- Details
- By Chez Oxendine
- Economic Development
The Native-run Little Eagle Art Foundation had major plans for 2020, including a slate of programs at Devil’s Lake State Park as well as an invitational art market.
But the Wisconsin Dells, Wis.-based organization, which director Melanie Tallmadge Sainz describes as an “incubator” for up and coming Native artists, canceled most of its programming or shifted them online in response to the spread of COVID-19. In turn, those cancellations adversely affected the artists involved in the events.
“That really impacted, economically, a lot of the people we contracted with to do performances or workshops or those kinds of things,” Sainz said.
In addition, Sainz said the foundation saw “a little downturn” in its annual funding and turned to grants for support.
Little Eagle Art Foundation’s experience fits with trends identified by the Longmont, Colo.-based First Nations Development Institute in a recent report on the state of Native-led nonprofit organizations during COVID-19.
The Charting a Path Forward report paints a grim picture of what’s to come for organizations that lack support, highlighting a need for more focused and active philanthropy after a year in which many fundraisers were canceled and organizations narrowed their services.
The report stems from a First Nations survey conducted in June 2020 that collected responses from 290 community-based, Native-led nonprofit organizations.
Among respondents, 38 percent had reduced their operations and 35 percent anticipate having to reduce their staff size. Nearly 70 percent anticipated a drop in revenue, while 43 percent of respondents expected a loss of 25 percent or more.
Little Eagle Art Foundation was fortunate in that regard, Sainz said. While not disclosing specific numbers, she said the group’s funding shortfall was mostly made up by seeking more grants.
“That just took more of my time in terms of grant writing,” Sainz said.
Many organizations have either missed out on funding opportunities or have been unable to pursue them, according to the First Nations report. One in five of the survey’s respondents had not received funding of any kind for the last three months.
For its part, First Nations provided $6.5 million in grants to Native organizations across the country in 2020, said Raymond Foxworth, the institute’s vice president of grantmaking, development and communications.
While more than half of overall funding among respondents came from foundations and organizations like First Nations, the rest came from individual donors, according to the report.
That funding has gone to preserving general, day-to-day operations and providing programming and services, as well as to pandemic-prompted needs, such as technology for remote work, according to the report. Moreover, organizations also had to spend money to acquire personal protective equipment to work directly with their clientele.
The report’s authors note that the potentially precipitous drop in revenue since the pandemic’s onset has compounded an already existing problem with Native-focused philanthropy.
“Data on foundation giving to Native communities and causes documents that Native communities are gravely impacted in economically challenging times. During recent economic recessions, giving to Native communities and causes declined significantly,” according to the report.
First Nations notes that during the Great Recession between 2007 to 2009, funding to Native-controlled organizations plummeted 31 percent, from $71 million to $49 million annually. Native-focused giving has never recovered to pre-Great Recession levels and has remained “volatile” in the years since, the report’s authors wrote.
They added: “The Native nonprofit sector continues to call on philanthropy to increase investment in Native-led change; formulate relationships with Native communities and learn from indigenous knowledge and frameworks for community and economic development. These demands are not new and have been made consistently by the Native nonprofit sector for at least 30 years.”
Foxworth said these nonprofits are organizations worth supporting given their crucial role in Native community building.
“These nonprofits are banks, community development financial institutions, and organizations doing important work around food access and business development, cultural and language retention and revitalization, and more,” Foxworth said. “First Nations has always believed that to grow strong and healthy Native economies we need a strong and healthy for-profit, nonprofit, and government sector.”
For Little Eagle Art Foundation, the predicted drop in philanthropy disrupted the organization’s plans for a new building. Sainz said the organization had initially planned to conduct a feasibility study for a “living cultural center” in 2020. However, between the dangers of COVID-19 and the economic conditions during which Little Eagle Art Foundation would have been asking for donations during a capital campaign, the organization thought it best to delay the entire process.
“The people we were working with — and I have to agree with them — decided it was not a good time to collect data for a capital campaign. That’s probably pushed out two or three years,” Sainz said. “Getting together $250,000 to half a million doesn’t seem feasible until we as a country figure out where we are as far as overall fiscal needs.”
The First Nations report offers a pessimistic outlook for a rebound in philanthropy, but the organization remains hopeful that charitable causes will do a better job of including Native American-led groups in the future.
According to the report: “In previous crises that have gripped the nation, philanthropy has divested support to Native communities. While we do see foundations reinvesting in times of recovery, it has been shown to take years for levels of support to rebound to pre-crisis levels. At First Nations, we will continue to work with our community partners to ensure that Native communities are not forgotten and that they receive the support they need during this health pandemic and beyond.”
For Sainz and Little Eagle Art Foundation, the focus comes down to getting art and resources out to the people that need it, day in and day out. She referenced an upcoming virtual art show as one example.
“It’s taken innovation and creativity to pull in everyone safely,” she said. “We’re going to keep our momentum, and hopefully in 2022, we’ll be able to provide that event in person.”
