PETALING JAYA: The largest American foundation donor to Malaysian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) between 1998 and 2001 was the Ford Foundation, a report by an Australian think tank said.
The Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) in its report entitled “US Foundation Funding in Malaysia” said the affluent Ford Foundation provided five grants totalling US$993,630 (RM3.8mil) to promote women’s rights.
IPA executive director Dr Mike Nahan, who authored the report, said even though the Ford Motor Company gave rise to the Ford Foundation, the latter is today totally independent of the former in terms of objectives, function and governance.
The second biggest US foundation donor was the Packard Foundation, another offshoot of a rich US industrialist, who was the co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard company.
It gave three grants totalling US$972,731 (RM3.7mil) to promote population control in the Asia-Pacific region.
The third largest donor was the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, which was established by one of the original investors in the General Motors Company.
It provided US$600,000 (RM2.3mil) to Malaysian-based Third World Network (TWN) to maintain its international activist network.
“This was the single largest grant provided to any organisation,” Nahan said in the report available at www.ipa.org.au.
The Foundation for Deep Ecology was the fourth largest US foundation donor.
It gave eight grants totalling US$555,000 (RM2.1mil) to the Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) and TWN.
Corporate foundations which gave grants to Malaysian NGOs included those associated with AT&T, Motorola, Levi Strauss, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lucent Technologies, BP Amoco and United Parcel Post.
