previous professional accomplishments were in directing a harbor and a hospital; and it is dictated by Government- and EU-prompted changes in public funding for higher education and research. I think that many VSG members working in academia or in other organizations might have similar experiences with this kind of process. The deep irony is that this process of what can be called neoliberalization is ongoing, even after the global bankruptcy of the financial sector where this thinking originated, plunging the whole world into crisis, forcing governments to bail out “badly managed” banks and companies with public (taxpayers’) money, and forcing Foundations like Ford to cut back its expenses. No regrets, no responsibilities, no apologies for mistakes; just more “management” by dismissing knowledge and the people embodying that. Sorry for this long rant; I had to get this out of my system, perhaps prompted by my sense of shame and sorrow towards my former Vietnamese colleagues who suddenly find themselves without jobs and who will have to struggle to find something else and to make ends meet.

 

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