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Making Connections – The Foraker Group Nonprofit Sustainability Model and Alaska Tribes

In 2014, Foraker received funding from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust that was designed to enhance our ability to serve rural Alaska Native serving nonprofits and tribal governments by testing the validity of the Foraker Nonprofit Sustainability Model in those organizations. The project became known as “Making Connections.” This report documents the research and findings of a three-year process.

Executive Summary

Since our founding, Foraker has been committed to serving all areas of Alaska. We recognize the vast opportunities to learn and grow from both urban and rural, and Native and non-Native cultures. In all our work, our sustainability model, created primarily with the nonprofit sector in mind, provides a framework for strengthening organizations no matter their mission, size, or location. The model stresses maintaining focus on the reason an organization exists by articulating the founding story and answering the questions “who are we?” and “where are we going?” Using the answers to those questions as the focal point, the model asks organizations to ensure that the right people are on the board and staff and that a balance exists between the CEO and the board. It also asks organizations to consider the sources, sufficiency, and resiliency of their unrestricted funds to meet opportunities and unforeseen needs, and finally to foster strategic and productive partnerships to further mission results.

The Making Connections project, which was supported by this grant, was designed to assess how the lenses of the sustainability model are helpful in the way Alaska Native tribes are exercising tribal governance. Currently, many tribes operate with governing tools that result in limited effectiveness. These tools are often designed and controlled by the federal government, funded by the federal government, and organized around social programs that do not reflect indigenous ideas of how authority should be exercised. In most cases, these tools do not maximize the opportunity for leadership to deal with current and complex challenges that face Alaska’s tribal governments and the people they serve. We recognize this fundamental dilemma in their current framework, and we have been testing our assumption that the sustainability model is a way to rethink where they are today and where they want to go. Whether we are working with a tribal government or Native nonprofit (one that is governed and led by a majority Alaska Native board and staff), we wanted to learn more about how our sustainability model can be a platform to help Alaska Native leaders ask new questions and rethink methods for effective governance from the inside out. We also wanted to share these insights with the funding community to create a better understanding of the structures that are both supporting and challenging the tribes and Native nonprofits in Alaska.

The Making Connections project underscored the importance of maintaining Foraker’s connection in our Native communities through better understanding of how the sustainability model is used in effective tribal governance, whether that use is intentional or not. During the three years of this project, a variety of our staff and consulting team worked with tribal citizens and leaders who are actively engaging in new conversations and practices related to governance that stem from, and are guided by, cultural values. These conversations have required leaders to counter practices that were based on inherited western institutional values and frameworks and move to those that are culturally appropriate. The Native Nations Institute (NNI) calls this process “Native Nation Building” and defines it as “the enhanced capacity of indigenous people to realize their own cultural, educational, political, economic, and environmental objectives through fundamental actions of their own design and initiation.” The guiding principles of nation building go beyond defining good governance, they are meant to encourage leaders to strengthen tribal capacity and become the primary decision makers over their land and future. In this regard, tribal leaders learn to move into governing practices that are focused on strengthening their purpose through legitimate cultural values. This clear focus helps tribes define and clearly articulate the “self” in tribal self-determination and self-governance.

In the first two years of the project, the Foraker team worked to deepen existing relationships and establish new ones with many tribes in the state. This work took many formats including issue specific facilitation in areas like planning and HR, listening sessions in concert with grantees of the Oak Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, attendance in our certificate program, and connections through our Rural Capacity Initiative business development process. Each of these engagements and subsequent relationships provided insights into the selection of groups upon which to base case studies on the use of our sustainability model. While the original grant proposal called for engaging these groups as a cohort, for a variety of reasons we chose to use one-on-one relationships, which turned out to be a more successful process for them and for us.

In Year Three, we moved to the objective of providing case studies and developing metaphors to assist tribes in using the sustainability model to advance their work. Four tribes were selected because of their reputations for strength in one of the areas of the sustainability model and for their determined and engaged leadership. At this point in the project, Lead Capacity Builder Jonella Larson White engaged in intensive conversations with tribal leadership, administered governance assessment surveys, and brought together tribal council members to share the challenges they each face. The insights we gained from these engagements are captured in case studies that are attached to this report.

Foraker’s work with the participating tribes will allow us to adapt how to employ the sustainability model in tribal governance frameworks. Below are observations that will provide context for our future work.

• Tribes, like nonprofits, vary with where they are in their sustainability journey – some have a clear focus and a true understanding of their governing constitutions, whereas others do not. This is similar to what we find in our work with nonprofits.
• Tribes, like nonprofits, face a real challenge of capacity. This is especially true for tribes that exist in communities with small populations (less than 100 people), are faced with an out migration of citizens, and operate their entities using systems that have little to no match with cultural values. To counter this challenge, tribes are investing in leadership capacity through focused teachings that emphasize cultural values and development of Native language (especially among children), and by encouraging high school students to actively participate in tribal council meetings.
• Tribes, probably more so than many nonprofits, understand and embrace their purpose and values through their oral history and cultural practices. Not all tribes have their purpose and values written, but they can certainly communicate their importance along with their strategic vision and plans.
• Our work with tribes is inherently different when we discuss focus – who they are and where they are going. With nonprofits, we often ask organizations to describe the story of their “founding.” With tribes, we know that their peoples have organized for thousands of years and have much deeper and more profound understandings of “who they are” from a cultural perspective. Our hope is to provide leaders with adequate tools that encourage them to incorporate their indigenous concepts of how governance and authority should be organized and exercised into formal governing institutions (tribal entities, Native corporations, schools).
• The core purpose of tribes is always to foster, grow, and encourage the health and well-being of their citizens. Unlike nonprofits, they typically do not have varying “missions.” Tribes are guided by their cultural values often with the strategic vision “to remain for the next 10,000 years.”
• As sovereign entities recognized by the federal government, tribes receive certain federal payments and engage in cottage industries and more recently in 8A companies, all of which are considered earned income. Tribes also are in the midst of developing alternative energy projects and food security projects, protecting and exercising subsistence rights, and supporting local entrepreneurship – all of which offset the high cost of living in rural Alaska and connect to the financial resiliency factor within the model.

The insight and knowledge we gained from this project will not only continue to inform our work around the state, but will also have an impact on how the funding community engages with tribes and Native nonprofits. Throughout the project, we have had conversations with funders who are making grants and supporting the capacity of organizations in rural Alaska – mainly the Moore Foundation, Oak Foundation, and Rasmuson Foundation.

Foraker staff remains committed to building the cultural competency within our team of staff and consultants. Continuing and expanding Making Connections will be a long-term project that can now be carried on with enhanced capacity, insight, and commitment.