MacKenzie Scott’s Millions Support Native American Nonprofits

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott’s no-frills, no-strings approach to giving has proven particularly valuable to Native American nonprofits, whose history of private philanthropy has long been marked by mistrust and meager funding.

Although Scott’s donations to Native American nonprofits are a small fraction of the billions of dollars she has given since 2020, they are unique because they have gone to Native American-led groups.

“For a long time, we saw that a lot of the money that went to Native causes and concerns went to museums and arts foundations and educational funds that weren’t controlled by Native people, so in that context, it’s really good to look at (these gifts) and see that almost all of them are Native-controlled organizations,” says Miriam Jorgensen, who studies the flow of philanthropy to Native-led organizations and is director of research at Harvard’s Project on Indigenous Governance and Development. “It’s an important contrast of that giving.”

Scott has awarded 37 grants totaling $132.5 million to Native American nonprofits over the past four years. That’s 0.8% of the $17.3 billion she’s given to more than 2,300 charities to date and reflects the paucity of philanthropy giving to Native American-led organizations. Less than 0.5% of funding from large U.S. foundations goes to Native American nonprofits, according to a 2019 report report by Candid and Native Americans in Philanthropy.

Scott is not a major donor to Native American groups. The Bush, Kellogg and Northwest Area foundations are among those that regularly support Native American-owned nonprofits. But her multimillion-dollar donations to Native American groups have been widely publicized, giving them a kind of seal of approval that charitable leaders say has increased their groups’ visibility.

“It had a huge impact on how we were perceived by individual donors, foundations and corporations,” says Robert Martin, president of the Institute of American Indian Arts, a public tribal college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that received $5 million from Scott in 2020. “Since all of this has happened, we’ve built partnerships (for student employment) with Nike and NBCUniversal and many others.”

Unlimited and simple

Misconceptions about Native American-run and Native American nonprofits are common and have hurt fundraising efforts, says Michael Roberts, who runs the First Nations Development Institute, an economic development organization. His group, which has received $8 million from Scott, conducted a 2016 study that found Native Americans are largely invisible to the public and funders.

“When they think we exist, they have all these wonderful misperceptions of who we are—from being very impoverished to being spiritual children of nature to being casino-rich Native American tribes,” Roberts says. “Most of it is based on what people have learned from old K-12 textbooks or from public media.”

His organization interviewed foundation directors about their views on Native Americans and found that their answers largely matched public opinions.

“I was a little annoyed when I saw it because this is a group of people who are probably more educated than the general population and claim to be more aware of racial and social issues,” Roberts says.

Getting a donation from Scott was different from his experiences with foundations, Roberts says, not only because the money was uncapped but also because the process was so simple. Scott’s advisers called twice to discuss the group’s work, and a third said the money was on the way.

“In 20 years of leading First Nations, I have never dealt with any private foundation where getting $8 million, if it was available, was so easy,” Roberts says.

With Scott’s money, the First Nations Institute doubled its endowment, launched a Tribal Lands Conservation program, helped purchase a new building and tripled its grant funding to other Native American-led organizations.

There was another unexpected benefit.

“Suddenly foundations felt comfortable giving us million-dollar grants instead of quarter-million-dollar grants,” Roberts says.

The National Urban Indian Family Coalition used a $2 million gift from Scott to hire more staff, provide them with better health insurance and raises, and increase grants. The Seattle-based nonprofit awards grants to about 55 human services organizations that serve Native Americans living in more than 40 cities across the country.

Executive director Janeen Comenote says Scott’s money has allowed her to focus on her mission rather than worry about paying salaries. As with other groups, the grant has made other funders take notice.

Increase in government funding

U.S. Census data shows that 75 percent of American Indians and Alaska Natives live in urban and suburban areas. Comenote says charities need to expand their presence in those places. Her group’s increased grantmaking has allowed nonprofits to build stronger relationships with local and state governments, leading to many grantees receiving more or first-time government funding.

But government grants come with a lot of restrictions, says Erik Stegman, CEO of Native Americans in Philanthropy. Charities can’t use the money to build foundations, hire staff or fund non-programmatic work, so unrestricted donations like Scott’s increase government support because charities can use it however they want.

“You can spend your whole life chasing after very isolated pieces of federal money, and that tends to create a deficit mindset,” Stegman says. “When you get that infusion, it makes the government dollars work better because it fills the gaps.”

Increase in fundraising

Native American charitable leaders say Scott’s gifts are having an impact on individual donors. The average individual gift has increased at the Native Forward Scholars Fund since it received $20 million from Scott, says Angelique Albert, the fund’s chief executive officer.

Before Scott’s gift, most donors gave between $5 and $25, Albert says. Now, the fund is attracting more donors who give $1,000 or more. Albert says the increase is due to using some of Scott’s money to hire four more fundraisers and expand its marketing efforts.

The attention-grabbing power of Scott’s gifts has also helped small, local charities. The Carolina Panthers football team gave a $5,000 gift to the Boys & Girls Club of the Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina. The charity’s director of youth services, Rose Marie Lowry-Townsend, doesn’t think it would have happened without the $1.25 million grant she received from Scott in 2022.

“People don’t write us checks for $1,000, and they definitely don’t write us checks for $5,000,” Lowry-Townsend says. “That was very unusual for us.”

It remains an open question whether Scott’s donations to Native American-controlled nonprofits will continue to influence private giving, said Jorgensen, the researcher on Native American philanthropy.

He sees Scott’s donations as the second phase of a recent effort to increase Native American philanthropy. Jorgensen notes that NDN Collective (also a recipient of Scott’s grant), a nonprofit founded in 2018 that works to strengthen Native American communities, was the first to increase the flow of charitable money to Native American-led groups.

Will there be a third wave? “Indian country and indigenous communities are demanding this. They’re saying, ‘Stop giving money to the museum and start giving money to us,’” Jorgensen says. “MacKenzie Scott’s donation shows that indigenous-controlled organizations can manage this kind of money.”

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Maria Di Mento is a senior reporter at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read full article. This story was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and the nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. For all AP coverage of philanthropy, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.