In areas ranging from education and environmental protection to social services reform and civil rights, achieving real and lasting impact often means changing complex and dynamic systems. No single individual or organization can succeed in this work alone. But when people reach across the lines that too often divide us, they tap into new ideas and resources — and create partnerships that can help them achieve their goals.

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Incorporated in 2007 and launched in 2009, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation is a Native-led, philanthropic organization dedicated exclusively to the perpetuation of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian arts and cultures nationwide.

Through its Community Inspiration Program, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation assists artists by helping them to build the capacity to make progress on complex problems. Specifically, the Community Inspiration Program provides capacity building support to artists working on projects designed to connect Native and non-Native people in community conversations that address pressing social, cultural, and environmental concerns to create positive change. The foundation offers funding support for community collaborations and assists artists in strategic planning, including developing evaluation and documentation systems, to help their projects engage participants to reach relevant outcomes.

We were a little late getting into the evaluation process, so it didn’t happen from the beginning. One of the things that we learned is that as we continue this program and even provide our learning to other organizations or foundations that want to engage this kind of work, it’s really important to build evaluation in at the very beginning.

Some of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation’s key learnings about the Community Inspiration project are:

  • Build evaluation in at the beginning of the project.
  • Projects are more successful when partners can collectively articulate a clear social impact goal.
  • Community engagement and community development correlated with project success.

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