Support Native people and Native nations
Why it’s important to us
We believe that investing in Native people and Native nations is one of the highest impact things we can do.
The challenges facing Native communities are profound. For example, if you overlay a map of child poverty in our region with the boundaries of reservations there is significant overlap.
But philanthropic impact is not just about addressing a profound need. Impact comes from investing in extraordinary people and institutions to address that need. It comes from investing in big ideas for change. We see extraordinary people and institutions with big ideas throughout Native nations and Native communities in our region. Read more about our commitment to support Native nations and Native people.
41%
Percent of 2024 grantmaking to support Native people and Native nations
How we’re doing
Across all our grantmaking, 41% went to support Native people and Native nations in 2024. This was relatively consistent with our funding of Native communities in the past few years. We’ve also started looking at some additional aspects of our Native-focused funding to get a better understanding of the kind of investments we’re making. In 2024, 23% of our Native-focused funding supported tribal governments, 59% supported Native-led nonprofits and 73% supported issues related to the self determination of Native people such as language reclamation, land stewardship and energy production.
We are regularly referenced as one of the top funders in the country in total funding that supports Native communities and issues. We’re proud of this, but at the same time, we would love to see the big national funders give more to Native communities and knock us down the list!
What’s next
We are committed to influencing the field of philanthropy to invest more to benefit Native people. We want to encourage more funders to connect with Native communities in their grantmaking strategies. We have experience we hope could be helpful to others.
We continue to seek out opportunities to invest in the self-determination of Native nations and people, building upon our relationships and understanding of the community opportunities we can help support.