These Six Funders Are Leading the Way in Support for Native American Causes
/
Participants in the first ever Indigenous Peoples March in Washington, DC in 2019. Rena Schild/shutterstock
Philanthropy has consistently overlooked Native American communities. The numbers tell the story: Native Americans represent 2.9% of the U.S. population, and experience high rates of poverty and related negative consequences, but receive just 0.4% of philanthropic funds, according to Native Americans in Philanthropy.
Edgar Villanueva, author of “Decolonizing Wealth” and founder of the Decolonizing Wealth Project, put it this way in the forward to the 2019 report “Investing in Native Communities”: “With only 20% of large foundations giving to Native communities and causes — many of these intermittently — long-term relationship-building between Native communities and the philanthropic sector becomes incredibly challenging.”
That report was published by Native Americans in Philanthropy and Candid; the two also teamed up to create a web portal with the same name, as my colleague Tate Williams reported when the project was announced three years ago.
Investing in Native Communities is a practical tool to track philanthropic funding; it also aims to raise awareness of Native issues in the philanthrosphere and beyond. It features, for example, a section called “Native 101” that invites readers to deepen their understanding of Indigenous peoples and to view history through a Native lens. The portal’s Funding Map provides Candid data on grants that benefit Native Americans in the U.S. (including Alaska Natives, American Indians, and Native Hawaiians), as well as grants to organizations that focus on Native Americans in the U.S.. It charts the landscape of funding for Native Americans from 2006 to the present — 6,191 funders made $3.9 billion in grants to 5,808 organizations.
Erik Stegman, Native Americans in Philanthropy CEO, said the portal “has been incredibly popular with funders and the general public, receiving an average of 5,000 visitors per week over the past three years.” Investing in Native Communities is one of a number of tools the organization has developed “to address the inconsistencies in how data is collected and coded to reflect the reality of funding reaching Native communities or Tribal Nations,” he said in an emailed statement.
Native Americans in Philanthropy and its partners work to educate grantmakers about Native communities and where investments are needed most, Stegman said. “But we are only scratching the surface. If philanthropy is truly committed to supporting all people, a good place to start is through sharply increased investments in Indigenous-led data projects.”
The fact that philanthropy needs to do more to fund Native American communities doesn’t detract from work that foundations, small and large, have committed to — including support for early education for Native American children, Native youth activism, scholarships for college-bound students, health equity and work to strengthen Native arts and culture. One small community foundation in Northern California is trying to tackle the problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and MacKenzie Scott has made Native Americans a priority in her firehose of funding over the last several years. Just this week, Native Americans in Philanthropy and Biodiversity Funders Group joined funders to announce the Tribal Nations Conservation Pledge: to date, 15 major funders have committed to provide $102.5 million over the next five years to support tribal-led conservation efforts. Although these efforts are far from enough, they are worth noting.
These are some of the funders leading the way in support of Native American causes.
Ford Foundation
The massive Ford Foundation tops the Investing in Native Communities list for funding from 2006 to the present, for a total of $676.8 million. Ford’s mission is focused entirely on inequality, which it calls “the defining challenge of our time, one that limits the potential of all people, everywhere. Addressing inequality is at the center of everything we do.”
As part of its environmental commitment, Ford joined other funders and governments in pledging to support Indigenous land protection, as IP’s Michael Kavate reported. In the U.S., the foundation has provided funding for a wide range of organizations that support Native Americans, including the Institute of American Indian Arts and Alaska Native Culture and Arts, First Nations Development Institute, the First Nations Fund, the Indian Law Resource Center and American Indian Artists.
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
This Michigan-based funder’s tagline is “Putting Children First,” and it has long included Native young people among its priorities. Kellogg, like a number of other funders, increased that commitment after the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Reservation in 2016, as IP reported. W.K. Kellogg’s giving for Native causes was $216.7 million from 2006 to 2020, according to Investing in Native Communities.
One WKKF grantee, Native Women Lead, works to improve pay equity for Native women, who earned 57 cents for every dollar that white, non-Hispanic men earned in 2021, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Native Women Lead helps promote entrepreneurship among Native women by providing low-interest loans and other support. Another grantee, the Keres Children’s Learning Center on the Pueblo de Cochiti Reservation in New Mexico, teaches children in the Native Keres language. The foundation also helped launch an innovative program to boost access to affordable dental care for Native Americans and other rural residents, as IP reported.
Other WKKF grantees include the First Nations Development Institute, the National Indian Health Board, and the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Healthcare is the primary focus of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF); the foundation also addresses the many barriers that lead to disparities in health status for many Americans. RWJF funds a range of Native American causes, and gave a total of $125.5 million in 2006 to the present, according to Investing in Native Communities. Some of its grantees include the American Indian Cancer Foundation, All Nations Health Center, and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. RWJF also provided key support in a program, mentioned earlier, to increase access to dental care to Native Americans living in remote rural regions.
RWJF’s Culture of Health Prize recognizes communities “where people and organizations are collaborating to advance health, opportunity and equity for all.” In 2020–21, the Thunder Valley community, which is part of the Oglala Lakota Nation on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, was a prize recipient for its efforts to tackle issues like food and housing insecurity, unemployment and poor healthcare, and to restore the Lakota language and traditions. The Chickloon Native Village, which established Alaska’s first tribally owned and operated full-time school and preschool facility in 1992, and operates a community health clinic, was another Culture of Health Prize recipient.
Northwest Area Foundation
A regional foundation created by the son of the founder of the Great Northern Railway, the Northwest Area Foundation’s mission is to “support efforts by the people, organizations, and communities of our eight-state region to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable prosperity.” Its geographic area includes Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon, as well as the 76 Native nations in the region, and it has long made Native Americans a funding priority. According to Investing in Native Communities, the foundation provided $120.9 million to 520 organizations from 2006 to 2021.
Northwest Area Foundation directs 40% of its annual grant dollars to support Native-led organizations, a commitment it made in 2012, for a total of nearly $79.7 million from 2012 to 2022. The foundation has fulfilled (and even exceeded) that commitment, “with funding focused on supporting efforts that produce good jobs, thriving businesses, and restructured systems to strengthen Native communities,” according to its website.
Some of the foundation’s grantees include First Peoples Fund, Native American Youth and Family Center, Standing Rock Community Development Corporation, and the Potlatch Fund, among many others.
NoVo Foundation
The NoVo Foundation, which was started by Peter Buffett, Warren Buffett’s youngest son, has a broad agenda that encompasses a variety of social justice issues, as IP has reported. This entry has a caveat, as it’s not entirely clear to what extent NoVo is supporting Native causes these days. The foundation doesn’t offer much information on its website, following a controversial reboot in 2020, but it does say in an FAQ section that NoVo will continue to fund Indigenous causes. The Investing in Native Communities portal only has data from 2006 to 2019, but in that time, it provided $110 million in 362 organizations. It has provided grants to organizations including: First Nations Development Institute, the Native American Rights Fund, Minnesota Indian Womens Sexual Assault Coalition and the Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies.
Bush Foundation
The Minnesota-based Bush Foundation was built on the fortune of Archibald Bush, a 3M executive. A regional funder, its work is focused on Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and the 23 Native nations in that region. Beginning in 2006 to the present, it provided $103.6 million in grants to 392 organizations addressing Native American issues, according to the Investing in Native Communities portal.
The Bush Foundation considers its commitment to Native communities central to its mission. Since 2017, it has kept careful track of that support by issuing Native Nations Investment Reports that review its investments in those communities.
In 2021, the Bush Foundation committed $100 million to Native American and Black communities in its region to address the racial wealth gap. And as IP reported, since 2012, the foundation has made a deliberate effort to diversify its board to reflect the communities it works with.
One Bush Foundation grantee, Oyate Hotanin, an Indigenous arts and social justice organization, is working to improve the juvenile justice system in Ramsey County, Minnesota. The organization’s work has helped decrease the confinement of youth there. Another, the Wolakota Buffalo Project, an initiative of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate (or Rosebud Sioux) Tribe, is working to restore the buffalo population on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Other grantees include the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, the Four Bands Community Fund, and Tiwahe Foundation, according to Investing in Native Communities.
