“Elk City, Idaho can teach all of us about enduring a severe economic downturn and losing jobs. It is a town where people have come together as a community to transform a more traditional forest resourced-based economy to one that is sustainable,” says Nancy Collins-Warner, board member and Chair of the Grants Committee at Inland Northwest Community Foundation (INWCF). In Fall 2007, she had the opportunity to visit Framing Our Community (FOC), the grassroots nonprofit nestled within two million acres of the Nez Perce National Forest. Eleven community members founded this organization in 1999 to provide economic opportunities for citizens to thrive.

Thriving is indeed what they are doing.

Collins-Warner’s impressions of FOC describe best what INWCF hopes to do throughout the region.

The nonprofit is at the heart of the renaissance for this beautiful town of approximately 400 people. Joyce Dearstyne, Executive Director of FOC, does not take this task lightly. “Our responsibility is to help train and educate the next generation.”

With her staff of “three and a smidge,” FOC does this so that people in the region can continue to raise families, live and retire in this peaceful place.

With a recent $25,000 grant from INWCF, FOC is purchasing more land to build a Public Log Sort Yard Excavation and Equipment Project close to private and federal lands.

The public sort yard will reduce log transportation costs, identify the best value and use of woody biomass materials and facilitate connections to other markets. FOC is excited about sharing its model with others and remains committed to the collaborative effort.

Collins-Warner shares the enthusiasm as well: “The leadership of FOC has taken the community’s strengths and clear preferences about its future and run with them, with remarkable success, matching local initiative and vision with ‘outside’ partnering organizations, foundations and visionaries.”

At INWCF, we are proud to support such innovation.

Framing our Community