 Welcome to INSIGHT, produced in partnership with Lakeland Public Television, serving North Central Minnesota. Today we are chatting with Nancy Vesquetchol of the Northwest Minnesota Foundation. Nancy has generously agreed to share some of her experience with us. I'd like to thank you, Nancy, for joining us today. Thank you. So talk about the work of the foundation serving such a geographically dispersed area and providing for so many different needs. Your programs are quite diverse and quite fascinating. So talk first about the structure of the work that you actually do for Northwest Minnesota. Well, that's a very interesting question. You know, it's one of the things we say at our office, if there's cars in the parking lot, we're not doing our job. We serve over 14,400 square miles and we serve it, a lot of it we serve face to face, getting out and meeting with people, finding out the needs that they have and trying to develop programming that meets those needs. And we really break it down into a couple of kind of big buckets, if you will. Some is the work that we do directly, the programs that we serve, and then work that we do by supporting others, by supporting other non-profits in the region, by supporting communities in the work that they do within their communities. So we're very unique. We're one of the Minnesota of only six initiative foundations in Minnesota, nothing like us in the rest of the country. We have lending programs. We're one of very few that actually have IRS designation of lending as a charitable purpose. So we have hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that go out in loans to businesses throughout the region, through a multitude of different lending programs, SBA, small lending programs. What people know as microloans in other countries of $100 or a few $100 in Africa or Asia, here it takes $35,000 to $50,000 to be a microloan, a different scale, but we do have those for starting entrepreneurs, to gap lending programs where we're working with banks or other lenders to meet the needs where a loan just won't come together because there is that gap to make that deal actually work. So a big loan that needs to be syndicated and a number of lenders come together to make that loan work. So we have lending that occurs throughout the 12 counties of Northwest Minnesota. Every day our lenders are out in the region pulling these loans together and working with communities to make these deals happen. So you have a number of different competencies all in the organization. So let's take these areas one at a time. Let's start off with the first area that you mentioned, the programs that you administered. Describe those programs. So I talked about the lending a bit. We do run the lending programs. And one thing I would add to that, you talked about the hard-nosed lending. We do the hard-nosed lending, but in addition to that, we offer technical assistance, which is a very important part of that. These are advisory services. Advisory services. We actually house a small business development center for the region. So you can connect with business advisors at no cost. We've worked with trainings related to Parent Aware, which is a big program in Minnesota for upping the quality of child care that's provided through the region or through the state and ties into programs on the state level for scholarship dollars that are available. Our coalitions have worked with providing different trainings for child care providers so that they can keep up the hours that they need for their certifications. We've also provided facilitation in communities who are looking at what their child care needs are. So do they need to build a center? Do they need to bring more home-based child care into their mix? Right now, we're about a thousand spots of child care short within the region. And what's the mix to meet that? So we work with resources to facilitate finding that mix and those resources for child care. How many grants, or what is the total dollar value of grants that you generally make annually? Our discretionary grants run from about 400 to 500,000 a year. And then our grants through our component and community funds, they can range up into the millions. And oftentimes we're able to pair grants so we're able to identify areas that are of particular need and then go back to our funds and say, this is something that looks like it would be of interest to you and make them aware of things that are available that they could support. And we really look at ourselves very much as being matchmakers. So oftentimes this will occur, especially in areas like arts and things that support youth and children. Many of our funds and our donor advice funds specifically have very specific interests in those areas, so we're able to direct opportunities to them in those areas. In terms of the third area, which is the lending area, how does that function? If you are a lender of a sort of last resort for people who need that type of help, you are actually the person or the group that people come to after they've exhausted other options. So how does that work? How do you protect the asset base that you lend out with the expectation that you'll receive at least a preponderance of those funds back and can rotate them back into the community later on for another tranche of lending? It would seem like that would be the case, but in reality, our losses are not particularly higher than what a bank might see. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that we are very diligent in our loan reviews and we do bring other resources to our loans. Oftentimes banks bring us loans because they know that we will make the overall quality of the loan better. So they will come to us and say, this loan has need and we would like you to come into this loan, not because it's necessarily a bad loan, but there is a weakness that we think through the resources you bring, it will definitely strengthen the overall loan because you will bring additional technical resources to it. Because we have a more patient attitude and we have more technical resources, basically we are in it for a different reason. So an example might be someone who a bank feels is a good credit risk provided they receive additional counseling to help them achieve their vision that necessitates the loan in the first place. The bank is not necessarily a capacity building organization, they are in the business of loaning money and receiving a profit from that loan. So they are coming to you and they are saying, we would do this, except this person needs additional help. We can't provide it. Would you be interested in providing it? And that's where you get involved. That is exactly right. And that's something that works so well and where we have such a good relationship and such a good opportunity to serve. So we're not in competition with our local banks. It's a very symbiotic relationship, if you will, because they know exactly where our sweet spot is to serve and how they can bring business to us that ultimately serves their need. Plus, the strength here for the community is that as you help your clients to evolve their own expertise, the next time that client might need a loan, they may be in a different circumstance, a different place with different expertise. They can go back to the bank and the bank could perhaps at that point make the loan without the need of those additional services. So you're creating a market for the banks for the future by providing this training that only experience can afford. That's absolutely right. In fact, the best success story is when someone comes in for a small SBA loan and then they move up to the GAP loan program and then ultimately they outgrow us and they go to the bank and they don't need us anymore. And then ultimately they become a donor back because they have amassed wealth. That's the perfect circle and that's the circle we like to see. What kind of people come to you for loans and for what type of purposes? We have one area that we do always keep a focus on and that is what we call essential services. Our small towns are very important within the region and we want to make sure that we always keep our eye on having that hardware store or that grocery store or gas station or those things that are so absolutely critical to the population of those towns. And so on the retail side, those are where we do focus some of our energies as well. Nancy Fisketchel, thank you so much for sharing the work of the Northwest Minnesota Foundation and thank you so much for your insights.