Q4 2023 Grants Reflect New Funding Initiative to Rebuild Broken Systems

Our new funding initiative supports grantee-led efforts to overcome injustice through big-picture changes for their communities.

Our grantees are leading long-overdue change. Their vision fosters justice by drawing from the wealth of generational knowledge and lived experience in their communities.

In 2023, we launched an initiative to fund grantees’ self-determined responses to unjust policies and practices. Among the proposals we supported were responses that look to the past to help solve problems today, as shown through the work of two Q4 grantee organizations: Rondo Community Land Trust (Rondo CLT) and Food Access and Sustainability Team Blackfeet (FAST Blackfeet).

Grantees’ innovations are inspired by insights rooted in their history.

“It’s not necessarily that we’re creating something new,” says E. Coco, deputy director of Rondo CLT. Rondo is a predominantly Black neighborhood of St. Paul, MN, that was divided and harmed by the construction of Interstate 94.

“We’re going back to the intuitive thinking used in the past by the people of Rondo,” Coco explains, “the earlier wisdom that embraced cooperation, reciprocity, and mutuality to advance community interests. For example, pooling money as an extended family to help family members purchase homes and creating thriving businesses in backyards and basements. We’re trying to reclaim those approaches in ways that make sense today.”

Rondo CLT takes an alternative, reparative approach to community development. Its programs aim to unlock capital, support shared ownership models, and revitalize the cultural and commercial landscape of Rondo through affordable housing initiatives and business opportunities.

Food sovereignty initiatives in Native nations are another way the past informs solutions to current challenges.

“Today’s food system is broken, but it wasn’t in the past. We’re working to return to a balance that existed for generations before us,” says Jamison Aimsback (Blackfeet), an outreach worker with FAST Blackfeet.

FAST Blackfeet offers family-oriented classes and other programs to counter food insecurity, inadequate access to healthy food options, and high rates of diet-related chronic illness in its community on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.

“Essentially our whole goal is to address problems in the food system that are the result of colonization,” says Mackenzie Sachs, a registered dietitian with FAST Blackfeet’s Food Pharmacy program, which provides produce vouchers in an area where fresh fruits and vegetables are difficult to access.

“Our cooking classes focus on the ingredients our ancestors used, like bison and serviceberries,” Jamison adds, reflecting that the organization’s work reminds him of a motto he learned as a student at Blackfeet Community College: Remember your past to build your future.

The grants to Rondo CLT and FAST Blackfeet are part of our new initiative to advance justice in ways that rebuild broken systems.

Back in 2021, after a yearlong process, we updated our grantmaking approach to focus on social, racial, and economic justice. (Read Program Director Karla Miller’s blog about this.)

Last year, informed by a year’s worth of initial learning grants, we created the first major funding opportunity based on the new approach, which emphasizes trust and reciprocal relationships. Eighteen organizations across the eight states and 76 Native nations in our region received a collective $3 million in grants as part of the initiative.

• With its one-year, $250,000 grant, Rondo Community Land Trust plans to pursue its reparative approach to reframing economic development in communities recovering from injustices.
• FAST Blackfeet will use a two-year, $250,000 grant to improve food security, share nutrition education, and advance food sovereignty among the Blackfeet Nation.

Grantmaking in Q4, and 2023 overall, focused on helping our grantee partners achieve racial, social, and economic justice.

In Q4, our board approved 60 grants totaling more than $7.2 million. Overall grantmaking in 2023 was just over $14.5 million.

Q4 grantees also included:

Mahchiwminahnahtik Chippewa and Cree Language Revitalization (MCCLR) of Box Elder, MT—$250,000 over two years to preserve and teach the language of the Chippewa and Cree People of Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation

Black Liberation Collective (fiscally sponsored by Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence Inc.) of Boise, ID—$250,000 over two years to support community healing and collective care among Black trans youth

For more information on recent grantmaking or the work of the Foundation, contact Paul Bachleitner, director of communications, at pbachleitner@nwaf.org.

We’re always working to shine a light on our changemaking grantees and share what we’re doing—plus the why and how behind our work.

At our February board meeting, we’re welcoming Amy Sings In The Timber (Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) and honoring outgoing board member Maria Valandra (Cree).

Did you read about our new mission and why we changed it?

We’re seeking two program officers to join our team. Are you interested, or do you know someone who may be?