West Central Initiative gives annual update to Becker County Board

Detroit Lakes, Minn. (KDLM) – Members of West Central Initiative, the nonprofit community foundation that serves a nine-county area in west-central Minnesota, presented their annual report to members of the Becker County Board last week.

During the meeting, Rebecca Lynn Peterson, director of development for the organization, said, since January 2022, West Central Initiative has made more than $1.2 million in grants and loans available to different entities throughout Becker County.

“Since January of 2022, we’ve made over $1.2 million of grants and loans in Becker County,” said Peterson. “Many of those are through your DL Community Fund and other community funds, like the Becker County Historical Society having a fund with us along with some other donor-advised funds … and, we’re pretty proud about this, some small grants to fire departments in (Becker County).”

She also highlighted a new program the nonprofit is spearheading, aimed at recruiting more candidates to run for local elected office at all levels government, called: The Rural Democracy Project.

“This is by no means to encourage our local officials to not to run for office, but to encourage new candidates to think about running for office,” she said. “We realized, in our nine-county region with school boards, city councils, and county commissions, we need a plethora of people to run for office, way greater than the metropolitan areas. And so, we got funding from the McKnight Foundation to fund our Rural Democracy project.”

The program will consist of two, weekend-long public leadership training courses on Sept. 29-30 and October 6-7 for anyone interested in learning more about serving in local government.

Also, the nonprofit will be holding a longer 6-month public leadership program and implementing a rural democracy network with the mayors of all 82 communities within West Central Initiatives area of operations.

According to the nonprofit, since 1986, West Central Initiative has provided more than $8.9 million in grants and funding to Becker County.

That funding has led to more than $7 million in increased assets for Becker County and $9.1 million in extended loans and grants through the organization’s donor and federal relief funds.

Peterson also mentioned they are currently seeking input for the organization’s climate action plan and encouraged the Becker County Board and other entities to submit their comments and recommendations to make their plan stronger.

For more information on the West Central Initiative’s grant and loan programs, or to submit comments to their climate action plan, visit their website at: wcif.org.