The American Indian College Fund awarded a little more than $26 million in scholarships and student support last year. On Thursday, the Denver organization announced a single gift worth nearly three times that: $70 million, unrestricted, from Yield Giving, the philanthropy MacKenzie Scott founded.
The gift is the second Scott has made to the College Fund in five years, and the largest. It anchors a seven-year plan the Fund built after months of meetings with the people the money is meant to serve: Native students, tribal college and university presidents, community members and its own board of trustees. Less than 1 percent of philanthropic giving in the United States reaches Indian Country, a figure the Fund documented in an August report with the Brookings Institution. The plan is a long answer to a short number.
Because the money arrived with no strings, the Fund set its own priorities. Students come first: more scholarships at the nation’s 34 accredited tribal colleges and universities, college success coaching, career assessment and mentoring, and wellness programs written to reflect Native cultures. The colleges themselves get faculty development, governance training and new capacity for cultural and environmental programming. A family-friendly campus initiative expands. And $20 million goes into a designated endowment, money set aside to keep working after the seven years run out.
“We built this plan by listening first,” said Cheryl Crazy Bull, the College Fund’s president and CEO. “This gift gives us more very welcome resources to build on our history of success with supporting Native students and tribal communities.”
The need is not abstract. The August report found that federal investment in Indian Country has fallen back to pre-pandemic levels of underfunding, despite the government’s trust and treaty obligations. Census data draws the result in one line: 16 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native adults hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 33 percent nationally.
The Fund’s case for closing that gap rests on returns it can count. Its research shows that scholars who receive support beyond the scholarship check graduate and enter careers at 1.5 times the rate of students who do not. A study published last year by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium calculated that every dollar spent on tribal colleges returns $1.60 to taxpayers, through higher earnings, greater tax revenue and lower spending on assistance and health programs. Since its founding in 1989, the College Fund has provided more than $434 million in scholarships, programs and tribal college support, and it remains the nation’s largest charity devoted to Native higher education.
Crazy Bull closed the announcement with thanks in Lakota: “We say wopila, thank you, to MacKenzie Scott for her trust in the College Fund and our mission to create stronger Native families and communities.” Seven years of spending now has to prove the trust was well placed. The standard she set for it was plain: “We know a teacher can change lives, and a health-care worker can save them. Both professions require a college degree.”
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