Big change rarely starts in big rooms. It begins in the places people call home and in the daily concerns of people caring for their families, friends and neighbors.
That belief sits at the heart of how we work at Alaska Venture Fund. We call it the beaver and crane approach — a way of investing that pairs practical, grounded work in place with systems-level vision, coordination and action. Large-scale change requires us to connect and invest in both.
From Birthwork to Systems Change
The Alaska Native Birthworkers Community (ANBC), a project hosted at Alaska Venture Fund, is an excellent example of this approach.
At the community level, ANBC is rebuilding the circle of care that once surrounded Alaska Native birth. They train Indigenous doulas, offer culturally matched support for families, and help parents bring new life into the world surrounded by language, tradition and community.
In a state where many expectant parents have to leave their homes and travel hundreds of miles to give birth, that work is profound. It’s about health, yes — but also about belonging, identity and the right to be cared for in ways that honor who you are.
That’s the beaver work — hands-on, human and rooted in culture and love of a specific place.
But ANBC’s founders are also cranes. They’re working to change the systems that shape the context of ANBC’s work — advocating for new policies, educating medical providers and reframing what safe, culturally grounded birth care can look like. They’re pushing for structural change that reaches far beyond their own programs, reshaping how Alaska, and beyond, thinks about maternal health and Indigenous sovereignty.
By supporting ANBC, we’re not just supporting a service — we’re investing in a model of how local care and systems change can move together.
The Power of the Beaver and the Crane
Beavers build where they live: they make things work in real time, for real people — a wildfire resilience effort in Western Alaska, mariculture training in Kodiak, community greenhouses in the Lower Yukon.
Cranes connect those local successes into something bigger: statewide policy, national investment and global learning that helps others do the same.
When the two move in concert, the results last. Local action alone can’t shift the structures that shape our lives, and policy without roots in community and the practical concerns of people rarely sticks. Our Alaska Model is about holding both, about making sure innovation in place and innovation in policy are resourced and connected.
Why It Works for Alaska
Alaska’s vastness makes this approach necessary. Our communities are small but our scale is huge; what happens in one village can ripple through a whole region or even the world.
Traditional philanthropy often divides itself between small, community-focused grants and big, system-wide initiatives. In Alaska, that separation doesn’t make sense. Here, the local and the global are bound together, in our ecosystems, our economies and our people.
That’s why we help channel investment across both scales at once. We support local innovators who are testing solutions that fit their communities, and we connect their work to the policy, research and partnerships that can carry those lessons further.
With ANBC, every lactation specialist trained and every family supported strengthens a movement for culturally grounded care — and fuels a broader conversation about equity and health across Alaska, realizing their mission of “sovereignty at first breath.”
From Local Practice to Shared Future
The Alaska Native Birthworkers Community reminds us that systems change doesn’t always start in the halls of government or the boardroom. Often it starts at a kitchen table, with a family talking about what’s possible if relatives could give birth at home again — or with a group of women reclaiming a tradition that was nearly lost.
That’s how meaningful change begins here: rooted in community, carried by conviction and scaled through partnership, connection and vision.
This is what we mean by our Alaska Model. It’s not a single project or formula, but a way of working that honors both place and scale. It’s about helping beavers keep building, and giving cranes the lift to carry those lessons skyward. Investing this way in Alaska, across a wide range of sustainability issues, we’re confident we’re changing the world.