According to H. Rowan Gaither, Jr., the current president of the Foundation, philanthropy, like the old Mormon defense of polygamy, "is a hard thing to live." Gaither's staff receives more than 7000 letters a month, many of them seeking part, if not all, of the Foundation's annual income. As a result, the Foundation must reject far more requests than it can accept.

From $6 to $2,000,000

In the case of a major grant, an institution submits to the Foundation a detailed proposal on the scope, general purposes, and intended uses of a project. The Foundation then sends copies of the proposal to outside experts for appraisal, the budget for the program is examined, and, if recommended, the proposal is either passed or rejected by the Trustees.

In 1953, the Trustees spent $58,000,000 in this manner. Because each request must be individually processed and investigated, the Foundation spent more than $2,000,000 during the same year for administrative expenses. From 1951 through 1953 the Foundation granted $119,000,000 to people and institutions all over the world, for individual projects requiring from $6 to more than $2,000,000.

With few exceptions the Foundation does not administer its own funds, but gives money to established institutions. To obtain a grant, an institution or an individual must plan a definite project.

But if the Fund handed out money to every deserving cause without a guiding policy, it would soon find its vast resources dissipated in the final analysis on worthless projects. The Foundation, therefore, has chosen to allocate its resources to five areas in a definite pattern.

Five Areas of Attack

The five areas in which foundation money is spent represent a broad attack on world problems. In each area the fund has concentrated its money in research projects which are isolated, but which fit into a broad attempt to attack the world's problems. The five areas are:

1) The promotion of international understanding and world peace.

2) The strengthening of democratic institutions and processes.

3) The advancement of the economic well-being of the world.

4) The expansion and the improvement of education.

5) The enlargement of scientific knowledge and understanding about the inner workings of man himself.

"One great need underlies all these problems," the foundation's trustees reported in 1950,"--to acquire more knowledge of man and of the ways in which men can learn to live together."

Through direct grants to universities for specific research projects and through two subsidiary funds set up expressly for the support of education, the Ford Foundation has fulfilled the dictum expressed by the trustees in 1953: "Education in its broadest sense is perhaps the single most promising means for improving human welfare and has been supported in various ways by almost every grant we have made."