Foreign Policy Association (FPA)

History and Background

The Foreign Policy Association (FPA) was originally founded in 1918 to support “Internationalism” within the United States through educational efforts, such as speaking events and broadcasting policy debates, as well as publishing Foreign Policy Reports analyzing global issues. Local chapters formed within the U.S during the 1930’s and 1940’s, while the group also developed a “foreign policy community” which supported its work that included policy experts, activists, and members of the U.S State Department including Secretaries of State John Foster Dulles and Cordell Hull. ^{3 2} According to a 2023 report by Andrew Lanham of The New Republic, the group’s influence declined during the Vietnam War while Lanham alleges the organization ignored specific racial issues within the United States, while quoting David Allen’s book Every Citizen a Statesman in stating “[t]he group treated “Black engagement with world affairs” as if “it did not exist.”” ²

Activities

Great Decisions

The Foreign Policy Association’s “Great Decisions” program was launched in Oregon in 1954 and claims to bethe “largest discussion program on world affairs” in the United States. Participants read the Great Decisions Briefing Book, a series published annually by the FPA on the major diplomatic issues of the year, watch videos on diplomatic policy, and then engage in discussion groups with experts and each other. Every year, Great Decisions participants are polled by the National Opinion Ballot Report on foreign policy topics, and the results are distributed to the White House, members of the U.S. Congress, media outlets, as well as the U.S. State Department and the U.S Department of Defense. ^{3 4}

By 1959, five months after the program was created, there were Great Decisions discussions in 500 communities in 43 states involving 80,000 individuals. By 1964, 250,000 Americans had participated in Great Decisions. ²

World Affairs Council of Washington, D.C.

In 1980, the FPA founded the World Affairs Council of Washington, D.C., an independent think tank focused on discussing international diplomacy issues. ³

South Africa UPDATE Series

In the 1990s, the FPA and the Ford Foundation published the South Africa UPDATE Series, an analysis of the South African state during the final years of the apartheid regime and the country’s transition to multiracial democracy. ³

Leadership Forum

In 2000, the FPA launched the World Leadership Forum (later renamed to Leadership Forum), a foreign policy expert training group. The Forum went defunct in the late 2010s. ³

Financials

According to its 2023 990 form, the Foreign Policy Association (FPA) reported $6,103,728 in revenue, spent $4,959,915, and ended the year with $6,688,541 in assets. The FPA receives funding in grants from nonprofit foundations, which reached over $5 million during the 2023 calendar year; the rest of the organization’s funding was reported as primarily membership dues. ⁵

In 2021, the FPA received a $25,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. ⁶

From 2007 to 2018, the FPA received seven grants worth a total of $615,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. ⁷

The Ford Foundation was a major supporter of the FPA in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1965 alone, the Ford Foundation donated $1 million to the FPA. ⁸

The FPA has received funding from the Starr Foundation. ⁹

Leadership

As of 2025, Noel Lateef was serving as the president and CEO of the Foreign Policy Association, a position he has held since 1995. Lateef was previously chairman of the Bowery Savings Bank and worked at Sullivan & Cromwell, in the U.S. State Department, and as law clerk to the late Judge James R. Browning, who served as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. ¹⁰