Chachalu capital campaign receives six grants

The Chachalu Tribal Museum & Cultural Center Phase II capital campaign recently received a $60,000 grant from the Collins Foundation, bringing the number of grants received to six and the value of those grants to $573,484.
The Collins Foundation is an independent, private foundation based in Portland that was created in 1947 by Truman W. Collins Sr. and other members of the family of E.S. Collins. The foundation exists to improve, enrich and give greater expression to humanitarian endeavors in Oregon, and to assist in improving the quality of life in the state, according to the mission statement on its website.
Previously, the Chachalu Phase II capital campaign has received $250,000 from the Meyer Memorial Trust and grants from the Oregon Community Foundation ($35,000) and the Ford Family Foundation ($200,000). In addition, two grants from other Oregon Tribes included $15,000 from the Umatilla's Wildhorse Foundation and $13,384 from the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw's Three Rivers Foundation.
"The process of obtaining these grants included many meetings and coordination with the foundations," said Land and Culture Department Manager Jan Looking Wolf Reibach. "Together with Finance and Tribal Council, the capital campaign team worked to create a new process to provide the Tribe's financial information securely to the foundations in order to meet the broadened requirements compared to most federal grant applications.
"We continue to move forward with fundraising efforts paralleled with management and continued development of Land and Culture and Chachalu. Full updates of the Chachalu capital campaign with financials, projections, plans and recommendations shall be provided to Tribal Council in September."
Long a dream of the Tribe, a Tribal museum and cultural center received a jump-start in the summer of 2011 when the Tribe purchased the former Grand Ronde Middle School site from the Willamina School District.
After almost three years of planning and renovation work, Phase I of the Chachalu Tribal Museum & Cultural Center opened on June 5. Since then, there have been more than 1,000 visitors and dozens of tours conducted at Chachalu, Reibach said.
With current fundraising successes, more than 25 percent of the cost for Phase II has been raised, Reibach added. The next phase will include 4,500 square feet of additional exhibit space, new classrooms, a conference area and a history research library.
Chachalu is a Tualitan Kalapuya word meaning "place of the burnt timber" that people used to reference areas of Grand Ronde affected by a devastating forest fire that occurred in the mid-1800s.
"Chachalu is the name chosen for the Tribal museum and cultural center because, as with our land, the Tribe is healing from the past and continues to provide for our people," Reibach said.