Our History
Although the eight states in our service region are contiguous, history, more than bonds of population or geography, brings them together into the Northwest Area Foundation’s service area. These states were once served by the Great Northern Railway, founded by James J. Hill. In 1934, James J. Hill’s son Louis W. Hill established the Northwest Area Foundation “for charitable, educational and scientific purposes which contribute to the public welfare” – to promote economic revitalization and improve the standard of living for the region's most vulnerable citizens.
During the first 50 years, we operated as a traditional grantmaker, awarding two- to three-year grants in up to 39 categories ranging from the arts to medical research to agriculture to poverty reduction.
In 1997, we initiated an extensive review of our eight-state service area and operations. We recognized that a disproportionate part of our region includes communities facing persistent and devastating poverty, even though our region encompasses some of the nation’s wealthiest and fastest growing cities. As a result, in late 1998, we embarked on a bold experiment – to focus on a single, poverty-reduction mission, and to do so in a way that allocated a significant portion of our resources directly to communities, often through newly created organizations.
As planned, after several years, the Foundation evaluated this approach and determined that we could achieve greater impact if all our grantmaking supported the work of proven or promising organizations. These organizations either have a demonstrated track record or are poised to do innovative or cutting-edge work moving people out of poverty and toward sustainable prosperity.
The programs and policies of the Foundation continue to evolve, but the original vision and wisdom – that a dream is no stronger than the people whom it inspires and their capabilities, and that a single dollar can have the purchasing power of many more – continue to counsel and invigorate present board and staff deliberations with a sense of how to find one’s direction through the bewildering maze of options for change.
In the past decade, poverty rates within the Foundation’s eight-state region increased to 1989 levels, with 2.2 million people today living at or below the federal poverty threshold.* That figure nearly triples to 6.2 million when considering those who live at 200 percent of the federal line. Poverty is highest among the young, Native Americans, African Americans and Latinos.
* In 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau federal poverty threshold was $21,756 for a family of four.
