1980s

In response to groundwater contamination crises in Woburn, Massachusetts, and Love Canal, New York, Mott trustees approved the Foundation’s first five-year plan for environmental grantmaking. The plan focused largely on toxic substances, but it also strengthened efforts to protect the Great Lakes and improve community resource management. Under the plan, Mott funded one of the nation’s first community-wide studies of how hazardous wastes could threaten human health. We also bolstered national efforts to reduce toxic pollution through improved waste management practices.

The only fully cooperative engineering and management university in the United States, Kettering University has been an integral component of Flint’s higher education system since 1919, when it was known as the School of Automobile Trades, and later as General Motors Institute. Between 1983 and 2022, Mott made 48 grants totaling $70.6 million to support the institution’s efforts to increase the size of its undergraduate and graduate programs, and contribute to the economic revitalization of Flint and the region.

Mott’s focus on building and maintaining strong neighborhoods led to the creation of a national Neighborhoods Small Grants Program that ran in the United States from 1984 to 1994. The goal was to increase community foundations’ interactions with, and support for, resident-led organizations in low-income neighborhoods. Mott provided more than $5.8 million in support to 25 community foundations across the country. Some of those foundations continue that work today.

Between 1985 and 2017, Mott invested more than $57.5 million in microenterprise as a pathway out of poverty. The strategy relied on cooperative groups and lending approaches to encourage self-employment among low-income people. Goals of the grantmaking went beyond economic development to include self-esteem, social development and empowerment of the individuals served. Our grantmaking also supported development, evaluation and replication of effective models to strengthen the microenterprise field.

Informed by our earlier work on toxics, Mott formally established our Environment program in 1987. Protecting freshwater ecosystems, primarily in the Great Lakes basin, and promoting global sustainability have been key components of the program from the outset. Our grantmaking also has strengthened the environmental community in the United States and abroad, supported hydropower reform that improved thousands of miles of U.S. rivers, informed policy changes aimed at reducing the volume of persistent toxic chemicals entering the Great Lakes, and increased access to renewable energy in developing countries.

The nation’s first middle college serving high schools in multiple school districts, Mott Middle College was created in Flint with the support of a planning grant from the Mott Foundation. Over the years, the dual-enrollment institution, which allows students to accrue college credits while earning their high school diplomas, used Mott funding to expand the model to school districts in Michigan and across the country.

As early as 1985, Mott began taking steps to help the people of South Africa by adopting the Sullivan Principles. In 1988, the Foundation made its first grants in South Africa in response to the country’s apartheid crisis. Mott’s work in South Africa led the Foundation to consider more direct grantmaking to promote social and political progress internationally.

A charter trustee of the Mott Foundation, Harding Mott was successively named to every key Foundation post, including chairman. He helped to guide the work of the Foundation for more than 63 years.

The late Homer Dowdy, who had been vice president of programs at Mott and a longtime friend, remembered Harding as a humble and loving man, noting, “He had a heart for people.”