The Community Vitality Project operates with funding from the Northwest Area Foundation, and in collaboration with the University of Washington’s West Coast Poverty Center.

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The mission of the Northwest Area Foundation is to support efforts by the people, organizations and communities of their eight-state region to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable prosperity. The eight-state region consists of: Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

Although the eight states are contiguous, history, more than bonds of population or geography, bring them together into the Northwest Area Foundation’s service area. These eight states were 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.

The Foundation operated as a traditional grant-maker its first 50 years. In the late 1990’s, it spent over a year reviewing operations and probing key stakeholders to explore how it might achieve greater impact. In 1998, the president and board of directors decided to focus on a single mission – reducing poverty long term. They also decided to work directly with communities by providing financial resources and technical assistance.

The Foundation’s board of directors reconfirmed its commitment to the focused mission in late 2007, and it determined to take a next step in the application of foundation assets for increased impact. Based on lessons learned and evaluation of programs, as well as conversations with key stakeholders, going forward the Foundation would strive to realize its mission by supporting the work of proven or promising organizations across its region.

The Northwest Area Foundation sponsors the Community Vitality Project to help understand poverty and economic trends in its region and to help identify critical policy actions that could help reduce poverty through analysis of levers arising from interrelationship among economic, social, cultural, and environmental conditions.

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The West Coast Poverty Center at the University of Washington (UW) serves as a hub for research, education, and policy analysis leading to greater understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty and effective approaches to reducing it in the west coast states. Funded in October of 2005, the Center is the newest of three regional poverty centers funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Education (OASPE). The other regional centers are the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky and the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin. OASPE also sponsors the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan.

A collaborative venture of the UW School of Social Work, the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, and the College of Arts and Sciences, the West Coast Poverty Center creates new opportunities for cross-disciplinary exchanges and collaboration among poverty researchers and fosters a network of poverty scholars in the west coast region. At UW, the Center mentors the next generation of poverty scholars and practitioners through faculty awards, research assistantships and dissertation fellowships for graduate students, and graduate and undergraduate programs of study. Beyond the university, the Poverty Center works to bring poverty-relevant knowledge to policymakers and practitioners through outreach, communications, and events.

An interdisciplinary group of faculty affiliates of the Poverty Center hold teaching appointments at the University of Washington. The Center is governed by a group of senior faculty affiliates at UW who constitute an executive committee and an external advisory board.

The West Coast Poverty Center brings an important west coast perspective to poverty studies. A key theme in their current work is “Old Assumptions, New Realities: Economic Security for Working Families in the 21st Century,” which has both been the unifying theme behind our ongoing academic seminar series and the 2008 conference.

The collaborative research between the Community Vitality Project and the West Coast Poverty Center involves looking at the geography of poverty, poverty concentration, and urban-rural variation within three Western states - Washington, Oregon, and California.