Spotlight on PWNA’s Phoenix Distribution Center

At Partnership with Native Americans (PWNA), we take pride in the work of our partners who serve Native communities on 60 reservations across 12 states, year-round. So, what does it take to ensure we’re helping our partners serve their communities?

In addition to our donor relations and administrative offices in Virginia and Texas, PWNA operates two distribution centers that directly serve our partners in the Southwest and Northern Plains. Our distribution center for the Southwest is located in Phoenix and houses essential supplies and materials that are distributed to reservations across Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and portions of Colorado and California. Every product in the 40,000-square foot warehouse is inventoried, valued, and accounted for as part of an annual auditing process. And while maintaining track of items at this scale can be a challenge, our team has scored 100 percent on audit accuracy for the past three years.

Our Phoenix warehouse is stocked year-round with canned goods and emergency food and water, toiletries, school supplies, new clothing items, emergency blankets and more. These items are made available through donations of high-quality, gift in-kind products and purchased items, to ensure PWNA is ready to deploy deliveries and replenish supplies when our partners need them. Recently, local news outlets 3TV AZ Family and ABC 15 visited the Phoenix distribution center to learn how we’re helping Native American communities.

PWNA operates a distribution center of similar size and volume in Rapid City, South Dakota, to serve reservations across North and South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and Idaho as well as a portion of Washington state. Through our program partners on the reservations, PWNA delivers about $30 million worth of goods and project support annually.

Every week, our drivers load up and hit the road to make deliveries to about 100 program partners, about half of which are located in the Southwest. These deliveries help support reservation-based programs that are working to combat barriers to education, food access, disaster relief, and animal welfare on Native American reservations.

PWNA’s mission is two-fold: serving immediate needs and supporting long-term solutions as identified by the Native American partners and communities we serve. Our regional distribution center teams are a vital component in making sure we work toward realizing our dream of stronger, more sustainable Native American communities.