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Business is an unlikely hero: a force for good working to solve society's most pressing challenges, while boosting bottom line. This is social purpose at work. And it's a dynamic journey. Purpose 360 is a masterclass in unlocking the power of social purpose to ignite business and social impact. Host Carol Cone brings decades of social impact expertise and a 360-degree view of integrating social purpose into an organization into unfiltered conversations that illuminate today's big challenges and bigger ideas.
Carol Cone:
I'm Carol Cone, and welcome to Purpose 360, the podcast that unlocks the power of purpose to ignite business and social impact.
Welcome to Purpose 360. I'm Carol Cone, and today I am so honored to have Mary Culler, who is the President of Ford Philanthropy to join us. And her background is extraordinary for this job. She was chief of staff to Bill Ford for about seven years. She was director of state and local government affairs for Ford. She worked for, prior to Ford, she started I think 1999, she worked for Chicago's Mayor Daley. She helped with the EPA in DC. So she has such an amazing background, not traditional for someone who's running a philanthropy of this size. So we're going to get into how that helps her in a moment. But welcome to the show, Mary.
Mary Culler:
Hi, Carol. Thanks so much for having me this morning or today. I'm thrilled to be here.
Carol Cone:
It's wonderful to have you there. And I want to congratulate you because last year was the 75th anniversary of Ford's commitment to philanthropy and you did a rebranding. So we'll talk a little bit about that. But this is a deep and rich history for a company that so many people think, "Oh yeah, it's the Ford Foundation." No, this is not the Ford Foundation, listeners. This is something very different. So why don't we start out with a little bit more about your background, Mary, and then we're going to talk about Ford philanthropy and its overarching direction, and then we're going to get into lots of great questions.
Mary Culler:
Well, I really appreciate it. I can't believe as time sort of flies over the years, but I was very fortunate early on in my career to go to Washington to work for the federal government. And I did work for the Environmental Protection Agency, as you said, and in that capacity, I was fortunate to work on a very innovative team and we started the National Brownfields Program, which was all about redeveloping properties that were laying stagnant in communities. And I think that was the beginning of my love for really understanding the power of community-driven programing and the importance of working at a very hyper-local level with people, listening to people understanding what their needs and wishes are and really developing programs together.
Carol Cone:
And I love it. So why don't we just start with a higher level, which is last year was your 75th. You rebranded. Let's have our listeners, what do you focus on and also why did you rebrand?
Mary Culler:
So we are very fortunate. Our company is 122 years old. We have always been very involved in community. Our founder, Henry Ford, really was one of the first philanthropists in the sense that he, for example, partnered with nonprofits, the American Red Cross. He gave the American Red Cross some of the first vehicles in World War I to go out on the front lines and feed our soldiers. And so he was always very steeped in being in the community and doing for community. And so over that time, we have been fortunate, 75 years ago, Henry Ford II established Ford Philanthropy, Ford Fund at the time. And we have pretty much stayed true to our values, which is to be in community, as you said, listen to community members and then develop programing around some core areas, essential services. We focus a lot on food and health and we also look for example at education and what are the opportunities to move people forward and upward.
And then we think about what we do. Our core business is transportation. And when you think about transportation, it's one of the very key ways to get people out of poverty. And so we are really looking now at how does mobility, bringing services to people, ensuring that people can get to the services that they need is core to our programing. Because in all fairness, it doesn't matter how great the programing is. If people can't access it, then it's really not useful. So that has been our trajectory all along. And we're a global philanthropy, we're in 39 countries, so we're all over the world because Ford is all over the world. And so I'm very proud of the work that Ford Philanthropy has done over the years because it has been co-created with community.
Carol Cone:
And why did you rebrand from Ford Fund to Ford Philanthropy?
Mary Culler:
So I think Ford Fund, when it was first established, it was very focused on the funding. And over the years, when I first came in, I started to hear that people didn't even understand what Ford Fund was. Is it just a monetary fund, is it a retirement fund? It sort of didn't meet the needs of what we do because it is so much more in corporate philanthropy than about the money, Carol. And we really felt that it didn't really speak to who we were anymore, and that's why we decided to move from Ford Fund to Ford Philanthropy.
Carol Cone:
I would just like to compliment you. Ford has invested 2.4 billion in contributions since 1949. And it's extraordinary.
Mary Culler:
And that has been just a huge commitment by the company. The company has never ever sort of waned in our community donations. Even at the toughest time, during the downturn when the industry was really struggling, we were one of the only auto companies that stayed in our philanthropic giving at the worst of times. And I think that was really very much because of our purpose-driven values.
Carol Cone:
That's wonderful. So I want to build on the purpose-driven values. Ford recently they've run an ad called Committed to America and it says assembling more vehicles in the US and employs more hourly workers in the country than any other auto maker. That stopped me cold in my tracks when I saw it and I saw it in The New York Times. I'm just curious what you can share about that ad, how it was put together, the response you've gotten internally first as well as externally?
Mary Culler:
Well, I think as a Ford employee, I'm very proud of what we do here in the United States. We have been the largest American manufacturer for years. And for every one automotive job, we create 14 other jobs, which is staggering. So I think that is something that we're very proud of. And it's not only those jobs that are created, but it's, like I said, the giving back. Because in every one of those communities where those people are working, our employees want to give back.
And so recently, for example, we launched a new product in Kentucky and as part of that launch we donated a vehicle to Habitat in the local community. And I remember the employees coming up and saying, "well, we're very proud of launching this new product. We're super excited about it, but we're really proud that we're being able to take something we make and give it to the community so it can be used in a really powerful way." So I think that's just part of the ethos and that's part of the wonderful thing about having all these employees in this country is that they can also be deployed to help when needed.
Carol Cone:
I love that. You are very embedded in the community where you have facilities. You�ve got this wonderful video of Stanton and Stanton is in Western Tennessee and it's this tiny little, I guess it was an old school and it's rundown. Can you talk about that?
Mary Culler:
Well, I love the Stanton story and it starts with the community center kind of philosophy, which is in these plant communities, we do have bricks-and-mortar community centers. So Stanton is a really wonderful community. It's about 45 minutes outside of Memphis, Tennessee, very rural, as you said, and it's a place where we have built one of our largest battery manufacturing plants. It's really quite staggering how big it is. And it came into the community and of course, as part of that, Ford Philanthropy, before it even started being built, we started talking to the community about what they wanted, what did they need, how could we provide help.
Now of course, there's a whole job training component as part of coming into a community, but there was more that the community wanted. And one of the things they wanted was a place to gather. They had sort of lost their community center and there was this beautiful schoolhouse, very small schoolhouse in the middle of town that had literally been this schoolhouse that everyone had gone to from kindergarten through high school. But it had been shuttered for a very long time, for over 30 years.
And so we have been working with the community to, in essence, make that schoolhouse the center of this community center model that we have where we even have right now a pop-up community center right next door to it as the construction is happening, so that people can access services with the help of the United Way and a bunch of other different nonprofits that we're partnering with.
Carol Cone:
How many other community centers do have around the globe 'cause they are global?
Mary Culler:
Yeah, so we have one in South Africa, we have one in Thailand, and we have one in Romania. And then we have some here in the US. We have one in the UK, in England. So they're kind of all over.
Carol Cone:
Now, I could not have finished this without having chatting with you about Michigan Central Station. Can you tell the story?
Mary Culler:
So this is when everyone was trying to do their part to revitalize Detroit 'cause Detroit's an amazing city. And we are in Dearborn, which for people it's about eight miles from the city, maybe a little less. So we wanted to have a presence there. Bill Ford, who is our chair, also had already done some economic development in the city.
And so he wanted to do something and as time went on, we went from looking at three-story buildings to Bill's vision of seeing this train station that was originally the train station for the Detroit area that shuttered in 1986. People pilfered it, the roof came off, it was being rained in for 30 years and it was designed by the same architects who designed Grand Central in New York. So you can think about the grandeur, it's like a beautiful, beautiful train station. And so Bill and Ford invested in this train station to make it the next sort of phase of innovation in the mobility realm. And so as part of the renovation, which took six years, it is now an innovation hub, but the other great thing is it's a resource for the community.
And that was always part of the plan is that he really wanted to give it back to the community in a way that it could be utilized. So it's open to the public, there's programing, there's wonderful things happening there, and it's really an iconic building.
Carol Cone:
And you made nearly a billion-dollar investment in it. You also got state funds, 'cause you're not-for-profit, so I guess Governor Whitmer was about $125 million of funds there. You also got Google to join you. So how did you do that?
Mary Culler:
Well, we started talking to people even before the construction started, and I think Google saw the kind of opportunity to come into this innovation hub and help us. And they have a really wonderful program with youth there where we bring youth in and they train them in their program. And that has been really wonderful to see the kids that come from all over the city to have this moment with Google to be trained. And then, what's wonderful is next to the station, there is a beautiful building that has about 240 startups in it. And so people get to-
Carol Cone:
Is that the new lab?
Mary Culler:
That's the new lab building, yes.
Carol Cone:
That's fantastic. And I love it played so well into your background.
Mary Culler:
Well, it was great that I had that economic development background and like we said, that's great. But when I look at Ford Philanthropy and I've learned a lot, I wasn't an expert Carol, as you noted, my background was so diverse. I wasn't a philanthropic expert and I don't claim to be one today, but what I know for a fact and you know this is that you cannot create programs in a vacuum. You have to be in the community. And I think that's what's wonderful about this Building Together initiative that we've launched is that I've been in kind of running the philanthropy about four years. And so what I loved was seeing what we could do as Ford Philanthropy alone and then see where we could bring the power of Ford Motor Company to the table in the right way because for us, it's really about staying true to our philanthropic roots as a company and bridging things in a way that could really create impact.
So for example, in the Disaster Relief essential services area, we kept thinking well, yes, it's great that Ford Philanthropy has these wonderful partners, Feeding America, for example, Red Cross. We also support Team Rubicon and Habitat. Those were partners that we had, but what if we could link them with our 3000 dealerships all across the country.
Carol Cone:
I'd love to hear it. Tell me how you did it.
Mary Culler:
Well, what if we could link our volunteers to really have an impact? So a few weeks ago, we did launch this initiative where the dealers are rallying around these four partners. We're providing additional resources, but really manpower, volunteers, expertise. Where needed, we'll loan them vehicles in the midst of a disaster. We certainly were tested during the disasters in North Carolina. We currently have this very terrible situation in Texas that's currently underway that's incredibly sad. And so what's wonderful is we have this playbook, this turnkey operation where we can really connect with our dealers, we can connect with our volunteers, we can connect with these partners, and we can say, "How can we come together in this moment and into the future and really have the biggest impact?"
And I want to be clear. Our dealers are extraordinarily philanthropic on their own. They're in these communities, they're very involved. So what we've done though is to say, "Okay, do we want to come together in this way around these issues, essential services and building communities?" And they've been very positive.
Carol Cone:
Very, very powerful. You're linking all of the assets that you can bring to bear, but you're also letting it go in a way by inserting the co-creation with local community members, local not-for-profit.
Mary Culler:
One of the most powerful things is to just let people know who's out there, what people are doing. And our non-profit partners, that's not their sort of everyday thing. They're not thinking about, "Oh my gosh, I need to tell people our story." They're really just getting the work done. I think Team Rubicon is a perfect example of that. We started partnering with them seven years ago. They weren't well known. And I think over the years, we've been helping get them more visibility 'cause we think they're doing wonderful work, as are all our other partners as part of this initiative.
Carol Cone:
We've had Jake Wood in the past on the podcast. They're great. I want to know some of your special sauce about you had a 40% increase in your volunteerism hours since 2023. How did you do that?
Mary Culler:
Well, I think first of all, we have access to a lot of employees. So that's the good news. The difficult thing is to ensure that you're making it easy for employees so that they understand what's available to them. And so we put a lot of time and effort for a couple years. I really have to commend our volunteer organization team to really double-down, make the platform super easy, make the opportunity more nimble. We also, because of this partnership with Team Rubicon and then subsequently our Building Together partnership, is we actually extended our volunteer service hours with those partners to 56 hours.
Carol Cone:
That's huge. Wow.
Mary Culler:
So people can actually deploy. So during North Carolina and some of these other natural disasters, we actually had Ford employees from different locations go to North Carolina, Florida, wherever that disaster was and help for five or so days. That was not only life-changing for them, but super-helpful to the organization.
Carol Cone:
Now, Building Together, I know on your current social impact report it's the cover. Is it a branded sub name for the program? Is it a subsection of the work that you do?
Mary Culler:
Well, it's interesting you should say that. So it is a new program, so it will be more highlighted in our report next year. Obviously, I think branding is an interesting term. I think it's a rallying cry more than anything.
Carol Cone:
Building Together, let's do it.
Mary Culler:
Right.
Carol Cone:
Well, you're doing a great job. You have a couple elements, I believe, in Building Together where one is called Bridging the Transportation Gap. Can you explain what that program is?
Mary Culler:
Yeah. So just in Ford Philanthropy's mission, as I noted earlier, is that we of course are interested in moving people forward and upward, and we have our nonprofit partners in our programs. But what we have found over the years is that transportation is one of the key enablers to success. And so the question is, we're not in a position to give away vehicles, that is just not a sustainable program. So then what we do is we try to be innovative around transportation. So we're working, for example, with a wonderful nonprofit called Phoenix Mobility Rising. They're doing a lot of really innovative things in transportation. We've been funding them for a long time.
One of the interesting things we're testing is something called a Mobility Wallet, where we're giving people a wallet of mobility options so that if they're trying to get to a job, a resource, a program, they can use this wallet and figure out their own transportation needs. Because as you know, transportation varies in every single local community. Some cases, there are great public transportation, others there are not. And then in the area of food, for example, we realize that you know what, we're not experts always in the platform for delivery. So we've partnered with DoorDash and what they have done is we give money to food banks and they can actually work with DoorDash to have fresh food delivered to seniors who are housebound. DoorDash has extra capacity. They already have the platform in existence, why reinvent that?
Carol Cone:
Also, talk about your mobile health 'cause I think that's another parallel to the Bridging the Transportation Gap.
Mary Culler:
Healthcare I think is one of the areas that's the most ripe for opportunities. So whether it's a mobile mammogram, whether it's actually this wonderful program that goes into the schools, a mobile eyeglass unit and actually fits kids for glasses because so many kids don't get to the eye doctor and they don't have access to that kind of resource. People in community can't always access the resources and so that's really what we're focused on.
Carol Cone:
And on your grants page, you say that you don't take unsolicited requests, so it sounds like-
Mary Culler:
We don't right now.
Carol Cone:
Yeah, because you've got lots of lanes that you're in, then you go out and you seek in your local markets, you listen to your local markets, then you decide. How do you decide locally where the money goes?
Mary Culler:
Yeah, I think we do go out into the local market. We ask others, our dealers, our new partners with us in that, because some of them actually do have relationships with some really great local organizations that we may not have had line of sight on. So that's really nice. But I do think that to your point, really the onus is on us to get to know people.
Carol Cone:
I would love to ask you, look into your crystal ball. Where do you think philanthropy is going to be going in the next three or five years?
Mary Culler:
Well, I think it's going to require a lot more partnerships. And what I know is that if we were to work more closely together, really figure out each other's sweet spots, where can we come in and really make a difference and build a continuum of action together, wow, how powerful would that be, right? So that's kind of my hope is that sometimes in these moments of crisis, that's when innovation happens and you almost have to undo the traditional model and rebuild it in a way that is more relevant for the time. And I feel like we have an opportunity right now to do that.
Carol Cone:
So my next question is, all of our listeners, its always about measurements. I got to make the case, I want to get more funds, I want more people. What are your best recommendations to make the case to the C-suite to prove that you're having an impact in all sorts of areas?
Mary Culler:
Well, that's a really interesting question. You know that measurement is really difficult in this arena. And I do feel like if your whole goal is just about measurement, what's the return on your investment, you will not be successful. Because I think that in the end, you have to lead with purpose and you have to do it for the greater good. Now, that's not to say you shouldn't know if your dollars are having an impact or if your program is actually helping because you could have a lovely program that sounds great on paper, but doesn't actually really move the needle. And so I think for us, so much of it is about working very closely with the nonprofits, figuring out the stories we want to tell, measuring the things we can manage.
Carol Cone:
That's great. This has been a marvelous conversation. I want to see the station.
Mary Culler:
Well, the artisanship and work, the gentleman who was in charge of the renovation, wonderful gentleman by the name of Ron Staley, he was amazing, he did so many renovations across the country. And he told me this was by far the hardest because in most renovations, the things are left. You have things there, they're just broken, they need to be fixed, et cetera. And it's really an amazing story of restoration and the pride that we all have in the construction trades here in Detroit and the skilled trades who came in to help us with this project, they were the heroes. It is amazing, so please do come.
Carol Cone:
I want to. So I always love to give the last word to my guest. So I mean, we covered a lot, but there's a lot more to cover. So what would you like to leave our listeners with?
Mary Culler:
Well, it's no surprise that our nonprofits, who really do so much incredible work in the community, are really at a crossroads right now. There's just a lot of challenges ahead of them. And I think for us as supporters, we just need to work together. And so I'd be interested even Carol in your input, if there are other corporations that you think are like-minded, if there's ways to connect the dots beyond what we're doing at Ford, I'm all game. We've even talked about hosting a convening here in Detroit at Michigan Central. We have this conversation more broadly because I do think the time is now for us all to lead in a way where we really come together and join forces to help communities in a most impactful way. So that's what I hope.
Carol Cone:
I love it. Thank you for joining us on Purpose 360. It's great. And when you have something else big in a year or so, come back because we always like to have our great guests come back.
Mary Culler:
Well, Carol, you've been really a joy to talk to. And just a reminder, it's never about one person, it's about an entire team. So I am really fortunate to work for a great company and with a great team. So I want to thank them for all their hard work. But thanks, Carol. It's been really fun.
Carol Cone:
This podcast was brought to you by some amazing people, and I'd love to thank them. Anne Hundertmark and Kristin Kenney at Carol Cone ON PURPOSE, Pete Wright and Andy Nelson are crack production team at TruStory FM and you, our listener. Please rate and rank us because we really want to be as high as possible as one of the top business podcasts available so that we can continue exploring together the importance and the activation of authentic purpose.
Thanks so much for listening.
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