Invest Northwest

Over ten years ago when impact investing was still a new concept for most people, Northwest Area Foundation created its first mission investment fund Invest Northwest. It quickly attracted other investors, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, to provide private equity capital to companies in eight states in the American Northwest. This report, made by Pacific Community Ventures, is the culmination of ten years of work and presents total results and key lessons from the project. Since its inception, the fund was invested in twenty companies, five of them are located in rural communities. These investments resulted in the creation of 1,700 jobs with wages and benefits above most in the region. Financially, NWAF expects the fund to break even – not a bad start for an early impact investor.