About The Collaborative

The Good Relatives Collaborative(GRC) is made up of three partner organizations who came together for the specific purpose of responding to a call for a grantmaking partnership with the Bush Foundation. GRC was awarded a six year contract to share and award $1.2 million annually to the Native communities of Minnesota, North Dakota. and South Dakota.

Each organization is deeply rooted in their community and follow their own mission in how they serve Native people. The collaborative came together around shared values and agree that the current funding models are not responsive to the needs of Native grassroots and constituency-led organizations engaged in community-centered problem-solving. GRC’s theory of change includes applying a Native lens in reframing the grantmaking process to build capacity in our Native communities.

GRC is looking to fund projects that will integrate, enhance and address community leadership, community healing, cultural revitalization, and capacity building by encouraging cooperation, collaboration, and reciprocity across the region in holistic and innovative ways.

Participatory Grant Making

GRC uses a Native-based lens in grantmaking. Participatory grantmaking closely aligns with Native perspectives and values that are rooted in community and are more collaborative than competitive, focusing on transparency and accountability to the community, while emphasizing self determination and trust in leadership development, process learning, and evaluation. GRC chooses to begin with this framework in the grantmaking process and further refine it so that values such as cooperation and being a good relative are reinforced. GRC acknowledges our shared history of trauma while being deliberate about healing, and supporting the growth and development of diversified economies in our Native communities.

Philanthropy That Heals

GRC recognizes that we all have work to do in decolonizing, disrupting, and dismantling the current funding systems rooted in competition.  GRC chooses to fund collaboration, not competition. As part of this effort, GRC supports the submission of both written or oral applications. As a collaborative, we have experienced and understood how the current scarcity model discourages transparency and pushes organizations to keep lessons learned to themselves in order to stand out in the quest for funding. GRC views funding and supporting community grass roots efforts and Native-led organizations that work together in addressing the root causes of multifaceted issues that enable our communities to walk through all the doors of opportunity at once.

GRC is developing new tools and approaches in grantmaking grounded in Native Ways of Knowing and Being. We recognize the need for flexible program areas that demonstrate fluidity and appreciation for Native worldviews.  Flexibility encourages the exploration of new partnerships and opportunities to collaborate that may have been overlooked. GRC believes lasting change is achieved when communities have ownership of both the solutions and resources they determine best address both the opportunities and challenges they have defined.