The Ford Foundation gave Harvard $2 million yesterday toward the creation of the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics. Another $500,000 was donated anonymously.

The Kennedy Library Corporation will have to raise another $7 1/2 million and present the funds to the University before the Institute can be officially created.

Richard E. Neustadt, associate dean of the School of Public Administration and prospective director of the Institute, said last night that the income from the grant would be used to establish small-scale "experimental projects" similar to those that would be conducted by the Institute.

Neustadt said that there were plans to bring active public officials, but probably not career civil servants, to Cambridge for the next academic year.

He added that studies would be made of the way government policy is formed. And a third project, Neustadt said, would attempt to satisfy students' "non-curricular" political interests. Neustadt said that all of these experiments would be conducted under Harvard's authority.

According to Don K. Price Jr., dean of the faculty of Public Administration, the details of the projects will not be worked out for some time. But, he said, the men to receive fellowships might be selected within the next "three or four months."

"We are not looking for the man who is a professional politician or a career civil servant," Price said. "We want the people in between." He noted that "these men really have an immense influence on government." Even though the program will be geared to them, he said, people from both ends of the spectrum might also participate.

The Institute will probably be located in temporary offices in the Radcliffe Institute of Independent Studies on Mt. Auburn St. until the permanent buildings are completed in 1970.