In my role at the intersection of Native communities and philanthropy, I’ve had to navigate between two different value systems. My core values are Indigenous. I grew up in the Seattle urban Indian community, and my mother’s family is Nakoda from the Carry the Kettle First Nation in Canada. As the leader of Native Americans in Philanthropy, I’ve spent decades working with Tribes and Native organizations across the country who embrace an Indigenous worldview centered on community relationships and connection to the environment that sustains us.
But I’ve also become fluent in the value system of philanthropists. Over the years, I’ve had many conversations with grant makers who prioritize data and other Western notions of impact while over-emphasizing a narrow view of “scale” that prizes big, highly visible gifts with a tangible return on investment.
As someone who understands both value systems, my role as a translator of Indigenous power has helped define my career. In that role, I regularly ask myself: How can I inform philanthropists about the impact their investments can have on Indian Country? One approach I’m leaning into is to stop telling, and to start showing.
Recently, my colleagues and I, in partnership with Alaska Venture Fund, brought a group of grant makers, including the Bezos Earth Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Alaska Conservation Foundation, to visit three Alaska Native rural communities. We wanted to give them an up-close look at the places and projects their dollars support, but whose impact can be hard to measure with traditional methods.
Among those places was the village of Igiugig, home to approximately 70 Indigenous people. Nearly 10 years ago, the village began an ambitious endeavor to move away from costly, climate-harming diesel fuel. Those costs were offset by a state government subsidized energy affordability program, but Igiugig leaders never considered that a permanent solution.
Several years before, they had identified an ideal source of energy — the local Kvichak River. The powerful but shallow body of water could generate its own energy if a hydrokinetic generator was installed to convert the flowing water into electricity. The expensive project, however, would require government funding. When that funding finally arrived in 2019 — nearly a decade after the request was made — village leaders were able to prove their theory that the river could provide sustainable energy and that the generator would not harm the river’s salmon, a primary source of food for Igiugig.
But the leaders were also aware that they couldn’t depend on the river as the village’s sole source of energy and began looking for ways to fund solar and wind projects. This time, rather than wait years for government funds, they turned to philanthropy, including the grant makers on the trip. Those funders could now witness firsthand what the Igiugig people had accomplished — and how closely that work aligned with their own energy goals.
Beyond Slide Decks
What they saw and experienced could never be fully represented in a slide deck. They fished in the Kvichak River, where those energy-producing currents tugged on their fishing lines. They met with young leaders and listened to Elders discuss how the 1919 flu nearly wiped out their people. They were hosted, and they were welcomed.
Trips like this aren’t just about making the case for a particular project. They’re about showing funders why they need to trust communities and take risks on small efforts driven by Indigenous leaders. The funders who joined us returned to their offices with a greater understanding of the human-centered Indigenous values system, which can inform their broader work across the country.
To grant makers, the Igiugig story is also inevitably one of numbers. The village leaders had set a goal to reduce the cost of producing electricity with diesel fuel by 50 percent. With initial investments in renewable energy projects, it is well on track to surpass that target, and they have since set a new goal to completely move the community away from diesel fuels.
The cost of achieving this goal — roughly $4 million over the next six years — proves that modest investments can have major returns for communities.
For the people of Igiugig, this is primarily a story of achieving energy sovereignty — of identifying what their community needed and connecting resources to solutions. It’s a story of forming new relationships with philanthropists that could drive future projects and serve as a model for similar efforts in other rural and Tribal communities.
When funders take the time to go out and meet the communities they serve — to hear people’s stories, share their meals, and take part in their lives — the notion of “lived experiences” becomes more than a talking point. Philanthropists too often believe that they risk sacrificing impact when they prioritize personal connection and small-scale community engagement. That’s not the case.
Human-Based Metrics
Philanthropy needs to make a course correction. It needs to let go of its often-limited view of measuring results and embrace a more human understanding of what impact looks like.
With that goal in mind, my organization is working to expand opportunities to connect funders directly to communities that they may not understand or fully appreciate. In 2024, we joined Native Hawaiian Philanthropy and Asian Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy to launch Power in Solidarity: Hawaii, a new partnership that will bring grant makers to Indigenous communities in Hawaii. By replicating the success of our Alaska trip, we hope to connect more funders with a unique group of communities that are deploying innovative strategies, grounded in their culture and values, to address needs.
We all strive for our philanthropic relationships to be more than financial transactions, but achieving this requires us to rethink our understanding of scale and connections with communities.
That begins with philanthropists truly taking the time to learn about the people and places they serve. It’s one thing to know something is true because you read about it in an impact report — it’s a completely different experience to know it’s true because you saw and experienced it firsthand. By taking more time in the field to witness the effects of our investments on real people, we will deepen our trust with communities and better understand why even the smallest projects can yield big results.
