CROPS partners with indigenous and rural communities to reach economic, health and social equity. By empowering Native American youth and elders, with a focus on passions, strengths, and needs, we have generated over $150M in grant funding for arts, broadband, culture, economic development, education, healthcare, language, victim services and more. We pair these fundraising successes with capacity building and technical assistance to ensure sustained impact.
Helping to grow Tribal and rural communities through culturally diverse partnerships and co-generational leadership.
Founded in 2004 by Beverly Santicola and her late mom, Ardella Paulsen, CROPS is a grassroots nonprofit, 501c3 charitable organization addressing rural poverty. Guided by a dynamic Board of Directors, CROPS partners with underserved rural communities and indigenous populations to reach economic, health and social equity. Services include fund development, project facilitation, economic development strategic planning, intergenerational leadership development and fiscal sponsorship. CROPS’ work with rural youth and elders has resulted in Santicola being selected twice for the prestigious Encore.org Purpose Prize Fellowship, funded by the John Templeton Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies.
Beverly Santicola
Beverly Santicola, Executive Director, originally a farm girl from Indiana who learned how to drive a tractor, plant seeds and grow crops at a young age, has turned her agricultural childhood and lifetime work experiences into a purpose driven mission to grow a new generation of leaders for the future of America.
She is an award-winning capacity builder, film producer, social entrepreneur, idea generator, problem solver, program developer, project facilitator, public speaker and grant writing consultant.
Over the past ten years, Santicola has focused her expertise and energy in the arenas of community development, youth leadership, and collaborative partnership building for government agencies, national associations, Native American tribes and Native Hawaiian nonprofits. Together with her team of professional grant writers, she has generated more than one billion in grant funding for clients.
Santicola has been nationally recognized for social innovation and leadership excellence by the US Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs in connection with the Tiwahe Initiative. In 2010 and 2014 she was honored by Encore.org as a Purpose Prize Fellow, for a youth-led Intergenerational rural development project she designed called ‘Growing Rural’. Honoring extraordinary people ages 60 and older who tap into the power of life experience to build a better future for us all, the Encore Purpose Prize was sponsored by the Atlantic Philanthropies and John Templeton Foundation.
Dr. Melita Rank
Dr. Melita “Chepa” Rank (Hunkpati Oyate) is the Chief Executive Officer for the Fort Thompson Indian Health Services (IHS) Health Center in South Dakota. With a doctorate as a licensed social worker, she is passionate about transformative and innovative best practices to address grand challenges facing tribal communities and people. She is leading the development of Integrated systems to foster well-being, suicide prevention in indigenous nations, and holistic services to create a culture of wellness within tribal nations.
Chepa has spent the majority of her career honored to work in public service in various capacities, primarily across tribal nations. She began her career working with families in child protection/child welfare services, eventually transitioning to administrative roles. Her research interests include enhancing tribal community capacity by fostering a culture of wellness, building bridges of economic and social development for tribal communities to reduce disparities, designing collective impact approaches to improve health and utilization of data for programmatic decision-making.
Board of Directors
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Melita Rank, PhD.
Native American Member – South Dakota
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Beth Wrobel
Board President - Indiana
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Harry E. Cummins III
Secretary/Treasurer – Ohio
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Jody Prout
Member – Wisconsin
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Susan Thomas, JD
Member – Texas
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Eileen 'Taffy' Lafferty
Native American Member – Oklahoma