Northwest Area Foundation Announces $5.3 Million in Second-Quarter Grants
Northwest Area Foundation Announces $5.3 Million in Second-Quarter Grants
The St. Paul-based Northwest Area Foundation has announced second-quarter grants totaling $5.3 million to nonprofit organizations working to build assets and wealth among low-income families in an eight-state region.
Grants from the foundation will support efforts to strengthen and develop grassroots leadership, improve public policies, and bolster community organizing, advocacy, policy coalitions, and analysis of tax and budget policies. Grant recipients include the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland, Oregon, which was awarded $500,000 over two years to create a community development financial institution that supports businesses and other activities; the Minneapolis-based Headwaters Foundation for Justice, which received $350,000 over two years for the Twin Cities African American Leadership Forum and to support other regional forums; and Opportunity Link, in Havre, Montana, which was awarded $268,000 over eighteen months to use social entrepreneurship principles to address economic inequities in rural and Native American reservation communities.
The foundation also awarded $225,000 to the Nature Conservancy in support of the Northwest Sustainable Forestry Workforce Project, which aims to address unemployment and poverty in the region through the creation of living-wage jobs that benefit Klamath and Yakama tribal members.
"Our goal is to expand economic access to low-income families so they have a path to move from poverty to prosperity," said Northwest Area Foundation president and CEO Kevin Walker. "The grant to the Nature Conservancy is a resourceful way of creating job opportunities while advancing environmental stewardship."
For a complete list of second-quarter grant recipients, visit the Northwest Area Foundation Web site.
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