Growth Initiative Fund Supports Business Growth

The GFMEDC-managed Growth Initiative Fund (GIF) is one of our many vital business support tools. This revolving loan fund primarily acts as a community buy-down partner with the Bank of North Dakota on the PACE and Flex PACE loans. The buy-down programs help unlock additional matching state grant funding to provide low-interest financing for primary sector companies, encouraging and enabling significant capital investments into their business.

The GIF is an $8.4+ million revolving loan fund formed in 1993 by Fargo, West Fargo and Cass County and is administered by the GFMEDC staff.

A great benefit of this revolving fund structure and the enabling of matching state grant funds for the companies is that these funds contributed to the GIF have been used many times over, generating almost $20 million in GIF loan activity, which has also helped provide access to over $33 million in matching state grant funds.

2023

In 2023, the fund approved 11 loans totaling $1,157,000 with primary-sector companies investing more than $29.3 million in capital investment, adding 101 jobs and 140,000 new square feet.

The GIF’s interest buy-down partner participation with Bank of North Dakota provided access of up to $2.36 million in matching grant funds.

The GIF’s interest buy-down partner participation with Bank of North Dakota provided access of up to $1.5 million in matching grant funds.

Lifetime of the Growth Initiative Fund

The all-time loan activity and economic impact can be seen below from the 289 loans to date.

The GIF is governed by seven board directors appointed by GFMEDC, Cass County, City of Fargo and City of West Fargo. The GIF, funded mainly in the late 1990’s to early 2000’s from contributions by the three public entities (totaling $7.3 million), was created as a revolving loan fund.

However, due to a trend of an increase in both the number of loans and size of loans, the current fund amount appears to no longer be large enough to adequately “revolve” and consistently maintain available funds for new loans. A key priority for GFMEDC is the pursuit of additional funding assets for the GIF to truly remain a revolving fund.

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