Campaign to Illustrate How Community-Based Organizations Create Impact
A giving campaign supported by the Native Ways Foundation highlights the importance of supporting Native-led non-profits throughout the month of May. Beginning May 1 and culminating on Native Nonprofit Day May 20, the campaign will raise awareness about how Native non-profits make a greater impact on Native communities.
Large foundations have allocated less than half a percent of their total annual grantmaking to Native communities since 2006, according to a report from the Investing in Native Communities Project. The group identified three solutions to the funding discrepancy: replacing false narratives around Native communities; expanding historic understandings through a Native lens; and supporting solutions led by and for Native communities.
Native Ways Foundation, a group comprised of seven national Native-led nonprofits including the American Indian College Fund and dedicated to expanding information giving in Indian Country through donor education and advocacy, seized upon the third solution.
“Native-led organizations have the solutions to the issues our communities are facing,” Native Ways Foundation Executive Director, Carly Bad Heart Bull, J.D. (Flandreau Santee), said in a statement. “We know our strengths and are best positioned to help our people. The Native Nonprofit Day campaign is an opportunity to celebrate the work being done by Native-led nonprofits while also supplementing our organizations’ ongoing fundraising efforts.”
Cheryl Crazy Bull, President and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, said, “Native non-profit organizations and their staff members are in close relationship with the communities we serve. We have the shared goal of the well-being and prosperity of our people. We have shared values of resilience, generosity, and reciprocity. We have a shared a history. And we have a shared commitment to the highest, best use of resources that our supporters share with us. People do good things when they support our work.”
Founding members of Native Ways Foundation in addition to the American Indian College Fund include the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the Association on American Indian Affairs, the First Nations Development Institute, the National Indian Child Welfare Association, the Native American Rights Fund, and Running Strong for American Indian Youth.
The College Fund urges people and organizations that wish to make an impact in Indian Country to support Native-serving and Native-led non-profits.
