NDN Collective does grantmaking, influence investing and lending, provides capacity-building providers and awards fellowships. It’s an advocacy and organizing power — its Landback Marketing campaign helps a nationwide motion to return Native lands to Native possession whereas constructing energy throughout BIPOC organizing efforts. And it’s a thought chief, producing common place papers and statements on nationwide and international points and their impacts on Indigenous individuals — from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to the Biden administration’s latest approval of a large oil drilling challenge in Alaska, which an NDN Collective spokesperson known as “a local weather catastrophe within the making.”
A number of the group’s work is much less conventionally nonprofit-like: In 2020, it participated in a protest when then-President Donald Trump was scheduled to go to Mount Rushmore; the group demanded that the monument be closed and the Black Hills returned to the Lakota individuals. Tilsen was among the many protesters arrested, however costs in opposition to him had been dropped final yr.
Any controversy hasn’t swayed donors. NDN Collective has amassed fairly an inventory of backers in its comparatively quick historical past, together with the Bezos Earth Fund, and the Bush, Doris Duke Charitable, Ford, Grove, JBP, Kataly, Libra, MacArthur, Northwest Space, NoVo, Robert Wooden Johnson, Surdna, and W.Ok. Kellogg foundations. It additionally acquired a grant from MacKenzie Scott in 2021, though the quantity was not disclosed (likelihood is, it was massive). The group’s complete income for 2020 was over $48 million, up from over $11 million in 2019, in response to tax filings.
In a sector that has lengthy uncared for Native causes, NDN Collective has achieved fairly a feat, aligning a various array of funders behind an agenda that’s, frankly, so much bolder than many philanthropic actors are comfy with.
NDN Collective’s relationship with its funders doesn’t cease it from sharply criticizing the world of philanthropy and the sources of its largesse. Its employees typically discuss “rematriating” (the feminine type of repatriating) wealth, as in a quote from Gaby Robust on the web site: “The NDN Basis was shaped to rematriate wealth again to Indigenous fingers underneath Indigenous management. We search to honor and useful resource our Peoples’ prosperity and self-determination.”
As affiliate director Tina Kuckkahn put it, “What some individuals see as fundraising, we see as liberating wealth, as a result of we perceive that almost all of the wealth within the nation was constructed upon the land that was taken from us, and on assets extracted from the land and constructed on the stolen labor of Black and brown individuals. So our concept and method is to liberate that wealth.”
Defend. Develop. Decolonize.
NDN Collective employs what it calls “The Three Ds” — defend, develop, and decolonize — to outline its mission and direct its work.
“Our methods are to defend our lands, our individuals, and our assets from the extraction business,” Robust stated. “And to develop our communities in sustainable, regenerative ways in which don’t compromise our surroundings or our future, being conscious of local weather change. Then decolonization, which is our lifeways, our language — reclaiming and revitalizing all these issues which can be actually the inspiration of our identification as Indigenous individuals.”
Two NDN Collective packages, its Group Motion and Collective Abundance Funds, illustrate this method. The Group Motion Fund simply introduced that it’s accepting functions for its most up-to-date spherical of funding. This system provides assist for movement-building and front-line organizing efforts throughout Turtle Island (the Indigenous identify for North America). Previous grantees embrace organizations working to guard the setting, fight fossil gasoline improvement efforts and practice neighborhood organizers. The objective of the fund is to “assist additional Indigenous Peoples’ mobilization methods because it pertains to the protection, improvement and decolonization of our peoples and the planet.”
The objective of the Collective Abundance Fund is to deal with the racial wealth hole in Native communities in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. The fund is underwritten by the Bush Basis, a regional funder that focuses on these three states and the 23 Indigenous nations that dwell there. In 2021, the Bush Basis made a dedication to deal with “wealth disparities brought on by historic racial injustice” by offering $100 million in seed funding to 2 neighborhood belief funds. The inspiration chosen NDN Collective and Nexus Group Companions as steward organizations for the neighborhood belief funds; every acquired $50 million to distribute in grants.
“The objective of those grants is to construct stability and generational wealth by enhancing entry to alternatives resembling training, homeownership and entrepreneurship,” in response to the Bush Basis announcement.
NDN Collective just lately introduced that it has employed a group to assist implementation of the Collective Abundance Fund. The brand new program will present about 200 grants of $25,000 to $50,000 a yr to people and households. Gaby Robust calls the Bush Basis’s dedication “most likely the closest to a full rematriation effort we’ve seen to this point.” Since NDN Collective was chosen as a steward group final yr, the group has been reaching out to neighborhood members to get their enter.
“What we first needed to do is to find out what wealth means to our individuals,” Robust stated. “So the planning for that took nearly a complete yr, to have the ability to outline wealth on our phrases. Our individuals are coming again to us and saying, ‘Right here’s what it means to us and right here’s how we will start to deal with it.’ We’ll start to deal with it — we’re not going to unravel it. As a result of merely educating any individual find out how to price range higher, that’s not going to unravel the wealth hole. Monetary literacy alone shouldn’t be going to unravel the wealth hole. These are systemic points that had been designed deliberately to do precisely what they’re doing, which is why now we have to have systemic change.”
Radical Indigenous futures
Philanthropy may and must be doing much more to push for systemic change, in response to Gaby Robust, and she or he has concepts for find out how to make that occur. Each she and Nick Tilsen contributed essays to the Stanford Social Innovation Evaluation (SSIR) for its 2021 sequence, “Decolonization and Radical Indigenous Futures,” a partnership between NDN Collective and SSIR.
In her essay, “Constructing Indigenous Energy in Philanthropy,” Robust supplied this critique: “When most philanthropic leaders ask what systemic racism is, they will look to their very own organizational constructions and the place decision-making authority is centered,” she wrote. “Even when the sector strives to ‘do good’ or ‘make a distinction,’ the presence of Indigenous individuals on the employees inside institutional philanthropy is uncommon, and their presence on boards of administrators is rarer nonetheless.”
Robust, who has a background in philanthropy (she was a program officer at Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies and the Grotto Basis) supplied this problem to the sector: “We take a look at the historical past of philanthropy, modern-day philanthropy, and the quantity of funding into Indian Nation general has been lower than half a p.c for many years and a long time, regardless of actually strategic efforts to have interaction in donor training,” she instructed me. “I imply, the numbers don’t lie. The numbers don’t lie.” (Discover out extra about funding for Native Individuals.)
As an alternative of spending a lot of its time educating donors, NDN Collective works with funders that respect the group’s mission. “We don’t search to align ourselves along with your priorities,” she stated. “Our priorities are the priorities of our individuals. So except a funder is admittedly about honoring that, they’re most likely not a great associate.”
Requested what recommendation she would supply philanthropy, Robust replied, “Flip over your belongings, primary. Second, get people in your board who perceive neighborhood and are grounded in neighborhood and replicate the neighborhood.”
Tina Kuckkahn added this: “Acknowledge that we’re our personal authorities and consultants on what our priorities are. As one in all our younger individuals put it, ‘Cease telling us what to do.’”
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