The Hopi Education Endowment Fund Awarded $2 Million Dollar Grant from Yield Giving

Last updated: 4/11/2024

Kykotsmovi Village, AZ – The Hopi Education Endowment Fund (HEEF) announced that it has received a $2,000,000 grant as an Open Call awardee from Yield Giving, a funding source awarding grants to community led and community focused organizations, established by Philanthropist and Novelist MacKenzie Scott. The grant marks the one-time largest gift the HEEF has received since its inception 23 years ago.

The HEEF was established in 2000 as a segregated fund of the Hopi Tribe. It operates under a Hopi Tribal Ordinance as a public benefit program exclusively for educational and charitable purposes. Currently, 45% of its volunteer board members are Hopi Tribal members and 86% of its Executive Committee are Hopi. It is currently leasing office space on the Hopi reservation but has had to move frequently over the past several years.

The $2 million dollar grant is expected to be utilized to secure a more permanent space for HEEF staff offices and board meetings on the Hopi reservation. Increasing staff and making program enhancements were also written in the grant proposal. Detailed plans for the utilization of the grant monies will be released later after further input from HEEF’s governing body.

Today’s announcement follows a 2-round and 9-month application process. In March 2023, Yield Giving launched an Open Call for community led, community focused organizations whose explicit purpose is to enable individuals and families to achieve substantive improvement in their well-being through foundational resources. HEEF provides educational scholarships for Hopi Tribal Members enabling them to attend college and pursue professional and graduate work.

The Open Call received 6,353 applications and initially planned for 250 awards of $1 million each. In the Fall of 2023, organizations top-rated by their peers advanced to a second round of review by an external Evaluation Panel recruited for experience relevant to this cause and underwent a final round of due diligence. In light of the incredible work of these organizations, as judged by their peers and external panelists, the donor team decided to expand the awardee pool and the award amount.

HEEF senior staff and board members began work on the grant application from Yield Giving beginning in early Spring of 2023 and applied with hopes of receiving funding for a more permanent and adequate space. The HEEF was then notified in the Fall that the application was forwarded to the second round. By late Fall, the HEEF had been informed that they would later receive a final decision by the Spring of 2024.

The news that the HEEF was a recipient of the award was extremely gratifying as the HEEF team was aware that the application process would be competitive. The HEEF is now undertaking a planning process to make sure that the funds received will enable it to be even more responsive to its mission and community. The HEEF mission is to ensure that education will always be available for Hopi students. Providing a more permanent office is crucial, as it would allow the organization to focus on its mission of serving Hopi students.

Current Acting Executive Director Justin Hongeva states “This is a great opportunity. The HEEF is relatively unique as its eligibility for charitable fund derives from its status as an Indian tribal governmental organization under Section 7871 of the Internal Revenue Code. While many grant-funding organizations are not aware of this tax code provision, Yield Giving opened the doors for us to be able to apply. We now can work on finding a land site and build a more permanent and suitable home for the HEEF.

This is a historical time for the HEEF, in addition to receiving the grant from Yield Giving, we are in the middle of a leadership transition following the recent retirement of our founding Executive Director LuAnn Leonard. Per the old saying, it took a village, and it is our Hopi people who will reap the benefits”.

The HEEF would like to express its gratitude and give thanks to Mackenzie Scott, Yield Giving, and everyone involved in the ongoing effort to further strengthen the educational opportunities for students of the Hopi Tribe. Askwali/Kwak’kwa/Thank you!

The Open Call was managed in partnership with Lever for Change, a nonprofit affiliate of the John D. and Caterine T. MacArther Foundation that connects donors with bold solutions to the world’s biggest problems. – including issues like racial inequity, gender inequality, access to economic opportunity, and climate change.

More information can be found at the link below.