Reflections:
Helping to Build the Ford
Foundation Asset Building and
Community Development
Program
Melvin L. Oliver
Dean, Division of Social Sciences
Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara
Asset Building: The Perspective of People of Color
Tuskegee University
October 3, 2005
Becoming VP at Ford
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Long time Grantee
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Leadership Change at Ford
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Urban Poverty
UCLA Center for the Study of Urban
Poverty
Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality
Franklin Thomas to Susan Berresford
Opportunity for Change
New Reorganization
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From 7 programs to 3
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Peace and Social Justice
Education, Media, Arts and Culture
Communities, Families, and Livelihoods
Worldwide Responsibility
Focus on Learning from Grantmaking
My Charge
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Take what was formerly 4 programs and
provide coherence, choose the right
leadership, and develop a creative and
responsive program
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Urban Poverty
Rural and Resource Development
Sexuality and Reproductive Health
Program Related Investment
Asset Building and Community
Development Program 1996
The assets program invests in
individuals and organizations
worldwide that build financial,
human, social, and natural resource
assets in ways that reduce or
prevent poverty, and invests in
developing the fields that support
the work of asset-building
organizations.
1997 Spending (Millions $)
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
n
Ope
er
ety
Soci
efell
ur
Arth
ts
Rock
M ac
Asse
Moving a Big Institution like
Ford has Consequences
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Instantly made asset building a legitimate
strategy for poverty reduction
Caused a rethinking of traditional approaches
that were service oriented as opposed to
“mobility” oriented
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Ownership versus rental housing
Challenged asset limits
Focused on institutional constraints for the poor to
accumulate assets
Costs to Moving an Institution
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Time Intensive
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Sexuality and Reproductive Health
What is an asset?
Assets Targeted
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Financial
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Human/Personal
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Social
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Natural Resources
Financial Assets
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Savings
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Investments
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Home ownership
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Business ownership
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Jobs
Human/Personal
Assets
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Health
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Knowledge
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Skills
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Faith
Social Assets
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Families
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Cultural Capital (Trust)
Intergenerational
relationships
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Community leadership
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Philanthropic capital
Natural Resources
Assets
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Land
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Water
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Forests
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Wildlife
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Livestock
Costs to Moving an Institution
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Time Intensive
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Work is invisible outside of the
institution
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Sexuality and Reproductive Health
What is an asset?
Politically you don’t want to expose
institutional dirty laundry
Took me out of the public debates
Did I accomplish what I
wanted to do?
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Yes and No!
Contributed to legitimizing asset building as a poverty
reduction strategy
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Supported asset building policy that has had a
national impact
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Not only in the US but worldwide
IDA’s
Children’s Development Accounts
Secondary Mortgage Markets
Contributed to scholarly work to understand the
sources and consequences of assets
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The racial asset gap
Do assets make a difference
Some of the unfinished
business?
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Making asset-building the new civil rights
agenda of the 21st Century
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Engaging communities of color
Broadening the debate on Asset Building
policy to include middle and upper class asset
building policies
Controlling the debate so that it is not
hijacked by the likes of the “ownership
society” proponents
What I learned being a Senior
Officer of a Major Foundation?
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Major institutions (e.g., large national
Foundations) are limited in what they can do
for “communities of color”
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Ford does a great job, but they will never be the
savior of our communities
Institutions think about their institutional viability
in a larger context and the larger context will
always win out
This is why it is important to have staff and
leadership in these institutions from communities
of color