When Adrienne Fainman and her partner Cueyolaux Cataldo decided to take their idea for a prefabricated home construction business from concept to reality, they faced challenges familiar to many Native American entrepreneurs — like how to navigate the complex legal and financial requirements of contracting.
In 2021, they turned to the Northwest Native Chamber, a business development nonprofit focused on advancing Native American business in the Northwest. The chamber helped them secure a grant to buy equipment, then began meeting with them weekly to provide help with accounting, legal advising and networking — support that Fainman says was crucial to their success. Their company, CedarStone Design & Build, now employs several full-time employees.
“It made all the difference,” Fainman said.
In the final days of the 2025 legislative session, a last-minute deal preserved funding for this key program supporting Native American-owned businesses after entrepreneurs warned plans to eliminate state funding would undermine years of work to expand economic opportunity for historically excluded entrepreneurs. As Oregon’s budget writers looked to tighten the budget amid federal uncertainty, the funding was at risk of being stripped entirely, to the shock of the program’s supporters.
Hundreds of entrepreneurs from traditionally disadvantaged communities, like Native Americans and those living in rural communities, have received similar support and resources through community organizations funded by Oregon’s Technical Assistance Program, or TAP. It’s a statewide initiative launched in 2020 that helps disadvantaged small businesses access no-cost legal, accounting and business planning services.
Oregon’s TAP program is housed under Business Oregon, the state’s business development agency, and it is funded biennially through the state’s budget. It received $4.8 million during the 2023-2025 budget cycle, making up 0.27% of the department’s $1.8 billion budget. In her proposed budget for 2025-2027, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek recommended continuing funding for the TAP program at the same level. But in a June 6 hearing before the Joint Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the state budget, lawmakers unveiled their vision for Business Oregon’s budget framework, revealing the TAP program wouldn’t receive any funding in the 2025-2027 cycle.
A last-minute funding bill, HB 5006, passed on June 24, included the $4.8 million in funding Kotek requested for TAP. A spokesperson for her office, Roxy Mayer, said the governor supports funding the program and was glad to see it funded through the end-of-session bill. The funds are a one-time approval of Oregon Lottery funds to support TAP, meaning it still lacks a sustaining funding model and the program could face similar funding issues in the future.
The original proposed gutting of the program worried Jacob Wallis, a Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation citizen and business services manager for Nixyaawii Community Financial Services, a nonprofit that promotes small business and financial equity for tribal citizens of that reservation. He says TAP is one of the main programs his organization depends on, and he was at first left confused and frustrated by the proposed gutting of the program, given his organization’s good relationship with Business Oregon.
“It is pretty much like a vital lifeline to our technical assistance that we’re able to provide to our small businesses,” he said.
James Alan Parker, chief executive officer of the Northwest Native Chamber and citizen of the Chippewa Cree Tribe, helped drive the creation of Oregon’s TAP Program. Parker argues culturally sensitive programs like those offered through Northwest Native Chamber are especially important given that Native American entrepreneurs have historically faced exclusion from traditional financial systems, discriminatory lending practices and a lack of access to capital and business development resources.
“This is the time when you can stand up as a state and say, ‘You know what? No, we really do see the importance here, we want to make sure that we’re maintaining that,’” Wallis said.
Amid pressure from program supporters, legislators chose to amend the budget to restore funding for the TAP program at the last minute.
Since 2020, TAP funding has enabled organizations like the Northwest Native Chamber and Nixyaawii Community Financial Services to provide free legal, financial and business development support that the organizations say opens doors to capital, contracts and long-term stability for Native American entrepreneurs. As legislators finalized cuts to the TAP program, supporters like Parker and entrepreneurs who rely on the funding told lawmakers they could lose access to the tailored guidance they need to thrive, undermining hard-won progress toward economic equity.
“This funding is crucial in supporting Indigenous and BIPOC small businesses and it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our clients and our community,” said Sam Taylor, community development manager for the Native American Youth and Family Center, which uses the state funding to operate its Native Business Accelerator program for burgeoning Native American entrepreneurs and runs an ongoing series of markets hosting small Native American vendors. Taylor says NAYA is thrilled the funding won’t go away, as the proposed cuts would have shut down a technical assistance program that nearly 700 clients rely on and force the group to cancel its marketplaces. He says many people provided written statements in support of the program after cuts were proposed.
Initially, budget writers argued that “a level of ongoing funding” will still exist for small business assistance in the state’s budget, while proposing cutting the TAP program. The state supports a network of 20 Small Business Development Centers around the state that provide business advising. State Sen. Lew Frederick, who represents North and Northeast Portland, historically one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city, raised concerns about eliminating TAP during the June 6 hearing.
“It is something that has made a huge difference, certainly in my community,” Frederick said in the hearing.
With uncertainty about federal funding, state legislators originally proposed a modest state budget of $38 billion, which is an increase of around $4 billion from the current budget — but included $271 million in “targeted reductions,” including cutting the TAP program. Business Oregon’s budget would have been trimmed by around 20%. Overall, the state’s budget writers have said the cuts were standard reductions that would not have a negative effect on the administration of services.
The state offers a series of small business development centers that provide one-on-one business advising, but some TAP supporters told InvestigateWest these offices are often unable to meet their needs, unresponsive and may not have knowledge relevant to the issues Native Americans regularly face in business. Parker said the vast majority of people who access business support services through the Northwest Native Chamber live at or below the poverty level. He said TAP funding should be viewed by state lawmakers as a proactive, preventative step reducing the need for social services.
“If these businesses weren’t started and weren’t being successful, they might be in a social services line, which cost the state way more money,” Parker said. “Our clients are on a thinner line between poverty and social services, and economic prosperity and self-reliance, so there’s much less of a margin for error. So when you take away services like ours, you effectively eliminate that line and make it that much more difficult for a business to succeed.”
Parker says the Northwest Native Chamber has assisted more than 500 urban and reservation-based businesses across Oregon, provided 5,500 hours of one-on-one business advising and technical assistance and 3,500 hours of training to its clients since 2020. In the same timeframe, it helped its Oregon-based clients gain access to $2.8 million in capital in the form of loans, grants and other funding.
The TAP program currently supports a variety of organizations across the state, including the Warm Springs Community Action Team and Nixyaawii Community Financial Services which provide support to tribal citizens living on the Warm Springs and Umatilla Indian Reservations. Other organizations, like the Black American Chamber of Commerce and North Coast Food Web, use TAP funding to provide business advising and skills workshops to their clients.
The Native American Youth and Family Center’s regularly hosts NAYA Marketplaces in Portland, and Taylor says they are a key component of the nonprofit organization’s services. The marketplaces are funded through the TAP program, and would’ve had to close altogether had TAP funding been cut. The events are where Native American crafters, who typically don’t have a brick-and-mortar location or regular means of marketing their goods, sell their handmade products.
“Marketplaces is our biggest sources of clients, artists and craftmakers — and for almost every one of them, that’s their main source of income,” Taylor said.
NAYA’s clients, particularly those who utilize their marketplaces to make ends meet, range from young beaders to experienced community elders renowned for their work but who still need money from the marketplaces to get by.
For Fainman, CedarStone’s chief executive officer, and others who have utilized TAP services, the financial resources and technical assistance were a huge help — “It launched us in the industry we’re in,” she said — but it was the culturally sensitive support and networking opportunities they received through Northwest Native Chamber, a trusted organization in Northwest Indian Country, that was a critical component of their success, she said.
“It was encouraging,” she said, to be surrounded by successful Native American entrepreneurs who then helped her and co-owner Cataldo, who is First Nations Okanagan and Shuswap. CedarStone, which is located in Springfield, Oregon, and employs Indigenous design techniques, says fear of failure is the No. 1 issue for early entrepreneurs — and that representation and cultural sensitivity from Northwest Native Chamber was important to her and her partner.
Native American business owners make up around 1% of all entrepreneurs in the United States, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Native Americans have historically low access to capital and credit, resulting from a variety of factors including proximity to financial institutions, low credit scores and credit utilization, and low mainstream mortgage market participation.
Lai-Lani Ovalles, co-owner of Black Pearl Wellness in Portland, echoed the importance of receiving support through a Native American-owned organization. Ovalles and her partner opened a holistic health care facility in downtown Portland with the support of NAYA’s Native Business Accelerator Program in July 2020.
Navigating business ownership didn’t come easily at first.
“In those early days, we were just trying to survive, and really keep the doors open,” Ovalles said. “Then I found out about the Native Business Accelerator program.”
Ovalles and her partner and co-owner, Sita Symonette, received specialized business counseling that helped them stabilize their finances after they opened their clinic in the difficult period surrounding the COVID pandemic in 2020.
“Not having a business background myself, or my partner, we really struggled to figure out finances and cash flow,” Ovalles said.
NAYA helped them navigate through all of the issues they encountered — everything from finances, marketing, branding and legal issues.
“All those fundamental tools that are necessary for a business to not just survive but thrive and grow to the next level, they really came at a good time,” Ovalles said.
InvestigateWest (investigatewest.org) is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Melanie Henshaw covers Indigenous affairs and communities in the region. Reach her directly at [email protected] or by phone or Signal at (971) 258-0891.