Incubator Member Spotlight: Shmuel Tamo of Indigenous Roots Productions

From our Spring 2025 Nonprofit Incubator Program, we’re shining a spotlight on Samuel (Shmuel) Tamo, Founder & Executive Director of Indigenous Roots Productions. Indigenous Roots Productions (IRP) is a nonprofit organization that amplifies the self-empowerment of Indigenous communities around the world through collaborative oral history, research, filmmaking, and folkloric music production. IRP supports oral history and folkloric music, among the oldest shared cultural traditions, which offer a window into the values and worldviews of our ancestors. Film and music production provide avenues for Indigenous communities to teach others about their way of life while archiving their stories for preservation. IRP partners with Indigenous communities by facilitating the production and distribution of stories told by communities themselves. The research revealing these stories is supported by consistent, appropriate methodology and theory, producing a database of qualitative, diverse samples. Films and music produced by IRP and partner communities can help relieve these cultures from the obscurity that leads to marginalization.

As the grant recipient from Mockingbird Incubator’s Spring 2025 Cohort, we’re thrilled to share resources and further empower IRP to pursue its mission. Read below for the interview!

Shmuel, pictured at Laguna and Volcán Miñiques, a sacred, high-Andean lagoon within Atacameña ancestral lands.

Jessica, Mockingbird Incubator Founder and CEO:  So, tell me a little bit about everything that's going on since we last chatted this Spring!

Samuel (Shmuel) Tamo, IRP President:  Well, it's great to see you, Jessica. Thank you. Been pretty busy with a number of projects, and IRP specifically has been able to grow a lot because of the work that we did in the Incubator. So, obviously, it was a huge milestone and threshold to break for the organization to get the grant.

It’s our first one, so that feels great. The application itself, the strategic plan, has also become the centerpiece for this new investment campaign that I'm working on. And, having been in a place just before I got accepted and joined in the incubator, having been in a place as a nonprofit founder who really believed in the organization, the mission, the vision and I was certain that [by] this point in time we would be taken care of, would be funded and people would realize the importance of IRP, and after that didn't happen, feeling a bit lost - the Incubator came around at the perfect time. And so not only did I get the opportunity to be inspired by what you guys have done, by my cohort members and all the work that they are doing, but by all of the conversations that that led to concrete materials, all of the networking and the tools from the GiveButter fundraising platform, to understanding our cornerstones and just putting those on our website, all the little polishing details. And then this final capstone of the entire 12-month strategic plan- it was like if I was lost looking for a map, you guys helped me draw it. And I really, really needed that at that time. 

And now it's reinvigorated - not just the motivation, but the confidence in how to fundraise and make IRP sustainable. So yeah, I was able to take [the strategic plan] and actually build it out into a web page on the IRP site specifically for sponsors, looking to really get this strategic plan funded, specifically where I'm able to lay out the summary, explain the major goals that we have over the next 12 months and how much they cost, the resources we need for them. It's all laid out there for any investor who wants to know what they are partnering with IRP for, and where their investment is going, or the donation is going. So, for me, that's huge because now all I need to do is contact and connect with people. And, you know, that's something I know - a lot of it is about being a founder and a director who is passionate and who is going to sit you down and talk about the mission and the vision, and hopefully by the end of the day, you realize why you should be involved. But having the tools to have that conversation and make it clear for your audience is what Mockingbird provided. So thank you for that.

Jessica: Tell me a little bit about your experience with the community at large.

Shmuel:  How about that, okay. You lead so much of it, and we get to know you very well. But then there are these other members of Mockingbird that are able to support us in their niches throughout the project. And so definitely meeting Marissa [Turesky, Mockingbird Analytics Director of Research and Evaluation] and talking about the evaluation side because there's this interesting overlap. There's an evaluation for the organizational impact, but then, of course, for IRP to understand that impact, we have to also evaluate - well, I guess any nonprofit needs to, but it's really important - how do our participants or narrators, rather, feel about our partnerships? And that evaluation, really, I mean, the films can be great and they can reach all these people, but IRP’s actual work and what speaks to our integrity as an organization is how our partners have felt when we have collaborated on these projects. So hearing from her and kind of brainstorming and talking with her about what evaluation of that looks like has been invaluable. 

And then Marissa was able to introduce me to Dr. Jaime Lopez of the University of Nebraska, who focuses on architecture, community spaces, marginalized peoples - and these are extremely valuable topics for what we have studied in Espiritu’s oral history research. One of Erika's [our primary partner] major efforts in her area, and we could probably say that that's a major goal for a lot of Indigenous communities, is community spaces and what that looks like and what that means for Indigenous people. And without going too far into it, this is a great example, because so many towns, even small, remote Indigenous towns in Mexico, are built on colonized ideas of community spaces. The Spanish square, you know, is everywhere. And that's not necessarily the Indigenous community space. So what does that look like? And having the opportunity to make that connection [between Dr. Lopez and our partner community] and let them have the conversation and just sort of learn from both of their expertise, and provide what I can to support, that's huge too.

And in a sense, there are all these other things that we've been doing - the networking with the cohort, the lessons that we learned, the strategic plan, the Give Butter - all of these were like, oh, that's kind of the point of what we're doing here. But then, because you guys care about what you're doing, because you're passionate, because you love the work of your participants in the Incubator, you want to make sure that we succeed. You want to make sure that we have the resources that we need. That's what led to this connection that may take the project and Erika's work to another level. So thank you for that.

Jessica: Of course! Tell me a little bit about one of the surprises that came out of the incubator, something that you were like, “Oh my gosh, I didn't know, nobody ever told me that.

Shmuel:  Oh my god, yes. A few different things, especially regarding compliance being registered in states where you're receiving donations, or when people start to want to put it on their taxes, these kinds of things. I mean, I have my masters in nonprofit management, right? You would think that I should kind of know most of all these things. But here we are in the Incubator, and I'm catching on to some things that I'm like, yo, this is a big deal. I really need to have that covered. You know, that is a T that needs to be crossed. So, especially regarding the financial compliance, some of the legal compliance pieces - those are foundational. I mean, that has to be taken care of, or you can be in big uh-oh.

Jessica: That's funny because that's not the first time I've actually heard that from somebody who has a graduate degree in nonprofit management, that they're still hearing things through the cohort that they were never taught in a two-year graduate program.

Shmuel: Yeah, and understandably, two years is still not enough. I actually, for a long time, was a little bit ashamed - I was like, what is a “master” of social justice and human rights? What are you talking about? You're not some sort of perfect person that you can say that. But I bring that up because you cannot master something in two years. There's no way they could have presented us with everything in two years… and it's not like that's the only nonprofit educational curriculum I've ever done, whether it's a day long or a four hour workshop at a local library talking about nonprofit management, you know, a variety of online stuff, different resources and still - a couple of those pieces were falling through the cracks and I wasn't picking up on those. So yeah, you guys definitely found an area that needs to be covered that maybe isn't getting the necessary attention for all the people who need to hear it.

Jessica: Tell me about the application process for you going in, before the Incubator. How hard was it? What did you expect versus what did you get? 

Shmuel: Honestly, I am so, so thrilled with this experience because it wasn't tedious or difficult. I was emailing, I had some questions because I don't know how many things I've applied for since I started working on IRP in general, and those were all much more intensive application processes. Then, for you guys, I was like, well, this isn't that hard to fill out, how much can it be?  I didn't really know anything about it. I just knew that it was relevant to the kind of help that I needed right now. So I was like, let's go for it, right? And then to get the quality and the amount of return - that's insane.

And I don't know, for me, the place I was in mentally, energetically - basically the exhaustion, the burnout, all that stuff that was going on. And then here comes Mockingbird Incubator- and the reason that I'm talking about the application process not being tedious is because by the end of it now, what I see is that you guys have really just focused on like [the] meat. There have been a lot of times when I have felt that even after working on applications for a very long time, as drawn out as they are and as specific as you try to be and tailored as you try to be, in the end, maybe the message just doesn't seem to get across at all.

Jessica: Tell me a little bit about who you think, having gone through the program, is a good fit for it, and what people can do to be ready.

Shmuel: Yeah. I mean, obviously, relatively new founders, right? You know, that's part of the whole point of being an incubator. 

Jessica: But you also can apparently have a whole graduate degree. 

Shmuel: Yes, exactly. So when I say new, I don't necessarily mean like you just thought of this yesterday, but, you know, if you're not necessarily as sustainable or you haven't found that sort of key to growth to get where you're wanting to get to, then this is a great program.

People who have a huge passion for a social issue, for a justice issue, but maybe if they don't have the financial and the legal understanding or experience - I guess if you don't have any of that understanding, even like some business background or something, maybe Mockingbird Incubator might be a little bit too ahead. For instance, if somebody is super new but they just know that they want to start a nonprofit, then maybe it could be good to do some self-research and at least get a bit of a background before, you know, jumping into this program.

Jessica: Yeah, we do have Introduction to Nonprofit Management, which is a self-paced course that we tell everybody, if you're still in the idea phase, if you don't have 501c3 status yet, take this first, to help you make the decision if this is right. Because a lot of people don't go into the 501 (c) (3) process with their eyes wide open about what they're choosing. We thank you for your time and commitment to the program, and can’t wait to see all the amazing things your organization will accomplish.

Shmuel: Please say hi to everybody and tell them thank you.

Jessica: It was our honor to support your important work. Please keep in touch!

If you’d like to learn more or donate to support Samuel’s work, please visit their website: Indigenous Roots Productions.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

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