Political gurus of all stripes puzzle over how to get more young people to cast a ballot — and Allie Redhorse Young has found an answer. Since 2020, Young, who heads the group Protect the Sacred, has organized events — from horse rides to the polls and celebrity townhalls — to animate the youth vote in Native American communities.
It’s no secret that many young people today are turned off by politics and that many don’t vote. Analysis by Pew found that people under 30 comprised just 15% of all voters in 2024, although they make up 20% of the age-eligible population. And the number of those opting out appears to be rising: “Young adults were a larger share of nonvoters in 2024 than in 2020 (30% vs. 25%),” according to Pew.
Young observed this disenchantment among the Native young people she worked with as an organizer for Harness, a nonprofit that engages in storytelling and culture work aiming to build community “to educate, inspire and care for one another.” Protect the Sacred was created in 2020 as a project at Harness; it is now a standalone nonprofit and Harness is its fiscal sponsor.
When Young started at Harness, the COVID pandemic was heating up, and she worked with young people to get information about the virus out to Native communities. Then, before the 2020 election, Protect the Sacred worked to get Native young people registered to vote and to the polls — but that turned out to be a heavy lift. “I was doing the traditional voter engagement messaging, you know: ‘Your vote matters,’ and it wasn’t working,” Young said.
After trying different approaches, Young, who is Navajo, realized that the most effective way to reach Native young people was through messages rooted in their history and traditions. For Native communities, particularly in the Southwest, horses represent strength and resilience, and trail riding has always played a central role. Young decided to organize horseback riding to the polls and the events immediately took off.
Protect the Sacred continued this work during the 2022 midterms and before the election last November. The group launched other popular events to raise awareness and build community, including a virtual voter registration and census information session with actors Mark Ruffalo, Mark Hamill and Paul Rudd, skateboarding to the polls, a bull-riding competition, a walk to the polls led by Ruffalo, metal and country music concerts, and more. Protect the Sacred also has a youth leadership program; each year, it convenes a cohort of aspiring young leaders who receive training in grassroots organizing and narrative development strategies.
From 2020 through 2025, Protect the Sacred hosted over 15 voter registration events, as well as get-out-the-vote and Native youth gatherings. The organization helped register over 5,000 voters in 2022 and 4,000 in 2024; its work has been amplified in The Guardian, People and Teen Vogue.
Protect the Sacred is small and scrappy, but its events aren’t cheap or easy to organize, particularly in remote locations that require driving long distances. In a recent interview, Young acknowledged that raising funds for the work has been a challenge. Protect the Sacred raised $10,000 through an online fundraiser last year and has received commitments this year from Grantmakers for Girls of Color, IllumiNative, Pop Culture Collaborative, Rural Democracy Initiative and Native Organizers Alliance. But its only multi-year, general operating grant is from the Mighty Arrow Family Foundation, a relatively new funder with a low profile.
At Inside Philanthropy, we often focus on billionaires and mega foundations with the capacity to give tremendous, headline-grabbing gifts. But modest gifts can make a big difference, too, particularly for small, grassroots organizations like Protect the Sacred, which are planting seeds for a more just and inclusive democracy. Given Protect the Sacred’s success to date — and the potential impact both young and Native voters are likely to have in upcoming elections — supporting it seems like a win-win.
What stands out about the Mighty Arrow Family Foundation
The Mighty Arrow Family Foundation clearly sees it that way. The foundation supported Protect the Sacred with $25,000 last year and renewed the grant for the same amount this year through 2027.
The foundation was created by Kim Jordan, who started the New Belgium Brewing Company. It’s small, with total assets of $14 million in 2023, and most of its grants are in the $25,000 range. Kim Jordan and her two sons are planning to donate all of the foundation’s funds by 2040. (The foundation did not reply to interview requests).
From the start, Kim Jordan’s approach to business had both an environmental and social justice orientation. Fort Collins, Colorado-based New Belgium, which makes Fat Tire, Voodoo Ranger and other brews, was the first wind-powered brewery in the U.S.; it was also the first that was 100% employee owned. (A subsidiary of Kirin purchased New Belgium in 2019).
A similar spirit informs Jordan’s giving. “To whom much is given, much is expected” is the first line on the Mighty Arrow Family Foundation’s website. Its focus areas include climate, food systems, land and water, and social justice, with an emphasis on the western U.S.
Mighty Arrow brings a collaborative, listening-oriented approach to its philanthropy. It launched the Mighty Partner Project, for example, asking its grantee partners the following question: How do we, as funders, take better care of the people doing this work?
It’s the kind of question that more funders should be asking, and the answers were informative, if not surprising. A few highlights: 95% of respondents emphasized the value of unrestricted, multi-year funding, 83% reported personal burnout and 78% reported burnout within their teams. The foundation has introduced two pilot project funds, the Nurturing Leadership Grant and the Transformational Capacity Grant, in response to the concerns raised by its grantees.
When the project findings were released, Executive Director Jordana Barrack wrote, “In this system of philanthropy that we are so fortunate to be a part of, we can always do better. I believe it’s the people we need to invest in, to nurture our leaders, so they can continue to hold up the light. These are ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”
Why funding civic engagement is so important — even at small scales
Allie Young would like to expand and scale Protect the Sacred’s reach. Other community leaders in the West have asked her team to help organize rides to the polls and other events in their regions, but to do so will take additional resources.
She is hoping that more funders will, like Mighty Arrow, provide long-term support. It’s not news that Native Americans receive only a fraction of philanthropy’s vast resources — despite some bright spots, like grantmaking from these six funders. Separate analyses by Native Americans in Philanthropy and First Nations Development Institute have found that U.S. foundation funding to Native American communities and causes remains well under 1%, as IP’s Mike has Scutari reported. And given many funders’ cautious stance in the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive messaging and outright threats, it is a difficult climate for nonprofits of all types — in particular, those with any sort of DEI focus, as IP’s Dawn Wolfe has reported.
But Native voters could make a big difference in future elections, particularly in purple states with low populations. As IP Editor-in-Chief David Callahan argues, these are exactly the sorts of places where small margins can, by deciding national elections, either safeguard or undermine progress on issues that philanthropy spends billions to address outside the arena of voter engagement.
A Brookings analysis of the Native American vote in the 2024 election noted the barriers to voting many Native Americans face, as well as an overall failure to reach this population. “Both major parties made outreach efforts to Native American voters, but half of respondents reported no contact from political campaigns or organizations, highlighting missed opportunities for engagement in this critical voting bloc,” the analysis found.
Young believes that Protect the Sacred events not only build community, but make the connection between voting and being part of something larger. “The ride to the polls is a representation of our ancestors and how they had to get to the polls,” she said. “They didn’t have any other means of transportation, but they knew the importance of casting that ballot.”
Young underscored the importance of voting for Native interests — and for the country as a whole. “We’re trying to communicate to our community that we need to protect our tribal sovereignty,” she told The Guardian. “And with that, protect our sacred sites, protect our lands, our cultures, our languages, our traditions.”
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