Spruce Root
🌐Spruce Root is an Indigenous-led Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) serving 23 communities, building a regenerative regional economy by supporting Alaska Native and rural entrepreneurs.
Bioregional Context
Southeast Alaska is a coastal and island-rich region spanning over 500 miles from Yakutat in the north to Hydaburg in the south. This bioculturally significant area is the ancestral and present-day homeland of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples, whose governance, economies, and lifeways are deeply tied to the region's forests, salmon streams, and marine ecosystems.
Background
Southeast Alaska is a coastal and island-rich region spanning over 500 miles from Yakutat in the north to Hydaburg in the south. This bioculturally significant area is the ancestral and present-day homeland of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples, whose governance, economies, and lifeways are deeply tied to the region's forests, salmon streams, and marine ecosystems—relationships forged over thousands of years.
The region includes part of the Tongass National Forest, the largest temperate rainforest in North America, and faces a complex legacy of colonial land policies, resource extraction, and economic displacement.
Origins and Network
In 2012, Spruce Root emerged in Juneau, Alaska, as an Indigenous-led Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) with a mission that went far beyond traditional lending. Founded with $500,000 in seed funding from Sealaska Corporation, one of the regional Alaska Native corporations created by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Spruce Root was born from a vision of economic empowerment that honored the deep relationships between people, place, and prosperity.
That initial funding came from an unusual source: carbon credits from 176,000 acres of Tongass rainforest that Sealaska had set aside for carbon sequestration in partnership with The Nature Conservancy. After dominating the timber industry in the region until 2021, when Sealaska renounced commercial logging, this marked a profound shift—from extraction to regeneration, from short-term profit to long-term stewardship.
Today, Spruce Root serves 23 communities across Southeast Alaska, from Yakutat in the north to Hydaburg in the south.
Activities
Small Business Lending
Spruce Root's approach to economic development starts with recognition: many entrepreneurs in Southeast Alaska don't have access to affordable capital through traditional financing channels. But Spruce Root sees beyond credit scores and collateral. Their small business lending program targets entrepreneurs who may not qualify elsewhere, but who contribute to economic development and community well-being in the region. Before potential borrowers even apply for a loan, Spruce Root provides business and career coaching. And they continue supporting them after the loan is issued. The loans can fund startup capital, working capital, business expansion, and more. Between 2012 and 2022, Spruce Root deployed $1.2 million in loan capital. In 2022 alone, they issued loans to four Alaska small businesses totaling $350,000. In 2023, new loans deployed amounted to just under $900,000—a sign of growing momentum and trust.
Business Coaching & Programs
Lending is just one piece of a much larger vision. Spruce Root offers business coaching to stakeholders beyond their loan portfolio. In 2022, they provided business basics training to Tlingit and Haida citizens, and partnered with Sealaska Heritage Institute on developing a business curriculum for Alaska Native artists—recognizing that cultural expression and economic opportunity can thrive together.
Path to Prosperity
One of Spruce Root's signature programs is Path to Prosperity, a business development competition that supports local businesses with positive social, economic, and ecological impact. The program specifically promotes the regenerative use of the region's resources—businesses that see themselves as part of the ecosystem, not apart from it. In 2022, the competition attracted 23 applications from eight communities. The 12 finalists attended an in-person Business Boot Camp, receiving 26+ hours of training and technical assistance from 14 mentors. The goal is to build a network of businesses that understand their success is tied to the health of their communities and the land that sustains them.
Resilience Circles
With Jump/Scale, Spruce Root runs Alaska Native Resilience Circles—a year-long cohort for Indigenous entrepreneurs that treats business viability and personal and cultural well-being as one fabric. Strong communities need viable enterprises; sustainable enterprises need healthy people and cultures. The program strengthens Alaska Native businesses in ecosystem care, long-term economic resilience, overall wellness, and community mental health. Cohorts meet in person and online for workshops on personal and business finance, marketing and branding, physical health and nutrition, mental health, and Indigenous culture and values. Financial skills sit alongside cultural grounding and wellness practice. By year’s end, participants leave with sharper business tools and a denser peer network among Indigenous entrepreneurs. Spruce Root and Jump/Scale describe the work as more than training: it is part of reclaiming Indigenous knowledge, wellness, and economic sovereignty across Alaska.
Sustainable Southeast Partnership
The Sustainable Southeast Partnership (SSP)—a Spruce Root and Sealaska program—works as a regional collective-impact network. It supports collaborative, community-led responses to linked social, ecological, and economic challenges, guided by Indigenous values. Individuals, Tribal governments, Native corporations, nonprofits, agencies, businesses, and others can take part. Village-level hosts appoint community catalysts who assess energy, food, natural resources, and economic sustainability, then surface projects—from food security and energy to habitat restoration—and pair with regional catalysts on design, implementation, and tracking. Regional catalysts also shape policy, help build cooperatives and mutual support, and run workshops to grow capacity. In practice, SSP is bioregional governance: place-rooted, accountable to communities, and woven from village to region.
Strategic Planning
In 2022, they finalized and took part in implementing a five-year strategic plan for the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and began facilitating an update of the comprehensive community plan for Yakutat in partnership with the local government. These are practical tools for communities to articulate their own visions and chart their own paths forward.
Seacoast Trust
Recognizing that the work of regeneration requires long-term, patient capital, Spruce Root became the fiscal sponsor of the Seacoast Trust—a permanent funding mechanism created to provide access to capital for Indigenous-led conservation projects that place local communities at the center of efforts to achieve a healthy environment. The Seacoast Trust's guiding principles include respecting community voices, upholding Indigenous governance and leadership, and valuing the integrity of all knowledge systems—including those anchored in 10,000 plus years of Indigenous history, traditions, and stewardship. The Trust will fund the work of the Sustainable Southeast Partnership. Projects slated for funding include Native forest partnerships, healthy salmon habitat, Indigenous Guardians programs, youth leadership opportunities, food sovereignty, climate migration, regenerative economies, and reduced carbon footprints. The Trust provides grants for work programs, loans for small Tribal businesses, Southeast Tribal Land Purchases, and local infrastructure projects, as well as exchange-traded and impact funds, network coordination and capacity building. In 2022, the Seacoast Trust reached an initial $20 million funding goal with the help of Sealaska, The Nature Conservancy, and the Rasmuson, Hewlett, Edgerton, Chorus, and Wilburforce foundations. But the real vision is much larger: the goal of the trust is to reach $100 million in order to fully fund the work of Sustainable Southeast Partnership in perpetuity—ensuring that this work doesn't depend on the vagaries of grant cycles, but can continue for generations.
Vision and Legacy
What Spruce Root has built over more than a decade is something rare: a financial institution that sees its role not just as providing capital, but as cultivating economic sovereignty rooted in place and culture. They've created pathways for Indigenous entrepreneurs to build businesses that honor their values, strengthen their communities, and ensure long-term resilience.
Their work recognizes that in Southeast Alaska—a region with a complex legacy of colonial land policies, resource extraction, and economic displacement—economic development must be regenerative, not extractive. It must honor the 10,000-plus years of Indigenous history, traditions, and stewardship. It must build businesses that strengthen communities, not businesses that extract wealth and leave.
From the $900,000 in loans deployed in 2023 to the 23 communities served across 500 miles, from the Resilience Circles supporting entrepreneurs' well-being to the Seacoast Trust's vision of $100 million in permanent funding—Spruce Root is demonstrating what bioregional finance can look like when it's Indigenous-led, place-rooted, and values-aligned.
They're showing that economic development doesn't have to mean choosing between prosperity and place, between profit and principles. In Southeast Alaska, they're building an economy where businesses succeed by strengthening communities, where financial success is measured by the health of the land and the well-being of the people who call it home.