A 100-year-old Pacific Northwest woolen mill known for its authentic Native American blanket designs had an opportunity to give back to its first and most enduring customers, the country’s Native American tribes. When approached by the Smithsonian to contribute to the building of a new Native American museum on Washington D.C.’s Capital Mall, the brand’s PR team designed a program that would raise significant funds for the project by doing what the brand does best.

Donating time, talent and resources, the company turned its century-old manufacturing and design know-how into dollars that would benefit the museum project. Working closely with the Smithsonian and Native American artists to develop a specially designed blanket series, the company donated all design services and sold the blankets at cost to allow the Smithsonian to sell at full market value. A specially labeled designer series became the platinum prize bringing in a significantly higher price tag. The company had used its blankets as fund raising tools in the past to benefit the American Indian College Fund, but initiating a project of this magnitude with the American public was a first for the brand.

The results were as spectacular as the blankets themselves. To date, this collaborative fundraising effort has yielded nearly $1.5 million for the museum. Highly praised and endorsed by the Native American tribes, each year a new blanket design is introduced to the collection, paying homage to Native American culture and building on the program’s success. The program also created a lasting public-private partnership between one of the country’s oldest brands and its most revered non-profit institution. A plaque on the museum wall commemorates the brand’s historic relationship with the Native Americans and its distinction as the only non-American Indian company to sell products in the museum’s gift shop.