A Friendship That Became a Foundation

The Foundation for Community Vitality was born not from a strategic plan, but from a chance meeting that reshaped the lives of two men and the communities they came to serve.

More than three decades ago, Jim Scott and Harvey Stewart sat next to each other at a legislative luncheon in Billings. Jim, who had spent his early career working across Indigenous communities in places like Colstrip and Lame Deer, arrived late and took the only empty seat.

Harvey, a pastor from Lodge Grass deeply involved in grassroots community work, introduced himself and began sharing stories of good things happening in that community. Something in their conversation stuck.

As the luncheon concluded, Harvey handed Jim his business card asking, “Do you want to make a difference on the reservation?” Harvey continued, “If you do, you must be willing to give your time, to show up, to fail and try again. This is not work done remotely.”

Jim agreed.

Over the years that followed, the two men began supporting local efforts in ways that looked radically different from traditional philanthropy. There were no applications, no grant cycles, no prescribed outcomes, no attempts to control what communities chose to do. Instead, they listened. They offered support – in time, with resources, and funding when appropriate. They helped bring people together. They supported what community leaders said they needed, not what outsiders thought they should need.

This approach became the ethos that still defines FCV today:

• Relationship-first
• Community-led, always
• A long-term commitment measured in decades, not grant cycles

Harvey and Jim, both of whom had seen the ineffectiveness of short-term funding – leaving projects that dissolved the moment the funding ended – were determined that their work would be different. Together, they shaped a simple but powerful set of principles:

• Build trust through authentic relationships.
• Support the work communities want to do.
• Let leadership emerge from within the community.
• Offer both financial and relational support.
• Stay long enough to matter.
• Never allow the work to overshadow the friendship.

These principles became not just the way Jim and Harvey worked together, they became the identity of the organization.

Through multiple generations, shifts in governance, new partners, and new challenges, the heart of FCV remains unchanged: two friends who chose to show up for a community and for each other, and built something enduring from that decision.

The communities that FCV has supported for more than 30 years continue to demonstrate what Harvey and Jim believed all along: