Founded | December 12, 1957 |
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Founders | Edward E. Ford |
Type | Private |
Purpose | To improve secondary education by supporting U.S. independent schools and encouraging promising practices. |
Location |
|
Area served | United States and its territories |
Method | Grants, funding |
Executive Director | John Gulla |
Board of Trustees, Chair | Robert W. Hallett |
Website | eeford |
The Edward E. Ford Foundation (E. E. Ford Foundation) is a private organization that provides funding to independent schools, school accreditors, and education initiatives. [1]
Edward E. Ford, a successful businessman involved in the early years of IBM, established the Foundation on December 12, 1957. Its main objective was to improve the quality of high school education with particular emphasis on private schools. [2] When he died in 1963, Ford bequeathed about $50 million to the Foundation. [3]
The Foundation initially directed much of its efforts toward supporting Ford's high school alma mater, Mercersburg Academy. This included a $1.5 million matching grant in 1964, the highest such matching gift to any American private school at that time. [4] As of 2023 the Foundation had contributed over $125 million in total grants to nearly 1,000 independent schools and associations. [5]
Foundation’s mission "is to strengthen and support independent secondary schools and to challenge and inspire them to leverage their unique talents, expertise, and resources to advance teaching while encouraging collaboration with other institutions." [6]
The Foundation’s Leadership Grant Program is among the most prestigious awards available to independent schools. [6]
Edward E. Ford | |
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Born | 1894 |
Died | 1963 (aged 68–69) |
Education | Princeton University |
Known for | Business and philanthropy |
Edward E. Ford (1894–1963) was a businessman and philanthropist from Binghamton, New York. [7]
The son of IBM co-founder A. Ward Ford, Ford attended Mercersburg Academy (class of 1912), Princeton University, and Lafayette College. [7] [8]
After college Ford established and developed a manufacturing business in Binghamton, New York, which was ultimately became part of IBM. [2] Joining IBM in 1917 as a junior salesman, Ford ascended to the role of division vice-president by 1936. Ford later ventured into independent business in St. Louis, Missouri and later in Florida. [7] His businesses in St. Louis included a Chevrolet dealership. [9]
In 1949, Ford was elected an IBM director, and by 1962, Ford's holdings in IBM stock amounted to about $61 million. [7]
In the late 1950s, Ford donated $350,000 to Mercersburg Academy for its building and development programs. [7]
In 1957, he established the Edward E. Ford Foundation with the primary goal of improving the quality of high school education with particular emphasis on private schools. [2]
Ford's first wife Jane Bloomer died in Delray Beach, Florida in 1960. He later married Mrs. Edward (Jane) Jamison of New York City. On March 5, 1963, Ford died in his sleep at his home in Delray Beach, Florida. [7]
Edward Durell Stone was an American architect known for the formal, highly decorative buildings he designed in the 1950s and 1960s. His works include the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Ponce, Puerto Rico, the United States Embassy in New Delhi, India, The Keller Center at the University of Chicago, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death of the two founders, the foundation owned 90% of the non-voting shares of the Ford Motor Company. Between 1955 and 1974, the foundation sold its Ford Motor Company holdings and now plays no role in the automobile company.
The State University of New York at Binghamton is a public research university with campuses in Binghamton, Vestal, and Johnson City, New York. It is one of the four university centers in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. As of Fall 2020, 18,128 undergraduate and graduate students attended the university.
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Segregation academies are private schools in the Southern United States that were founded in the mid-20th century by white parents to avoid having their children attend desegregated public schools. They were founded between 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, and 1976, when the court ruled similarly about private schools.
The Mid-Atlantic Prep League, also known as the MAPL, is a sports league with participating institutions from prep schools in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the United States. MAPL schools are allowed to have a limited number of post-graduates on their rosters.
Mercersburg Academy is an independent college-preparatory boarding and day high school in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, in the United States. Founded in 1893, the school enrolls approximately 444 students in grades 9–12, including postgraduates, on a campus about 90 miles northwest by north of Washington, D.C.
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Ralph Edward Gomory is an American applied mathematician and executive. Gomory worked at IBM as a researcher and later as an executive. During that time, his research led to the creation of new areas of applied mathematics.
School of the Holy Child, established in 1904, is an American all-girls', Catholic, independent, college-preparatory school for grades 5 through 12, located in Harrison, New York.
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