This six-part tutorial series was created for Indigenous-led and Indigenous-serving organizations seeking to strengthen their grant writing in ways that honor community voice, sovereignty, and lived experience. Led by Onawa Haynes, the series explores grant writing not as extraction, but as translation — carrying community knowledge, priorities, and strengths into funder language without losing what makes them true.
Participants will learn how to craft compelling community narratives, write stronger need statements, clarify funding asks, design fundable programs, align evaluation with community-defined success, and build sustainable grant systems that reduce burnout. Grounded in Indigenous values and real-world fundraising practice, these tutorials offer actionable tools, examples, and frameworks that organizations can immediately apply to proposals, programs, and funding strategies.
Workbook
Tutorials
Organized into six modules, these tutorials guide you through how to craft compelling problem statements, design fundable programs, identify aligned funders, and build sustainable fundraising systems.
Module 1: Grounding the Work & Community Narrative
This tutorial explores how to approach grant writing as translation rather than extraction. Learn how to center sovereignty, community values, and lived experience in proposals while avoiding deficit-based narratives that flatten Indigenous communities and their strengths.
Module 2: Storytelling & Problem Statements
This tutorial will help you craft compelling need statements that integrate storytelling, data, historical context, and community voice. Learn how to communicate urgency and impact without pathologizing the communities you serve.
Module 3: Clarifying the Ask & Proposal Framing
Funders respond to clarity. This tutorial walks Indigenous-led and Indigenous-serving organizations through how to connect community needs, program design, and funding requests into one cohesive proposal narrative while avoiding common pitfalls like vague asks, jargon, and mismatched scope.
Module 4: Program Design for Fundability
Many Indigenous organizations already lead transformative community work — the challenge is translating that work into language funders understand. This tutorial covers how to frame programs using activities, outputs, outcomes, and impact while staying rooted in Indigenous values, relationships, and ways of knowing.
Module 5: Goals, Outcomes & Evaluation Alignment
This tutorial explores how Indigenous-led and Indigenous-serving organizations can build evaluation approaches that honor community-defined measures of success while also meeting funder expectations. Learn how to align goals, outcomes, narrative, and evaluation into one coherent story.
Module 6: Funder Alignment, Systems & Next Steps
This tutorial helps build sustainable grant practices that reduce burnout and strengthen long-term funding success. Learn how to identify aligned funders, create simple grant tracking systems, and develop practical next steps for future proposals.
About the Presenter
Onawa Haynes, Esq., (Diné/Mescalero Apache) is the Founder and CEO of Hozhonigo Consulting, a Native woman-owned firm providing grant writing and strategic fundraising support to Tribal Nations and Native-led organizations. Through Hozhonigo Consulting, she partners with communities to secure federal, philanthropic, and private funding while ensuring proposals remain rooted in sovereignty, cultural values, and lived experience.
A former public defender, Onawa brings a deep commitment to equity and access to her work. She saw firsthand how under-resourced Native communities were navigating complex systems without adequate support — and turned her love of writing into a vehicle for change. Today, she helps Tribal governments and Native organizations translate community priorities into compelling, fundable proposals that bring critical resources home.
In addition to leading Hozhonigo Consulting, Onawa serves as President of the Hozhonigo Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on increasing equitable access to funding in Indian Country. She is also the founder of the Tribal Funding Registry, a software platform designed to help Tribes and Native-serving organizations more effectively track and pursue funding opportunities.
Onawa’s work is grounded in the belief that communities closest to the challenges are also closest to the solutions — and that grant writing should strengthen sovereignty, not compromise it.