Grants to Oklahoma Tribal Governments and Nonprofits
to Help Native Families Establish Emergency Savings

Description: Request a Grant Writer

Grants averaging $3,500 to Oklahoma tribal governments and nonprofit tribal organizations to help low-income Native families build emergency savings funds. This program is intended to help families open flexible accounts with credit unions and banks to provide a financial buffer in times of income fluctuation or unanticipated and emergency expenses.

Such accounts will promote financial inclusion by providing a mechanism for Native families to connect to mainstream financial services that are safe and affordable. With this funding, you may provide the initial opening account deposit and then the families can grow the accounts over time with their own deposits.

The emergency savings account program funds may be utilized for the initial account deposit money for program participants and other related program costs. While this is not a grant requirement, the family emergency savings accounts may be linked to other asset building programs you already administer such as financial education, entrepreneurship development, elder meal, seed saving, foreclosure prevention and homeownership preparation, matched savings account, credit builder/credit repair, Children’s Savings Account, and free tax preparation assistance.

Emergency savings accounts, for any family, can be a step along the way towards family financial stability and economic mobility. Depending upon the numbers of participants you wish to serve with a family emergency savings account program, you could, for example, provide the initial opening deposit of $50.00 each for 70 accounts or you could fund fewer accounts with more money (as an example of the latter, with a $3,500 project budget, you could fund six family emergency savings accounts at $500.00 each and then use the remaining $500.00 for other program expenses).

Depending upon the participants you serve, you can design your family emergency savings account program to meet local community needs. For this program, ONAC does not require that you make the bank accounts custodial with the name of your tribe or Native nonprofit on the account.