The First Peoples Fund was founded in 1995 in Rapid City, South Dakota as a donor-advised fund operated by the Tides Foundation. 1 The First Peoples Fund became an independent community foundation in 2003. 1
Programs
The First Peoples Fund provides year-long fellowships for artists or persons who practice Native American, Native Alaskan, or Native Hawaiian crafts and are members of a recognized tribe. 2 The Fund also provides training and microgrants to Native Americans seeking to develop arts-based businesses through a series of workshops. 3 The workshops especially focus on marketing and business development skills. 4
The Fund also supports Native American, Alaskan, and Hawaiian community organizations through its Indigenous Arts Ecology grant program. 5
Advocacy Activity
The First Peoples Fund has also been involved in advocacy in support of left-of-center political causes. Founder Jennifer Easton — who was not Native American — said that she founded the Fund after a “powerful dream” in which she was “standing between two groups of people—the Cavalry on one side and the Warriors on the other.” Easton described the “cavalry” as a group of white people who were “doing the wrong thing” and claims that “At the end of the dream, I turned and walked toward the Native people.” Easton has said that the Fund was “[her] personal way of apologizing” for “so much the U.S. government has done wrong when it comes to Natives.” 6
In 2020, the Fund joined other groups organized by the left-wing Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to call for Congress to authorize an extension of door-to-door counting as part of the 2020 U.S. Census. 7
Major Donors
In 2020, the First Peoples Fund received $1.25 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of an emergency grantmaking program to support artists and arts organizations impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 8 The same year, the Fund received $500,000 from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation for a “national field scan” of Native American arts organizations. 9
Since 2004, the First Peoples Fund has received more than $3.3 million from the Bush Foundation, a Minnesota-based foundation that has a substantial giving focus on American Indian causes. 10 In 2014, the First Peoples Fund won the Bush Prize for Community Innovation, awarded to persons or groups with “a track record of successful community problem solving.” 11
Grant Activity
All-time grants received statistics from Candid dataset:
Total Grant Value:$57,166,004
Number of Grants:339
Number of Funders:86
Selection of highest value grants received from the last seven years:
Mackenzie Scott and Dan Jewett made an unrestricted grant of $6 million to the First Peoples Fund. This grant is part of the $2,739,000,000 in gifts to 286 high-impact organizations in categories and communities that have been historically underfunded and overlooked, and social sector infrastructure organizations that support them.
General support for an organization dedicated to Native arts and culture in bringing about social change, strengthening Indigenous ecosystems, empowering leaders and inspiring next-generation leaders and core support for institutional strengthening
General support for an organization dedicated to Native arts and culture in bringing about social change, strengthening Indigenous ecosystems, empowering leaders and inspiring next-generation leaders and core support for institutional strengthening
General support for Native arts and culture and bringing about social change, strengthening Indigenous ecosystems, empowering leaders and inspiring next generation leaders
First Peoples Fund (FPF) is deeply grateful for the Northwest Area Foundation’s generous support and strong partnership over the past ten years. NWAF’s investment of more than $2 million beginning in 2011 including the release of Establishing A Creative Economy: Art as an Economic Engine in Native Communities in 2013 followed by the Presidential Award in 2014 has significantly changed the growth and programmatic trajectory of our organization. FPF has leveraged the Foundation’s investment and understanding of the link between art, culture and economic change with other foundations to maintain an average 23% annual growth rate over the last ten years. In 2021, we grew by 70%, reaching a projected annual operating budget of $4.8 Million and more than $7.5 Million committed and in reserves while maintaining 25% of our annual budget designated for grants to individual artists and grassroots organizations. Your investment, combined with the release of the Northwest Area Foundation-supported Building a Creative Economy: Art as an Economic Engine in Native Communities, sparked a critical strategic shift in our programming eight years ago. We moved from a primary focus on supporting individual artists as entrepreneurs and cultural leaders to an integrated, ecosystem-based approach in which we also build the capacities of Native CDFIs and other tribal community-based organizations to provide artists and culture bearers the resources and supportive ecosystems they need to create and sell their work in order to support themselves and their families and ultimately be viable contributors in sustaining their communities. FPF is driven by our core principle that strengthening Indigenous arts and culture is vital to solving the systemic, generational social and economic challenges faced by Native nations across the U.S. General operating support from the Northwest Area Foundation over the next three years will help First Peoples Fund reach the goals laid out in our strategic plan, outlined below, while meeting the new challenges of Covid-19. We will continue to strengthen the Indigenous Arts Ecology through deepened investments in individual Native artists, their families and community-level ecosystems, accelerating transformation already underway in FPF’S core communities and expanding change into more ecosystems. This includes the full realization of FPF’S Indigneous Arts Ecology model on the Pine Ridge Reservation with the opening of Oglala Lakota Artspace alongside Rolling Rez Arts and the integration of FPF’S expansive network of artists, culture bearers, youth and organizational partnerships.
To strengthen support for and research on the Native performing arts community
$500,000
2020
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Inc
To expand and deepen support for Native performing artists and to fund the first phase of a national field scan of the Native performing arts community
First Peoples Fund?s mission is to support those who see art and culture as ways to strengthen Native communities. They provide direct support through grants to Native artists, culture bearers and the organizations that support them. They provide trainings that 1,500+ Native artists have attended, and they conduct national research and develop reports on investing in the Indigenous arts ecology. Ecosystem grants provide general operating support for organizations that support others to solve problems in their communities.
$450,000
2023
Margaret A Cargill Foundation
The purpose of the project is to expand the influence, resources, support and expertise of First Peoples Fund (FPF) to new communities, anchor sites, artists and culture bearers in MACP’s regions, especially in the Southwest, so that artists have access to what they need to build their careers and networks, along with opportunities to transfer their knowledge and skills to their communities, resulting in a stronger and more robust Indigenous Arts Ecology.
$400,000
2023
Margaret A Cargill Foundation
The purpose of the project is to continue developing capacity at First Peoples Fund (FPF) by building off the significant leadership and organizational advancements made over the past 2+ years, shifting more of our focus to our director and manager level positions, while ensuring the organization has a strong, cohesive board and staff and internal strategic pathways for growth.
This general operating grant supports the First Peoples Fund's mission to sustain Native artists and culture-bearers and advance community and economic well-being rooted in Indigenous values.
4. Gourd, Sheri. “Native artists learn how to market their talent.” Tahlequah (OK) Daily Press. April 15, 2018. Accessed on Westlaw (2018 WLNR 10287958) November 11, 2020.
8. “Mellon Foundation Launches New Initiative to Support 1,500 Artists and Small Arts Organizations as COVID-19 Crisis Continues.” Mellon Foundation. August 27, 2020. https://mellon.org/news-blog/articles/mellon-foundation-launches-new-initiative-support-1500-artists-and-small-arts-organizations-covid-19-crisis-continues/.
