Digital Scholarship and Initiatives

Explains that, due to cutbacks in federal funding, Native American groups are seeking assistance from private foundations. Native American groups, like all grant seekers, must make their case important to a prospective donor. They are often applying for grants not specifically earmarked for Native Americans but, rather, geared toward a need such as health, education, or poverty.

The Lumbee tribe receives most of its budget from state block grants. The tribe received a Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust grant of $30,000 to help needy Lumbee people over 60 purchase medications. In 1994, according to the Foundation Center, only 6% of foundation grants went to Native American groups. Mentions Native Americans in Philanthropy (phone: 910-618-9749), a national nonprofit group headquartered in Lumberton whose executive director is Donna Chavis. The organization received a $60,400 grant in May, 1996, from the W.W. Kellogg foundation to “help develop a culturally responsive fundraising curriculum in collaboration with the fundraising school at the Indiana University Center for Philanthropy.”

The larger funders of Native American projects in North Carolina are Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, all in Winston-Salem.