2025-2026 Impact Report
Watershed
A watershed is a living landscape—one where water collects in a common basin then flows on through a network of rivers, lakes, and streams, adjusting to the contours and conditions along the way.
The Northland Foundation works much the same way. We serve as a hub, gathering resources—knowledge, partners, capital—that are distributed into northeast Minnesota.
Explore what that looked like in 2025–2026: the paths we took, and the programs and the people who made it happen.
A Letter from Our President
Dear Friends,
For 40 years now, the Northland Foundation has been gathering resources and helping direct them outward. Grantees, partner organizations, business borrowers, and others take those resources and turn them into opportunities across our rural region.
This past year asked us to be both responsive and proactive (see annual Highlights) in this work. We acted on existing needs with grantmaking, small business lending and consulting, child care supports, and youth and intergenerational programs. We also looked deeper and longer-term.
Thriving Rural Communities – newly renamed Moving Forward Together – is part of that long-term strategy.
Nearly two years ago, I joined an Aspen Institute leadership cohort and learned of their Thrive Rural Framework, a roadmap to building rural prosperity. It inspired me and our Board of Trustees to explore how to apply this tool in northeast Minnesota.
We began by partnering with Northspan to research our region’s demographic and economic trends, real strengths, and biggest barriers. The final report paints a clear, data-driven picture of where northeast Minnesota sits today and outlines seven key areas for action.
In a series of 16 community meetings, we shared these results and invited feedback. Two challenges were voted as first priorities: housing and investing in the next generation of leadership.
Bringing us together as a region to tackle these issues is exciting, uncertain, intimidating, and promising all at once. It will take all of us to get there.
Northland Foundation and Northspan may be gathering points for research and resources, but cities and counties, housing authorities, nonprofits, businesses, and Tribal partners must carry things forward.
Ideas and resources are beginning to converge. Action lies ahead. Let’s keep moving!
Warmly,
Tony Sertich
President & CEO, Northland Foundation
President/CEO
