The challenge

The Administration for Native Americans funds community-led projects across 575 federally recognized Tribes, state-recognized Tribes, American Indian and Alaska Native organizations, Native Hawaiian organizations, and Native communities in the Pacific. That portfolio runs to more than 140 active projects, plus the work around them: applicant support, merit review, recipient oversight, site visits, advisory committees, and public communications.

ANA’s own staff is small relative to that load. Before this award, the support was split across two contracts, one for staff support and one for IT and logistics. Intake, panel review, GrantSolutions and SharePoint administration, reporting, and communications all had to move together without a break in service to grantees. The risk was not a single backlog. It was losing continuity on a portfolio that Tribes and Native organizations depend on.

What we do

Red Creek Solutions is the prime contractor for ANA’s consolidated staff-support award, a four-year effort that began April 30, 2025. We provide on-site administrative, logistical, and communications support to the Office of the Commissioner, and programmatic support to ANA’s program offices. The work is judged by whether ANA can move faster for Indian Country, not by whether a task was on the original list. That is why the RCS team steps up to every challenge: the mission is self-sufficiency for Native communities, and the support has to be equal to it.

Day to day, that is grant portfolio management across all ANA regions, technical assistance to applicants and recipients, records and data management, program evaluation, and reporting. We support peer panel reviews, coordinate site visits, and handle logistics for the annual community partner conference and tribal advisory activity. IT support covers website maintenance and administration of GrantSolutions, Smartsheet and SharePoint. Communications covers briefing papers, newsletters, and social media for the Office of the Commissioner and the Native American Affairs Advisory Committee.

That operating work is the base. The rest comes from listening. As ANA pushed further into economic development across Indian Country, the gap was not another grant cycle. It was a forward-looking way for Tribal Nations to compete, partner, and build capacity on their own terms. Red Creek Solutions treated that as the next piece of the work, not a side request. Out of it came two initiatives that were not standing lines in the initial contract: ANA’s Tribal Announcement of Opportunities System (TAOS), and an ANA financial literacy program for Native youth, developed with Junior Achievement and set to begin in 2026. Both are the result of staying close to the client and taking on the next challenge when it would create a win for ANA and for Indian Country.

Results

The award put one contractor over work that had been split in two, and the portfolio has stayed in motion: more than 140 projects across every ANA region, with panel reviews, recipient support, and site visits continuing on the existing cadence. That operating base is what makes the newer work possible. ANA is determined to be forward-looking and action-oriented for Indian Country, not only a grantmaker, and Red Creek Solutions is building the tools that carry that intent.

The Tribal Announcement of Opportunities System, TAOS, is in development with the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development. Powered by ANA, it is a secure marketplace where federally recognized Tribal Nations post RFPs, RFQs, and partnership opportunities to a vetted national network of private-sector vendors. Nations publish on their own terms, vendors search by sector and region, and proposals route only to each Nation’s designated contact, from announcement to award in one place. It is procurement built around Tribal control, not a public inbox.

Alongside it, an ANA financial literacy program for Native youth is underway with Junior Achievement, set to begin in 2026. The program is being developed for Native young people rather than adapted from a generic curriculum after the fact.

Together, these are the results of the support contract so far: the existing portfolio held to its cadence, and two new ANA efforts stood up inside the same team that already runs grant operations, communications, and technical assistance.

Resources