work with us: Philanthropic Partners
Our approach
Philanthropy has long supported Indigenous communities—but today’s challenges demand more than one-time grants. Rising health disparities, climate impacts, and housing needs require deeper, long-term change led by communities themselves.
Otipêy Foundation helps make that possible. We support Indigenous-led planning, research, and capacity-building that lay the groundwork for community solutions. By working upstream, philanthropy can help spark systems change—while multiplying the impact of every dollar when paired with regenerative innovative financial mechanisms.
Whether you’re a family foundation or an institutional funder focused on health, climate, or Indigenous equity, Otipêy Foundation offers a trusted and culturally grounded way to partner in lasting impact.
What we focus on
Ways to partner
Support early-stage design and planning, including feasibility research, and engagement.
Support Indigenous-led research, data sovereignty, and evaluation to share what works—and why.
Fund Indigenous-led service providers, governance processes, and technical support to lead and scale solutions.
In Northern Manitoba, four Anisininew communities are facing a diabetes crisis. But instead of waiting for outside programs, they stepped forward to lead their own. In partnership with Otipêy, they began designing a new wellness model: peer coaching, culturally-based healing, digital health tools—all grounded in Indigenous knowledge.
Philanthropy helped make it possible, funding the design phase, supporting evaluation frameworks, and ensuring cultural alignment. Now, the project is preparing for full implementation and ready to serve hundreds of people. This isn’t just a health initiative, it’s a model for Indigenous-led systems change.
Otipêy Foundation is a Canadian charity focused on solution design, impact and innovative finance research, training, and ecosystem support. Otipêy is a separate fund manager that uses outcomes finance to scale projects. Otipêy Foundation ensures the conditions are in place for investment success—while staying aligned with its charitable purpose.
Yes. Rather than one-time grants, we focus on the upstream work — planning, research and capacity-building — that gets a community-led initiative ready for larger-scale investment. Support here compounds: it strengthens the initiative itself and helps unlock the outcomes finance and other capital that follows.
Otipêy Foundation is a registered Canadian charity, and we welcome inquiries from U.S. foundations and donor-advised funds interested in supporting Indigenous-led work in Canada. Reach out through our contact page and we can walk through the options available to your organization.
Every initiative we support is built with an impact measurement framework from the outset, developed together with the community. We track outcomes specific to each project — health, housing, climate or economic — and share results with our partners as the work progresses.
It's philanthropic support, not an investment — your contribution funds design, research and capacity-building rather than expecting a financial return. That groundwork is what later makes a project ready for outcomes finance and other investment.
Reach out through our contact page to start a conversation about your priorities and how they align with our current and upcoming initiatives. We'll follow up to explore what a partnership could look like.
Work with us: philanthropic partners
