Dr. Anne Petersen, senior vice president of the Kellogg Foundation, thanked AIHEC for the bowl they presented to her last spring. Pictured with her are (left to right) David Gipp, president of AIHEC, and Louis LaRose, a founder of Nebraska Indian Community College. Photo by Dean Everard and Katie Bleacher

When the W.K. Kellogg Foundation announced a multi-million dollar initiative in 1995 to support American Indian higher education, the nation’s tribally-controlled colleges and universities were jubilant. Most of the money would go to these small and often desperately poor community colleges. It was a major investment and, of equal value, an important statement of trust.

The Native American Higher Education Initiative (NAHEI) is now in its fifth year, and nearly every tribal college has received no less than $130,000 in grants. In addition, 22 colleges were also awarded between $350,000 and $1 million for larger and, typically, collaborative projects with other tribal colleges or with mainstream universities. In addition, a portion of the initiative was set aside for national Indian organizations, including the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and the American Indian College Fund.

The goal of the initiative is to strengthen the colleges administratively, financially, and culturally. Individual colleges have designed projects such as the purchase of student record software, development of a community wellness center, creation of new courses and degree programs, and establishment of development or alumni offices–among many others.

The influence of the Kellogg initiative is felt on campuses across the country. However, the initiative’s importance extends beyond the colleges or even the communities they serve. It deserves attention from the nation as a whole because it is attempting to fundamentally rewrite the way foundations do business with Indian communities. It also has implications for how philanthropies work with other minority communities.

“I believe that this is not just new and different for Indian country,” argues Donna Chavis, director of Native Americans in Philanthropy in Lumberton, N.C. “It’s new and different, period.”

Kellogg staff believes the Native American Higher Education Initiative is more about collaboration with its grantees than imposing requirements. “The initiative has been a two-way street for the colleges and the foundation,” says Valorie Johnson, a program director at Kellogg Foundation “It’s like a blending of two cultures.” Johnson, who is Seneca-Cayuga from Oklahoma, was instrumental in developing the project. Support and guidance also came from Betty Overton-Adkins, the foundation’s director of higher education.

The initiative is often described more as a partnership. Not all tribal college leaders see this as a partnership among equals, but most acknowledge that the foundation has attempted to give real power to the tribal colleges. In contrast to most foundation programs, argues Fort Peck Community College President Jim Shanley, the foundation “allowed the innovation to be driven from the bottom up, rather than the top down.”

In the process, the initiative may help the nation think more deeply about its attitude towards American Indians and the historical relationship between Native Americans and philanthropists. While many people want to “help the Indian,” the initiative asks deeper questions about who, in fact, should define the problems of Indian society and whether or not Indians should be trusted to shape their own solutions.

All of us or none of us

One of the initiative’s distinctive features is that nearly every tribal college received funding. Thirty tribally and Indian controlled institutions–all but the very youngest–are grantees.

The foundation did not originally plan to be so inclusive. Instead, Kellogg wanted to repeat the approach it took with historically black colleges and universities. In that initiative, the foundation picked what Johnson called the “best of the best–the Howards, the Spellmans, Clark Atlantas.” The foundation worked with these institutions to build Centers of Excellence. Each center focused on a meaty issue, such as math and science, international relations, and jazz.

“I really liked that,” says Johnson. “So as a program director, I though we should have these centers of excellence at tribal colleges.” Tribal college presidents had other plans. The story is often told of their first meeting with Kellogg staff. After the foundation’s generous proposal was summarized, tribal college leaders put Kellogg to the test. “What’s the splash?” challenged Shanley. He meant, how much money are you proposing, and how long will you stay with the colleges?

And when Sinte Gleska University President Lionel Bordeaux spoke, he turned the foundation’s assumptions about responsible grant-making upside down. “It’s all of us or none of us,” he said. “That’s the way it has always been with us.”

“Don’t pick us off,” Johnson recalls being told. “Don’t you decide who the best of us are. If you have $10, spread it among all of us.”

This statement—“all of us or none of us”–has been repeated many times since and has come to symbolize the spirit of the entire initiative. It captures a treasured ethic within the tribal college community– that success of each college depends on success of the movement as a whole. It emerged in the early days of the tribal colleges, when the first small group of struggling colleges came together and formed the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) in 1973. These early leaders knew that their survival required collaboration. So they put aside old rivalries, pooled their limited resources (and equally limited expertise as educators and lobbyists), and helped each other grow and mature.

Tribal colleges don’t always see eye to eye, but this spirit of self-sacrifice for the common good remains alive, as Kellogg discovered. But all this presented a serious problem for Johnson and others with the foundation who had advocated for a tribal college initiative and who had to present the colleges’ ultimatum to the foundation board. “I was really scared,” said Johnson. “We had just pulled a major coup by convincing the foundation that they should invest in the colleges. And then they tell us, ‘it’s all of us or none of us.’”

Dream Catcher

We don’t fund planning

As it turned out, that meeting was the beginning of a relationship–a new and unexpected kind of relationship–thanks in large part to the willingness of key foundation leaders to try something new. Kellogg did more than make “concessions” to the colleges; it set aside many of its own rules, regulations, and–most especially–institutional habits. The whole project was rebuilt, from scratch, with the full participation of the tribal colleges.

As a first step, the foundation agreed to begin with $30,000 planning grants for the colleges, another idea proposed by Bordeaux at their first meeting. Kellogg didn’t normally fund planning and could have stopped the conversation with that simple declaration. But Kellogg staff took Bordeaux’s idea back to foundation headquarters at Battle Creek, Mich., where they found support from Russell Mawgy, Kellogg’s CEO at the time.

The result was a multi-year, three part initiative. Out of this planning phase every tribal college was eligible to receive a $100,000 grant to address capacity-building within the college. Every project is unique, but most fall under several broad categories chosen by the colleges. Some address the need for long-term funding by developing new or expanded development offices. Others focus on curriculum development, especially the development of new distance learning courses or four-year degree programs. Another group addresses culture and community development by, for example, developing culturally-based courses or social services.

As the project took shape, Kellogg also decided to fund four national Indian organizations, three of which are affiliated with the tribal colleges–the American Indian College Fund, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, and the consortium’s Student Congress. Finally, the foundation reserved a large portion of the initiative for 22 larger and what Shanley calls “semi-competitive” projects that also include mainstream institutions. Here, the foundation was especially eager to encourage collaboration among tribal colleges or between a tribal college and one or more mainstream institutions.

The initiative gave tangible evidence that it was not “business as usual” by allowing the colleges to shape the project, by sharing the funds, and by taking time for planning and developing proposals that reflected needs of their own communities. But many observers say the evidence of Kellogg’s eagerness to try something new is most clearly seen in its willingness to relinquish some of its assumptions about outcomes. As the initiative progresses, the key questions now are: What defines success? And, how do we know the initiative is making a difference?

Johnson acknowledges that this is one of the hardest parts of the project. It is here that the clear differences emerge between the cultures of the Kellogg Foundation and the tribal colleges, and potential for misunderstanding still exists.

The foundation “is really attached to outcomes,” Johnson explains. “We plan almost everything. We do external scans, and then we do internal scans, and then we will review all the literature, and then we develop concept papers. We develop goals, strategies, and action plans.” Little is purposefully left to chance.

The colleges take a slightly different approach. “They want outcomes, too,” Johnson says, “but they are open to outcomes; they are open to what will happen. They say, ‘This is what we hope will happen.’ Whereas Kellogg is more machine-like. It’s more about predictability and control in its drive for excellence.”

Yet the foundation has relinquished some of that control, and as the initiative progresses, it is finding new ways to listen with sensitivity to the tribal colleges. At the most recent networking meeting–an annual event that gathers grantees and foundation representative for several days of meeting and presentations–the theme was “telling the story of tribal colleges.” For the first time, tribal colleges took almost full control of the agenda. They gave hard data–showing how the colleges are succeeding–but they also told stories about the culture and about the community. As a result the whole initiative is less about fulfilling predetermined expectations than it is about discovering what it has the potential to be.

Are expectations realistic?

While tribal college leaders praise the overall impact of the initiative, sometimes there are moments of frustration. Some within the college community, for example, believe that the foundation expects too much. The feeling is that Kellogg wants to see what one president calls “earth shattering” changes within the tribal college movement. Yet $22 million, when divided so many ways and over three or more years, is unlikely to produce immediate and obvious systemic change.

Shanley notes that the foundation first talked about a $30 million initiative that would target tribal colleges exclusively. The math was easy: $1 million for every college. But then some of the money was spent on planning grants, and the initiative was broadened to include national organizations and non-Indian institutions. Less was available to colleges. But expectations for change within colleges were not trimmed proportionately.

As the initiative progresses, some also quietly worry about projects that are having trouble. They note that inclusiveness is important, but this also increases opportunities for failure. Some colleges are weaker than others, for a variety of reasons, and may not have the skills, stability, or institutional resources needed to ensure sustainability of their projects. How the foundation feels about the initiative depends, in part, on how it feels about projects that don’t seem to leave a lasting mark.

But Kellogg and the colleges say that this is a necessary risk. To argue that the initiative should have been more selective, more controlled, misses the point entirely. Barbara Bratone of the American Indian College Fund argues that the distinctive values of the tribal college community simply required a different approach. Bratone directs resource development for the college fund. “The Indian community is different. There’s a basic cultural thing. Outpacing everyone else is frowned upon.”

The foundation’s more open and inclusive approach may create a more ambiguous relationship with grantees, but it also created an unusual level of trust between the colleges and the foundation. The planning phase, for example, was an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with the colleges. The significance of this relationship-building was not recognized at first, Johnson says, but the dividends are real. (See separate article in this issue by Tyrone Baines.)

“In Kellogg we pay attention to what’s scientific: ‘What are the facts?’ Don’t let the relationship get in the way,” she says. But with tribal colleges, “the relationships are important. And unless we establish that first, the initiative–no matter how much money we have–isn’t going to move forward.”

The planning phase also encouraged greater creativity by giving the colleges an opportunity to pause from their day-to-day preoccupation with survival and imagine whole new ways to serve their communities. “It made them stop and think: Who do they really want to be in the 21st century?” argues Johnson. “It gave them time to dream.”

She cites the Learning Lodge Institute as an example of what emerged out of this more reflective process. Hoping to find new ways to preserve tribal languages, Little Big Horn College is collaborating with Montana’s six other tribal colleges to help study, teach and–when necessary–reintroduce eleven different languages. “I really think that, collectively, they can come up with some answers for all Indian Country,” says Johnson.

In fact, one of the initiative’s more important–but less visible–outcomes is that it nurtures greater self-confidence within Indian communities. “Some days I get worried that we (tribal members) have been so dependent for so long that we don’t realize that it’s up to us,” Johnson said.. “I’ve already begun hearing comments like, ‘you shouldn’t have given us money for this, you should have given us money for that.’” But Johnson tells them, “You wrote the RFP (request for proposal)! You told us what you wanted to do.”

Johnson clearly wants to see tribal colleges focus more on the things that make them uniquely Indian. She worries that they are too often pulled away from their culture and risk becoming what she calls “Rapid City University on the Rez”–nothing more than community colleges that just happen to be located on a reservation. In her view, the value of the Kellogg initiative is that it allows tribal colleges to focus on their unique strengths and distinctive values.

“I think what Kellogg has done is make it safe for the colleges to dream in the open–not underground,” she says.

Next steps

Val Johnson

The initiative is not yet over, so it is too early to pass judgment on the success or failure of individual projects. But lessons are being learned. Asked what parts of the grant are making the biggest difference, some focus on the national organizations. Shanley, for example, believes the foundation is getting the “most bang for its buck,” through grants awarded to the American Indian College Fund, which raises money for scholarships and endowments, as well as the venerable American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which represents the colleges in Washington, D.C.

However, many of the smaller, capacity-building grants show that even $100,000 can make a difference. A community wellness center sponsored by Fort Peck College in Montana is drawing praise from Kellogg and is getting national attention. Barbara Bratone, meanwhile, believes money spent on building development offices was well spent. In several cases, these fledging efforts have already leveraged their $100,000 into a half-million or more in new grants and donations.

Johnson often focuses on collaborative and, especially, culturally-based projects–the Learning Lodge Institute in Montana is one of her favorites. She also talks about the Northern Plains Bison Education Network, a project led by United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, N.D., that is helping six tribes in the region learn how to better manage growing bison herds.

No less important is the initiative’s ability to provide the colleges with greater visibility and credibility. Barbara Bratone says that Kellogg’s commitment is responsible, in part, for several more recent initiatives, including a $30 million commitment from Lilly Endowment Inc. to fund campus renovation and new construction. Johnson also says recent initiatives from Packard, Fannie Mae, and several smaller foundations developed, in part, out of Kellogg’s work.

Finally, the initiative will also have a lasting impact by developing a new kind of relationship with reservation communities. Kellogg’s willingness to listen carefully and share power is, some argue, an essential but too often missing ingredient in the foundation world. “If one looks at the world of grant-making at large,” Donna Chavis argues, “it’s a business. We all know that. There are systems in place for efficiency. That system doesn’t allow time for building relationships.” But, she adds, this relationship-building is essential with Indian communities and valuable everywhere.

The legacy of the initiative will therefore be felt not just in the new programs created or the amount of new money raised. Instead, it will be felt when foundations listen to Indians and when Indians speak up with confidence.

Paul Boyer was the founding editor of the Tribal College Journal. He is completing his doctoral dissertation and works as a consultant for the Kellogg Foundation. For more information about the Kellogg initiative, see TCJ, Vol. VIII, N. 4. For AIHEC’s history, see Vol. IX, N.4. For information about the Learning Lodge, see Vol. XI, N.3; and see Vol. VI, N.3 for information about philanthropy in Indian country.