Lakota Fund’s Mission
Lakota Funds is a community development financial institution leading an economic resurgence of the Oglala Lakota Oyate on the Pine Ridge Reservation through culturally appropriate strategies reigniting the traditional Lakota spirit of productivity, commerce, and trade.
Lakota Fund’s Accomplishments
Lakota Funds is currently leading an effort to establish a reservation wide credit union that will provide members with enhanced and more accessible financial services.
Lakota Funds’ immediate goal is to improve the quality of life on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation by giving tribal members more understanding of their finances, their options for saving, and for asset growth. Lakota Funds gives tribal members immediate opportunities to use this information by improving their credit scores, growing an asset, utilizing Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) through our Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, and or Individual Development Accounts (IDA), and generally taking positive steps to manage finances and build family assets.
Small Business Economics journal published a study by four university economists in April 2009 showing strong and consistent positive impact of Lakota Funds on the quality of Reservation life. They concluded:
The Lakota Fund succeeded in raising real per capita income of Shannon county residents consistently and significantly throughout the 1987–2006 study period…[thus showing how]a well designed and highly successful micro-enterprise financing structure can confer large and significant private and social benefits … sustained growth in real incomes … net wealth and further personal, household, and community successes in socio-economic, health …, educational …, and other dimensions of progressive quality living…Lakota Funds is ready to move forward into the next stage of development with a stable and professional Board of Directors and staff. Four current staff of Lakota Funds achieved Economic Development Finance Professional certification by the National Development Council in 2008. These motivated, educated and skilled employees have been with Lakota Funds for four years or more and are long term residents of the area wholly committed to the mission and strategies. Tawney Brunsch, Executive Director (2010) and Loan Portfolio Manager (since 2008), is a tribal member with a Commercial Economics degree from South Dakota State University and fifteen years experience successfully managing area businesses and financial institutions. Over seventy five percent of staff and Board are tribal members. Additionally, Former Executive Director (2005-2009), Dowell Caselli-Smith, PhD, helped start Oglala Lakota College while working for an Oglala Sioux Tribe VISTA project starting in 1969 forty years ago. Later, while an administrator at OLC, he participated in launching Lakota Funds and served as a consultant over the years. He continues to assist with miscellaneous tasks as needed.
Lakota Funds focuses on key roadblocks to economic development in Indian Country:
- access to capital
- access to technical assistance
- access to business networks
- infrastructure access
Lakota Funds provides business services in five areas:
- technical assistance, coaching and mentoring
- courses in financial skills, business planning, home buying, and credit repair
- affordable housing
- business incubator fascilities at Lakota Trade Center
- and marketing
From 1986 to 2009, Lakota Funds:
- made more than 660 micro- and small-business loans totaling over $4.7 million
- provided training to over 1,200 aspiring entrepreneurs
- created over 1,000 permanent jobs
- provided marketing services to more than 1,600 artists and craftsmen
- developed the first Native American-owned, tax credit-financed housing project in America (and now manages a small housing development of thirty homes near Wanblee)
- developed the Lakota Trade Center in 1997, a 12,000-square-foot small business incubator and Tribal Business Information Center and,
- co-founded the first Native American Chamber of Commerce on an Indian reservation in the United States
Many Challenges Remain!
Despite numerous Lakota Funds’ inspired success stories, the private sector remains severely limited on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Shannon County, where most of the reservation's residents live, remains one of the poorest counties in the United States.
One-half of all families live below the poverty level, compared to 9.2 percent of all South Dakota families. Unemployment exceeds 70 percent, and median household income is 58 percent lower than the rest of South Dakota and 52 percent lower than the national average. On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation there are 13 businesses per 1,000 people, while the rest of South Dakota averages 83 businesses per 1,000 residents. Consequently, more than 80 percent of the money that comes into the reservation is spent in off-reservation communities. Due to a host of ills ranging from alcoholism and violence to astronomical rates of diabetes and heart disease, residents of Pine Ridge have the lowest life expectancy in the country, according to the U.S. Census. Yet, the people have a strong will not only to survive but to bring a better future for their children and grandchildren and become highly motivated when they find meaningful work that respects their culture and provides hope for the future.
There are Reasons for Hope
A critical shortage of safe, affordable housing has resulted in many, many instances of multiple families jamming into a single home. Nonetheless, incremental improvements to the health of the reservation's economy have been occurring through the efforts of Lakota Funds, the Pine Ridge Chamber of Commerce, and other interested public and private groups, foundations and investors. Taxable sales in Shannon County more than doubled from 1996 to 2006, according to the South Dakota Business Review, and since 1985 real per-capita personal income growth outpaced the South Dakota economy with a growth rate of 80 percent compared to 44 percent for the state. The private sector is growing but is still small and fragile. While utilizing banks and other financial institutions is largely foreign to Lakota culture, Lakota Funds recognizes that limited financial expertise and inadequate financial education resources are huge impediments to the economic health of reservation residents. Lakota Funds started the first Individual Development Account program on a South Dakota reservation in 2001 to help residents build wealth and learn firsthand about saving to purchase a home, for education, or to start a business.