For Immediate Release: November 3, 2023
Rapid City, SD – Today, NDN Collective released an impact report outlining the organization’s expansive work to build financial, social, and political power for Indigenous peoples for the last five years.
The full report can be found here. Key insights include that between 2018 and 2022, NDN Collective:
- Centered and made real the work of LANDBACK in all programming.
- Distributed $44 million in grants to 745 grantees.
- Received funding from over 90,000 individual donors.
- Supported 11 development projects centering community wealth building.
- Supported 9 Indigenous-owned businesses through a braided capital model, totaling $6 million in loans and power building resources.
- Held 24 creative resistance trainings to ensure Indigenous communities and allies are ready to mobilize in key moments for furthering justice.
- Continuously fought to center Indigenous rights in climate policy, including by testifying to Congress and building global power at annual United National Climate Change Conferences.
- Produced eight political memos and position papers, providing essential recommendations to the White House and governmental agencies.
“Launched in 2018, NDN Collective provides the most ambitious, systemic approach to empowering Native communities in the history of philanthropy and impact investing,” said Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of NDN Collective, in the report’s opening letter. “The change, justice, and liberation we seek requires the centering of marginalized experiences and leadership, as well as the significant redistribution of resources currently overseeing the concentration of wealth.”
“As a movement infrastructure organization, NDN Collective has been working to Defend, Develop, and Decolonize in a wide array of areas that affect our daily lives and the future of Turtle Island for all,” said Judith LeBlanc, Board Chair of NDN Collective, in the report’s closing letter. “Our call for LANDBACK has awoken a new collective sense of urgency to fulfill our role as protectors of land and resources, moving policymakers, tribal governments, and grassroots communities to not only dream but also lean into sovereignty.”
Beginning this year, the organization plans to release annual reports. A 2023 retrospective report is set to launch early next year.
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NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.