Indian Country does not get its fair share of private funding. That is a theme that has been playing in my head for almost 40 years. I wrote my first grant in 1970 to get some Pit River people out of jail. I wrote it on Beverly LeBeau’s kitchen table in Redding, CA, using a portable typewriter. To my surprise, it was funded in a week. That’s when I learned that some people give away money for free.

Then a decade later I did some calculations and figured that Indians were only getting about 10% of their fair share of foundation and corporation grants. So I wrote a book in 1983 called the “Funding Guide for Native Americans.” No one would publish it, so I did it myself. The following year I wrote another one called “Grants to Indians,” also self-published.

It seemed to help. What helped also was the emergence of the Native American Rights Fund, the American Indian College Fund, the Cherokee Nation’s private grants program, Native Americans in Philanthropy, and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. These national Indian organizations have raised the consciousness of the giving community, and gotten more of their money into Indian Country. Wilma Mankiller, who started as the grant writer for the Cherokee Nation when she moved back home in 1977, brought millions of dollars to the tribe. She then served 10 years as Principal Chief. I trained her in proposal writing before she left Oakland in 1977 to move back home.

John Echohawk and NARF have raised many millions in private funding for that national Indian law firm, which has won hundreds of battles for Indians over water rights, land rights, cultural preservation, and other issues. The American Indian College Fund under Rick Williams is now one of the largest fund raising organizations in the U. S. Elouise Cobell raised several million dollars in grants to support her lawsuit.

But it is still not enough. Back when I first computed the numbers, Indians were getting less that $5 million of the $9 billion foundations and corporations gave away. In the latest look at the situation, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy came out with an article by Joy Persall six months ago that said the amount of money going to Indians had gone up slightly from 1989 to 2002. Joy is head of NAP.

But the percentage of grants going to Indians had remained flat. And the amount of money going to Indians should have gone up as much as the increase of total funding, which went up by 159%. The last time I checked, private grants in the U. S. were $27 billion a year. Indians should be getting almost $300 million a year, but we are getting less than $100 million.

Tribal gaming foundations have emerged as a significant force in philanthropy as well. The NCRP says there are now 36 Native foundations. They gave away $11 million in 2003. Tribal gaming organizations gave away more than $100 million in 2004, much it in their local communities. Shakopee gave away $26 million in 2007, the report says. Let’s hope other tribal gaming organizations will step up to the plate and develop significant philanthropic programs.

We have written three books on Indians and grants. I say “we” because I wrote two of them and Stacey Jenkins wrote one. They were called the “National Indian Grant Directory.” The last one, which we published in 2008, will be the last one. I am getting ready to retire. Several other people tried publishing books on this theme, but they were all weak. The latest NIGD book, two volumes, is over 1,000 pages long and has info on over 500 foundation and corporation grant programs. It is the only one available now.

When I did my first Indian foundation book in 19873, there were only six foundations in the U. S. that had Native Americans in their policy statement! The first NIGD book we did in 2000 showed that this number had risen to 120, an increase of 2,000%. But when this is compared to the national total of 74,000 foundations and about 10,000 corporate philanthropy programs, it is still minuscule.

I actually got to help develop some of these giving programs. One in particular, the Bank of America program, started in 1977. Buck Boccheri, the head of philanthropy for the bank, called me one day in response to a grant for scholarships that I had submitted to him. He asked me to come to San Francisco and help them develop a mission statement in regard to Indian programs.

The late Richard Prentice Ettinger, the man behind both the Educational Foundation of American (EFA) and the Ettinger Foundation, visited with me for two hours in 1977. He asked me to be on his staff to review proposals, which I did for the next eight years.

The late Ping Ferry also asked me to help him evaluate proposals when he was directing the philanthropy program of the DJB Foundation and the Sunflower Foundation. DJB gave away both its capital and its interest, and deliberately went out of business in a decade. But their grants did a lot of good in Indian Country. I personally steered a couple of dozen grants from DJB and Sunflower to Indian grantees.

In addition to writing books, I have also done consulting work for several tribal programs and colleges. Dine’ College, Blackfeet Tribal College, Nebraska Indian Community College, Bacone College, and SIPI are just a few of the colleges I have worked with.

At one point about 20 years ago, the late Rose Robinson called a national meeting to help develop private philanthropy in Indian Country. Unfortunately, no one else has followed through with this idea. There were about 200 people at the meeting at a hotel in Reno.

I also wrote a book 20 years ago called “How to Write Winning Proposals.” We have been selling it through Catching the Dream ever since. It distills my 40 years of experience into 220 pages. Many organizations, including the Aberdeen Area Tribal Chairman’s Health Organization, have used it to pull in money. They got one grant six years ago of $5 million.

One of the stumbling blocks for Indians applying for private funding is that the tribal organization may lack an IRS tax exemption letter. It is relatively simple to get the letter, but it does take time. I think all tribal organizations ought to get it, so they can go after foundation and corporation grants. The main reason so few grants go to Indians is that we don’t apply. It is a tough business; only 5% of proposals nationwide are funded. And there have been many Indian failures, many of whom wanted to start at the top instead of the bottom. Persistence and perseverance are crucial.



(Dean Chavers, Ph.D., is the Director of Catching the Dream, a national scholarship and school improvement program for American Indians, located in Albuquerque. His address is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. His latest book is “Racism in Indian Country,” published by Peter Lang.)