Note: This article was featured in the FY23 Impact Report, which reports on NMF’s activities between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023. To read the report in full, click HERE
Supporting our region’s small businesses has been a key part of our work since our inception in 1986.
By helping entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed, we lift up not only business owners and their employees but we also add to the economic vibrancy of Northwest Minnesota.
From providing gap lending for business ventures to offering no-cost business consulting through the Northwest Small Business Development Center, our commitment to developing entrepreneurship has not wavered – it has only grown.
In continuing that growth, we have established our first subsidiary – the Northwest Minnesota Community Impact Corporation (NMCIC) – to strengthen our efforts in lifting up small businesses.
Since 1996, NMF has been a certified CDFI, a Community Development Financial Institution, through the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The program provides financing intended to support community revitalization. However, changes to the CDFI program over the years made it increasingly difficult for the Northwest Minnesota Foundation (NMF) to deliver impactful business support throughout the region. To continue as a certified CDFI, we had to ensure that certain percentages of our lending occurred within specific geographic boundaries.
Those boundaries – set by the U.S. Treasury with the intention of providing financing to populations who have been historically underserved – have been increasingly shrinking over time. It reached the point where much of our region is no longer included.
It is crucially important that NMF be able to do both: support the businesses and entrepreneurs throughout the entire region, and also be able to extend financing to those populations that have, historically, had limited ability to access financing and expertise.
By establishing the NMCIC, we are able to employ a more purposeful approach in providing lending capital and business support to those populations that have been, historically, left out of the opportunities to access traditional financing opportunities.
The NMCIC does not change our commitment to community revitalization – it expands it.
The NMCIC will apply for certification as a CDFI itself. It will carry forward that targeted work while opportunities for business lending, resources, and expertise throughout all of Northwest Minnesota continue on through NMF.
