Stories from The Kendeda Fund The Kendeda Fund

In this final bonus episode, members of the Kendeda Fund’s small team reflect on the values, spirit, humor, and wisdom that motivated philanthropist Diana Blank and guided her unconventional approach to giving. 


Stories from The Kendeda Fund is an audio storytelling project documenting the origins, impact and legacy of The Kendeda Fund. Each episode highlights an element of The Kendeda Fund’s philanthropic journey, revealing useful lessons for nonprofit veterans and emerging donors alike. Learn more at www.kendedafund.org.  
This episode was produced by Wonder Media Network. Our Executive Producers are Dena Kimball and David Brotherton.

At the end of 2023, Diana Blank’s foundation, The Kendeda Fund, will complete a philanthropic journey spanning nearly thirty years and more than $1 billion of charitable giving. With its departure, Kendeda joins a small but growing list of foundations opting to sunset rather than continue in perpetuity. This episode pulls back the curtain to reveal why Kendeda chose to wind down its work, what it took to pull it off, and what that choice means in a world riven by complex, existential threats like climate change, gun violence, racial and economic inequality. 


Stories from The Kendeda Fund is an audio storytelling project documenting the origins, impact and legacy of The Kendeda Fund. Each episode highlights an element of The Kendeda Fund’s philanthropic journey, revealing useful lessons for nonprofit veterans and emerging donors alike. Learn more at www.kendedafund.org. 
“A Date Certain: Lessons Learned from Limited Life Foundations” (National Center for Family Philanthropy) https://www.ncfp.org/knowledge/a-date-certain-lessons-from-limited-life-foundations 
This episode was produced by Wonder Media Network. Our Executive Producers are Dena Kimball and David Brotherton.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States government ran or supported more than 400 boarding schools designed to erase Native culture, assimilating America’s Indigenous people into White, western culture. Students endured rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Hundreds of deaths went unreported and unprosecuted; thousands of children never came home. It is a horrific chapter in our shared history, one which many Americans know little or nothing about. Leveraging a transformational investment from the Kendeda Fund, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is committed to understanding and addressing the ongoing trauma created by the policies that separated Indigenous children from their families and worked to strip them of their culture and their dignity. This is a story of people and culture persevering in the face of institutional eradication efforts.


Stories from The Kendeda Fund is an audio storytelling project documenting the origins, impact and legacy of The Kendeda Fund. Each episode highlights an element of The Kendeda Fund’s philanthropic journey, revealing useful lessons for nonprofit veterans and emerging donors alike. Learn more at www.kendedafund.org.  
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition https://boardingschoolhealing.org 
Canada’s Unmarked Graves from 60 Minutes https://www.cbsnews.com/news/canada-residential-schools-unmarked-graves-indigenous-children-60-minutes-2023-02-12/ 
This episode was produced by Wonder Media Network. Our Executive Producers are Dena Kimball and David Brotherton.

Colonel Eric Hastings is a veteran who spent much of his life turning to the outdoors for healing, during and after many years in active military service. He especially likes to fly fish. On the Quiet Waters Ranch in Bozeman, Montana, Hastings and his team help veterans find peace and reintegrate into daily life. They expose “wounded warriors” to nature-centered experiences and teach critical backcountry skills, giving the returning soldiers space to pursue healing, meaning, and new life directions. It was on this ranch where, on a foggy September morning, Colonel Hastings and the Kendeda Fund’s founder, Diana Blank, spent time together, walking in the woods, sharing stories about their pasts, and talking about their own relationships with nature and healing. 


Stories from The Kendeda Fund is an audio storytelling project documenting the origins, impact and legacy of The Kendeda Fund. Each episode highlights an element of The Kendeda Fund’s philanthropic journey, revealing useful lessons for nonprofit veterans and emerging donors alike. Learn more at www.kendedafund.org.  
Warriors & Quiet Waters https://warriorsandquietwaters.org/ 
“The Effect of Time Outdoors on Veterans Receiving Treatment for PTSD” (Bettman, et.al., 2021) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8405544 
This episode was produced by Wonder Media Network. Our Executive Producers are Dena Kimball and David Brotherton. 

Morganton, North Carolina has a rich manufacturing history dating back multiple generations. But that history has been challenged in recent years by cycles of outsourcing and job loss, leaving many workers stranded. Turning challenge into opportunity, Kendeda Grantee The Industrial Commons is building on Morganton’s existing infrastructure while creating a new economic model that keeps resources and knowledge in the local community. Set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, The Industrial Commons’ story is one of creativity and entrepreneurship, resilience and renewal. It reveals how community wealth-building strategies can help businesses provide jobs, goods, and services, while keeping assets in communities and growing local economies in ways that benefit workers, their families, and business owners.


Stories from The Kendeda Fund is an audio storytelling project documenting the origins, impact and legacy of The Kendeda Fund. Each episode highlights an element of The Kendeda Fund’s philanthropic journey, revealing useful lessons for nonprofit veterans and emerging donors alike. Learn more at www.kendedafund.org.  
The Industrial Commons https://theindustrialcommons.org 
Economic Democracy: A Conversation with Funders https://blog.candid.org/post/economic-democracy-a-conversation-with-funders/?source=philantopic 
This episode was produced by Wonder Media Network. Our Executive Producers are Dena Kimball and David Brotherton. 

Film holds a unique power to change the way we understand the world. Movies can shift our thinking, change our feelings, and focus our attention on critical issues like few other forms of storytelling. This lively conversation between two long-time Kendeda Fund grantees (former Sundance Film Festival director Tabitha Jackson award-winning documentary filmmaker Jeff Orlowski-Yang) examines the confluence of art, ideas and social change – with useful lessons for experienced media funders, emerging philanthropists, and film buffs everywhere. 


Stories from The Kendeda Fund is an audio storytelling project documenting the origins, impact and legacy of The Kendeda Fund. Each episode highlights an element of The Kendeda Fund’s philanthropic journey, revealing useful lessons for nonprofit veterans and emerging donors alike. Learn more at www.kendedafund.org.  
Exposure Labs https://www.exposurelabs.com 
Sundance Institute https://www.sundance.org 
This episode was produced by Wonder Media Network. Our Executive Producers are Dena Kimball and David Brotherton.