A new grant program is providing funds for federally recognized Indian tribes in California that “support efforts to identify, collect caselevel [sic] data, publicize, and investigate and solve cases involving missing and murdered indigenous people,” according to a program description on the California Grants Portal.
The grant program makes $11.4 million available for reimbursements, with individual grants ranging from $1 to $1 million. Applications are due by 5 p.m. PST on June 23. Awards are scheduled to be announced in mid-September, and the performance period is from Oct. 1, 2023 through June 1, 2028.
The grantor organization is the Sacramento, California-based Board of State and Community Corrections, which offer guidance to the state’s criminal justice systems and public safety realignment and offers information and data clearinghouses. Grants will be awarded in consultation with stakeholders from the indigenous community. The program is geared toward funding activities, programs or strategies that address at least one of the following concerns:
- Creating or expanding culturally based prevention strategies
- Strengthening responses to human trafficking
- Improving cooperation and communication on jurisdictional issues
The grants are also available for other related activities. “If you go into the RFP, there’s a whole list of other activities that could fund the grant aiding again to assist with missing and murdered indigenous epidemic on these tracks,” Board of State and Community Corrections Field Representative Eddie Escobar told The NonProfit Times. Such programs might include mentoring, community-building or substance abuse programs, which would be geared toward reducing populations, especially among children, vulnerable to predators, in addition to immediate-response programs such as funding a missing-person alert system. Escobar added.
Grants will be awarded within two categories: the Small Scope category, which will fund projects up to $440,000, or the Large Scope Category, which will make awards up to $1 million. The two categories were set up in part to avoid proposed programs submitted by larger tribes from overshadowing those smaller tribes, according to Escobar.
The focus on grants funding programs being established and run by tribes, as opposed to state or local governments or nonprofits, was not an accident. “Tribes have a lot of pride in being sovereign and being recognized as being sovereign,” Escobar said. “Many tribes don’t have gaming in casinos and stuff, so they don’t have that funding. They are really excited about, about this, this funding and what they could do.”
Escobar did not reference a specific incident that caused the program to be funded. The program, which was created under the California Senate’s Budget Act of 2022 (SB. 154), was designed to address ongoing concerns.
A non-mandatory virtual applicants’ conference, geared toward answering technical questions and providing clarity on request for proposal instructions, will be held on May 12 at 10 a.m. The link is https://bit.ly/3HL2cqN, the meeting ID is 836 4275 0491, and the passcode is 109448.
Additional guidelines about the grant program are available here.
