Wäicuni Foundation
When you cover the processing fee, 100% of your gift reaches lineage-led projects. If you don't, we absorb the difference from our operating fund. Your gift still goes to the work.
Ceremonial and ritual materials for one community gathering
One month's stipend for a language apprentice documenting Uwọttüjạ
Medicinal seed stock and propagation for Ñaupa Yachay's botanical garden
One Siona inter-community governance assembly
One senior monk's apartment at Tsering Jong (named-space)
Sponsor a full lineage project for one year
Wäicuni Foundation is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. EIN 42-3598333. Contributions qualify as a charitable deduction for federal income tax purposes to the extent allowed by law.
Members of our team have been working together for 15+ years within and in support of lineage projects. Starting in 2021, several members of our team joined a private foundation where we were responsible for initiating over 30 lineage projects worldwide and managing the granting of $30 million dollars. In 2026, as the operations of that foundation wound down, at the request of the elders we serve, and in order to open this work to public and philanthropic support, we established Wäicuni Foundation as an independent 501(c)(3) public charity, carrying forward those relationships and commitments under our own governance.
Recipients are identified through our direct relationships with lineage elders and leaders. Each grant is governed by a written agreement specifying the charitable use of funds and the recipient's reporting obligations. Funds are disbursed in stages tied to project milestones rather than in a single lump sum, so continued funding depends on demonstrated progress. The Foundation requires periodic and final reports on the use of funds, supported by receipts, photographs, and documentation of results. Because the Foundation maintains direct, ongoing relationships with each community, its team conducts site visits and in-person check-ins to verify that funds are being used appropriately and that projects are progressing as intended. If a report is inadequate or funds appear to be misused, the Foundation withholds further disbursements, investigates, and seeks correction or repayment. It retains all agreements, reports, and records for each grant.
A multi-stage process grounded in the standards of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, good faith negotiations, cultural sensitivity, and transparent information disclosure.
The knowledge documented in these projects belongs to the lineages and communities that hold it. Wäicuni Foundation claims no ownership, copyright, or commercial rights in any traditional knowledge, medicine, language material, or cultural expression arising from our funded work. Access to documented material is governed by the community's own protocols, and certain knowledge is restricted by the elders and will not be recorded, published, or shared.
Yes, you may designate your donations to the fund for a specific lineage. While the Foundation honors donor intent where possible, it retains ultimate authority to direct all funds to purposes consistent with its exempt purposes.
Yes, absolutely, contact us directly.
Yes. Please read about our Seventh Generation Society below and contact us directly.
Visits to partner communities occur only at the invitation of the elders, under community-set terms and a written code of conduct. We do not organize, sponsor, broker, or facilitate ceremony, medicine, or travel for outside participants for the purposes of so-called Indigenous Cultural and/or Spiritual Tourism.
No, absolutely not.
Yes
Gifts at this level are not processed. They are discussed.
Connect with our Executive Director, Adishvari dd, and our Donor Relations team via our contact form. We will tell you which route leaves the most in the lineages' hands given your circumstances: stock, an IRA distribution, a donor-advised fund, a wire, or a multi-year commitment, and we will say so even when the answer is not the most convenient one for us.
We will also send you our diligence packet before you ask for it: our IRS determination letter, board roster and governance policies, board-approved budgets, project budgets and timelines, our Free, Prior and Informed Consent protocol, and our Traditional Knowledge and Benefit-Sharing policy.
You are welcome to speak with the program director for the region that interests you, and where possible, with the lineage leader themselves.
Give by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Venmo, or Cash App, or by direct bank transfer (ACH), which costs us a fraction of card processing and leaves more with the lineages.
When you cover the processing fee, 100% of your gift reaches lineage-led projects. If you don't, we absorb the difference from our operating fund. Your gift still goes to the work.
Gifts of $500 or more: consider bank transfer over card. On a $5,000 gift, that difference is roughly $150, about a month's seed stock for the Q'ero botanical gardens.
Transmission is not an event. An apprentice learns a pharmacopoeia over years, not quarters, and the projects that fail are almost never the ones that lacked a large gift: they are the ones that lost a small one at the wrong moment.
Members of The Continuum Circle give monthly, at any amount, via the "Choose amount" Giving feature on this page. It is the most useful money we receive, because it is the only money we can plan against. Three of the projects on this page stalled in June for want of exactly this.
Circle members receive field dispatches from the lineages four times a year, an annual accounting of where the money went, and first notice when an elder asks for something new. You can change or end your gift at any time, from any dispatch.
If you hold a donor-advised fund at Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, National Philanthropic Trust, Vanguard Charitable, Greater Horizons, or a community foundation, you can recommend a grant to Wäicuni Foundation directly from your sponsor's portal.
Legal name: Wäicuni Foundation · EIN: 42-3598333 · Address: 701 South Street STE 100, Mountain Home, AR 72653
One request. Please ask your sponsor to include your name and email with the grant. Sponsors often transmit grants without donor details, and a gift arrives to us anonymously, which means we cannot thank you, and cannot report back on the lineages your gift supported. If your sponsor has already sent it, connect with our Director of Donor Relationships, Dechen Gyalmo, via the contact form and we will match it to you.
A note for 2026: because the new 0.5% AGI floor applies to your total annual giving, some donors are now contributing several years of intended gifts to their fund in a single year to clear the floor once, then recommending grants from it over time. Your advisor can tell you whether that applies to you.
If you are 70½ or older, you can transfer funds directly from a traditional, rollover, or inherited IRA to Wäicuni Foundation. This is called a Qualified Charitable Distribution, and it is excluded from your taxable income rather than claimed as a deduction.
For the 2026 tax year, the limit is $111,000 per person, or $222,000 for a married couple where each spouse has an eligible IRA. There is no minimum. If you are 73 or older, the transfer also counts toward your required minimum distribution.
Why this matters more in 2026 than it did before: the new 0.5% AGI floor and the benefit cap on top-bracket itemizers both reduce the value of an ordinary charitable deduction. A QCD is affected by neither, because it never enters your income at all.
How to do it. Ask your IRA custodian to make a direct transfer (the funds must go from the custodian to us, never through your hands) to: Wäicuni Foundation, EIN 42-3598333, 701 South Street STE 100, Mountain Home, AR 72653. Then tell us it is coming, at give@waicuni.org, so we can acknowledge it properly. IRA transfers frequently arrive with no donor name attached.
Two limits worth knowing: a QCD cannot be directed to a donor-advised fund or a private foundation, and the deadline is December 31 of the tax year in which you want it to count.
If you have held securities for more than a year and they have appreciated, giving the shares themselves is almost always better than selling them and giving the proceeds. You deduct the full fair market value, and neither you nor we pay capital gains tax on the appreciation. On $50,000 of stock with a $10,000 cost basis, that difference is thousands of dollars that would otherwise go to tax, and instead goes to a language, a garden, or a roof.
We handle securities gifts personally rather than through a form. Connect with our Executive Director, Adishvari dd, and our Donor Relations team via the contact form, and tell us what you intend to transfer and roughly when.
Within one business day you will have written transfer instructions for your broker, the name and number of the receiving account, and a direct line to the person who will confirm the shares have landed and send your acknowledgement. If your advisor prefers to speak with us directly, we will take that call.
We will also tell you honestly whether this is the right route for you. For some donors a qualified charitable distribution or a gift through a donor-advised fund leaves more with the lineages. We would rather you give well than give here.
GIFTS UP TO $3,500
No processing fee: the full amount reaches the Foundation. Send via your bank's Zelle service to:
For gifts of $10,000 or more, a wire costs us almost nothing to receive, far less than card processing, so more of your gift reaches the lineages.
Connect with our Executive Director, Adishvari dd, and our Donor Relations team via the contact form and we will send full wiring instructions the same day, along with confirmation of receipt and your acknowledgement for tax purposes once the funds arrive.
Questions: give@waicuni.org, +1 720-775-2142.
We issue wire details directly rather than publishing them, which also protects you: wire fraud against charitable gifts is common, and instructions taken from a web page are the usual vector. If you ever receive wiring details that appear to come from us, call the number above and confirm them by voice before sending anything.
Make checks payable to: Wäicuni Foundation
Mail to: Wäicuni Foundation, PO Box 171, Drasco, AR 72530
Write the project name in the memo line if you would like your gift designated, for example, "Q'ero botanical gardens" or "Uwọttüjạ dictionary." Without a memo, gifts are applied where the need is greatest, which is genuinely useful to us.
Include your email if you would like an acknowledgement by return, and a receipt for your records. Our principal office is 701 South Street STE 100, Mountain Home, AR 72653, and you can reach a person at +1 720-775-2142.
Many employers match charitable gifts made by their staff, often one-for-one and sometimes more, and a large share of that money goes unclaimed every year simply because nobody asks.
Search for your employer in the tool above, or reach out to our Director of Donor Relationships, Dechen Gyalmo, via the contact form, and we will complete our portion and return it. Our EIN is 42-3598333.
Some employers also match volunteer hours, and some match gifts from retirees and spouses. It is worth checking even if you think it does not apply to you.
Wäicuni exists because elders asked for an institution that would outlast the people who built it. A bequest is the form of giving that most closely matches that request: support that continues past any one lifetime, including your own.
Members of the Seventh Generation Society have named Wäicuni Foundation in a will, a trust, a retirement account, or a life insurance policy. There is no minimum, nothing is binding, and you may change your mind at any time.
Suggested language for your attorney:
"I give and bequeath to Wäicuni Foundation, a nonprofit corporation with principal offices at 701 South Street STE 100, Mountain Home, AR 72653, federal tax identification number 42-3598333, the sum of $______ (or ______ percent of the residue of my estate) to be used for its general charitable purposes."
If you would like your gift to endow a particular lineage relationship in perpetuity, rather than support general operations, write to us and we will structure it with you. Naming a fund for a family, a teacher, or an elder is possible at levels we are glad to discuss privately.
If you have already included us, please tell us. You are under no obligation to do so, and it changes nothing legally. It simply allows us to thank you while we can, and to make sure your intent is recorded and honored.
We work with companies in three ways: direct grants, employee matching programs, and sponsorship of a named project for a defined term, most often one to three years, which is the horizon on which this work actually moves.
A note on 2026: a new floor applies to corporate charitable deductions, which means small token gifts now carry little or no tax benefit. If your company is considering support, a meaningful multi-year commitment is both more useful to the lineages and more efficient for you than an annual token.
Private foundations, family offices, and institutional funders: our diligence packet includes our IRS determination letter, board roster and governance policies, board-approved budgets, project-level budgets and timelines, our Free, Prior and Informed Consent protocol, and our Traditional Knowledge and Benefit-Sharing policy. Contact our Executive Director, Adishvari dd, and our Donor Relations team via the contact form and we will send it within one business day.
Wäicuni Foundation retains full discretion and control over all funds, and every cross-border grant is governed by a written agreement with reporting conditions. We are glad to walk your counsel through it.
Some of the most valuable support we receive is not financial: translation, legal counsel, photography and film, travel miles for a delegation, or professional time in accounting, architecture, or land survey.
If you have something to offer, reach out to us via the contact form and tell us what it is. We will be honest about whether we can use it well. We would rather decline a generous offer than accept something that becomes a burden to a community to manage.
Wäicuni Foundation is a public charity recognized under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, EIN 42-3598333. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Tax information on this page is current for the 2026 tax year and is provided for general guidance only. We are not tax or legal advisors, and we encourage you to consult your own before making a significant gift.
