Thursday , 28 March 2024

Blog Archives

Building their own legacy

Transfer of wealth data show that more resources are available in our communities than we might have realized. And we know many of our communities are strapped for resources. How can we connect the two? Read More »

Rural wealth makes a quiet exit

By Heidi Marttila-Losure Read the obituaries in your local newspaper, and you’ll find stories of lives well-lived (and, perhaps more interestingly, sometimes not-so-well-lived). Most of the obits also have a clue as to whether that personal life story fits into a larger story that will significantly affect rural Dakota communities in coming decades. Here’s how to tell: In the list of ... Read More »

Beyond bake sales

A few years ago, when I was editing a women’s magazine published by The Tribune in Ames, Iowa, I covered a women’s philanthropy event at Iowa State University. The speaker that day was a woman named Kay Ballard, and she wasn’t afraid to get the audience a little riled. Read More »

Rural Wealth Makes a Quiet Exit

As children grow up and leave rural places, they often end up inheriting the wealth that was created in rural places and taking it to their new homes. Photo by Laura Melius

The process of assets changing hands as they go from one generation to the next is called the transfer of wealth, and it represents an incredible opportunity for rural Dakota communities if they can take advantage of it—or a significant threat to them if they cannot. Read More »

At Dakota Foundry, Employees Are Also the Bosses

TRYING TO SAVE their jobs were Doug Valsvig and Josh Bartos of Dakota Foundry, Inc. The company’s investors are also it’s employees — something that causes people to look for inefficiencies while on the job, thus saving the company money. Bartos is also one of nine shareholders in The Galley in Webster. Photo by Amanda Fanger

In 2004, corporate owners of Mereen-Johnson Machine Company announced plans to sell the Foundry Division in Webster. Josh Bartos soon discovered the company was more likely to close than sell, meaning laying off all of the company employees. Bartos, who is now the vice president of Dakota Foundry, and others didn’t want to let that happen. So they came up with a radical plan to save the company. From a kitchen table meeting, the idea of an employee-invested company was born. Read More »

’Kulm Is My Town’

By Sarah Gackle, Kulm Messenger   Rural Resident Puts Her Money Where Her Home Is   When Esther Lindgren saw that some of her friends needed to leave town for doctor care, she didn’t just offer a ride. She bought a van. Eighty-seven-year-old Lindgren of Kulm, N.D., has taken this approach to giving for years: She wants to do as ... Read More »

Scroll To Top