Four Bands Community Fund uses data to transform Indigenous finance
May 5, 2025
Incorporated in 2000, Four Bands Community Fund is a Native community development financial institution (CDFI) based in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. Lakota Vogel has been executive director since 2015, where she leads efforts in small business development, business lending, financial literacy, and youth entrepreneurship.
Four Bands Community Fund was born from a community economic development plan created by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe back in the 1990s. The Tribe identified a critical need for community access to capital — especially small-dollar loans from banks — and responded by establishing a revolving loan fund. One of their key efforts was to provide financial education and guidance to aspiring entrepreneurs, and in 2002, Four Bands becoming a federally certified CDFI. Since their start, they’ve deployed over $53 million in loans, created and retained 1,300+ jobs, and increased the financial skills of over 1,000 individuals across South Dakota.
Lakota Vogel, executive director at Four Bands since 2015, was born and raised on Cheyenne River and never planned on moving back home after attending the University of Notre Dame to study sociology. But after graduation, she discovered the Teach for America program and learned just how scarce their efforts were in Indian Country. She applied to become a high school special education teacher on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation and made her way back to South Dakota. Focused on improving systems for students with disabilities, Vogel returned to school to pursue her master’s degree in social work from Washington University in St. Louis. As part of a Native American leadership course she was taking, Vogel interviewed Tanya Fiddler, executive director at Four Bands at the time, and was inspired by the work Four Bands was doing to create economic opportunity for the Cheyenne River Sioux community. It just so happened that Four Bands was looking for an assistant director, and Vogel returned home — this time in asset development and wealth creation.
Challenging the system
Vogel’s experience was in university-level research and practice-based evidence, and one of her first projects at Four Bands was serving on the advisory committee for the Voices Survey, a household survey conducted by Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Ventures in 2012 as part of their poverty reduction plan. The purpose behind the survey was to collect community-centered data to inform tribal programs and support services, as well as support a challenge to the US Census numbers — which have been historically inaccurate for Native communities for years. The Census Bureau typically sends census forms to street addresses, and with a significant portion of community members receiving their mail at a post office box or living in homes with multiple families, a large number of people are continuously excluded from the datasets. The in-depth Voices Survey collected data across more than a dozen categories, including language, income, childcare, lending, and land use, and the information still informs programs and services to this day. It was during this time that Vogel first met Andrea Mader, who was working on the survey as a graduate student at Colorado State University.
Collecting the data to back up what her organization intuitively knows isn’t always easy, but Vogel puts data at the forefront of Four Bands’ work: “When I started at Four Bands, we had loads and loads of data on asset development and net worth and the racial wealth gap just sitting in Excel sheets waiting to be used. I knew it was the way to have productive, honest conversations that could have real impact in our communities.” Building on a partnership that started with their mentors, Tanya Fiddler and Kathleen Pickering, Vogel and Mader have been collaborating on Four Bands’ research, evaluation, and impact tracking for over a decade. Together, Vogel and Mader have trained other Native CDFIs on data collection and helped put data sovereignty at the center of the industry.
“Just because we're invisible in the dataset, it doesn't mean we're not worth telling our story.”
–Lakota Vogel, Four Bands Community Fund
Lakota Vogel speaks at the National Tribal Housing Ecosystem Summit in Boise, Idaho, in August 2024.
According to Vogel, collecting and analyzing their own data keeps Four Bands accountable to their community, which is their top priority. “We need to make sure our solutions and investments are actually changing things, and that our programming stays aligned with our community’s needs,” she explains. Though to truly shift systems, Vogel gets the message out to larger audiences — including the Native CDFI industry and the philanthropic community. An ongoing challenge for many Native CDFIs is obtaining enough aggregated and empirical data to help bolster their message. “We’re getting there,” Vogel says, “it’s just been moving pretty slowly.” Some of the ways Four Bands addresses these challenges is through their data partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, as well as memberships in collaboratives and coalitions like the South Dakota Indian Business Alliance, the Native CDFI Network, South Dakota Native Homeownership Coalition, Mountain | Plains Native CDFI Coalition, and the Good Relatives Collaborative. As for philanthropy, Vogel says individual funders haven’t found them yet, or they don’t see Native CDFIs as investable. She thinks there’s a mismatch between the needs of her community and the rate of return that donors with individual wealth expect.
Another major disconnect between Native communities and traditional financial systems is the emphasis on collateral and equity. A common belief in mainstream banking is that collateral and equity are reliable indicators of a low-risk borrower. Traditional banks often require a significant amount of collateral (upwards of 75% of the loan value) to even consider giving someone a loan. This is a huge barrier, especially for Native borrowers who may not have access to wealth or have been systematically stripped of their assets. When Four Bands analyzed 100 loans from their own portfolio using regression analysis, they didn’t find a strong correlation between high collateral scores and low-risk borrowers. This gave Four Bands the power to challenge the banking industry’s assumption. “We have data that proves collateral isn’t as predictive of success as you think, and it’s unjustly excluding Native borrowers,” says Vogel. In fact, research conducted by Sweet Grass using Four Bands’ data revealed that “relationship” and “community buy-in” are far more predictive of default than traditional risk factors.
Vogel doesn’t see this as a gap in knowledge or services from mainstream banks, as much as it’s viewing the same set of circumstances with a different lens. Four Bands takes an asset-focused approach to lending, beginning each new loan application at “100% yes” and only moving to “no” or “not yet” if necessary. In contrast, traditional banks often start at “100% no” and only shift to “yes” when thoroughly convinced. To complicate the matter, mainstream lenders don’t recognize Native assets the same way Native lenders do. Vogel uses buffalo as an example: “Four Bands sees tremendous value in using a 1,000-head of buffalo as collateral. Buffalo are extremely important to our community, and if a loan were to go bad, the community and the organization would do everything they could to not lose the buffalo. On the flipside, a commercial bank sees the buffalo as a risk and liability, so they value it at zero.”
One gap Vogel wishes traditional financial institutions would address is credit reporting for borrowers. Right now, banks use credit scores from credit agencies to evaluate borrowers, but they don’t report to credit agencies to help borrowers build stronger credit profiles. “It’s frustrating that banks can pull your credit and claim it’s an important way to judge you, but not use that same system to help you build your credit and be part of the solution,” says Vogel. To try and solve this issue for borrowers, Four Bands does report to credit agencies. Vogel wonders, though, if stepping in to fill that gap for banks — without holding them accountable — keeps traditional banks from evolving and taking responsibility.
What the future holds for Four Bands
Four Bands has been a leader in the Native economic development movement for over 25 years, and attracting new talent to the industry is a priority for the organization. “It's fortunate that I wanted to come home and live on Cheyenne River, but we really do need fresh ideas and exposure to new things,” says Vogel. There are challenges in attracting more young people to the community, however. Workers want affordable, livable housing and dependable transportation. They want access to healthy food and options for childcare — and rightly so. But this requires ongoing investments from local, state, and federal agencies, and Native communities are chronically underfunded. Four Bands knows they can’t do it alone, so they strive to build up their community, increase wealth and prosperity, and inspire fresh talent to serve the industry.
Vogel sees how Four Bands is making a difference in her community, with more people becoming financially aware and better stewards of their money. While her organization once focused on the fundamentals of financing, people have moved beyond the basics and are seeking greater control over their financial lives. “Customers come to us now, and they’re asking more advanced financial questions about investments and retirement plans. They're challenging us and looking for higher level content,” Vogel says. And as Four Bands continues to respond to their community and provide innovative services for businesses and consumers, there’s no doubt their programming will continue to transform the financial future of the Cheyenne River Sioux people — and of communities across South Dakota.