$70 million from MacKenzie Scott, whose giving exceeds $26 billion, powers a seven-year plan for Native students

Across much of the country, people are arguing about whether college is still worth it. In Indian Country, that question is mostly settled.

A degree can bring a steady paycheck. It can also bring a nurse back to a reservation clinic, a teacher back to the school she went to, or a young leader back to a tribal council.

Recently the American Indian College Fund announced a gift that rests on that idea.

MacKenzie Scott, giving through her organization Yield Giving, has made a $70 million unrestricted gift. It anchors a new seven-year plan to expand opportunity for Native students and the tribal colleges and universities that serve them.

This is Scott’s second gift to the College Fund in five years and the largest by far. Her first came in 2021. It was part of a round of unrestricted grants that reached hundreds of organizations working on equity, education, and community wellbeing.

The new gift deepens into a relationship that has already been tested. Like nearly all of Scott’s giving, it comes with no conditions on how the money is spent. That trust shaped what the College Fund did next.

The College Fund did not decide on the plan on its own and announced it.

It started by listening. Leaders met with Native students, presidents of tribal colleges and universities, community members, and the board of trustees.

They asked what would actually help students reach graduation and what would help these institutions last.

Cheryl Crazy Bull, the College Fund’s president and CEO, put it simply.

“We built this plan by listening first,” she said. The plan that came out of those talks treats tuition as one need among many.

Scholarships for students at tribal colleges and universities remain the plan’s foundation, and they will grow.

Around them, the College Fund is building more support.

It will add college success coaching, wellness and academic resources, internships, career assessment, and mentoring.

These are the supports that often decide whether a first-year student becomes a graduate. The plan also strengthens the path from campus to career.

It expands a family-friendly campus initiative for students who are raising children while they study.

And it strengthens wellness programs that reflect students’ own cultures.

The College Fund’s research shows why this matters. Scholars who get support beyond a scholarship graduate and enter careers at 1.5 times the rate of those who don’t.

The plan also reaches the institutions themselves.

The College Fund supports programs at the nation’s 34 accredited tribal colleges and universities, which sit on or near reservations.

Many are the only colleges within hundreds of miles.

Under the plan, these schools will receive support for faculty development, institutional capacity, curriculum, research, governance training, and cultural and environmental programming.

The College Fund will also run public education and public service campaigns to help more Americans understand what tribal colleges do.

To keep the work going after the seven years end, $20 million of the gift will go into a designated endowment, along with funding for visibility projects.

Crazy Bull, a Sicangu Lakota educator, has led the College Fund for more than a decade. She talks about the gift in human terms.

“We know a teacher can change lives, and a health-care worker can save them,” she said.

“Both professions require a college degree. Thanks to MacKenzie Scott’s gift, we can continue building the lasting change that education provides to the well-being and prosperity of our Native communities.”

She ended with the Lakota word for gratitude: “We say wopila—thank you—to MacKenzie Scott for her trust in the College Fund and our mission to create stronger Native families and communities.”

The gift comes at an important time.

Earlier this year, the College Fund and the Brookings Institution published a report on long-running underinvestment in Indian Country.

It found that less than 1 percent of U.S. philanthropic giving serves Native communities.

It also found that federal funding has fallen back to pre-pandemic levels, despite the government’s trust and treaty obligations.

The effects show up in the number of degrees earned. Only 16 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native adults hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 33 percent of all American adults.

Meanwhile, tribal colleges pay back what is invested in them.

One study from the American Indian Higher Education Consortium found that every dollar spent on these schools returns $1.60 to taxpayers.

The College Fund calls higher education “not charity but a forward-thinking investment.”

That investment already has a long record.

The College Fund was founded in 1989 and is now the nation’s largest charity supporting Native higher education.

It has provided more than $434 million in scholarships, programs, and tribal college support, including more than $26 million in the last academic year alone.

Scott’s gift does not replace that work.

It speeds it up, and it gives the College Fund what unrestricted money uniquely provides: room to plan years ahead instead of one grant cycle at a time.

Scott has said that the people closest to a challenge are best placed to solve it.

This gift follows that belief.

She chose an organization led by Native people, trusted it with the money, and stepped back. In return, the College Fund asked students and tribal college leaders what they needed and built a seven-year plan around their answers.

The results will show up over the next generation in tribal college graduates who go home to teach, heal, and lead.