The Great Fall Development Authority, Inc. (GFDA) is a regional public/private EDO which focuses its efforts on the 13-county Great Falls Montana trade area, also known as Montana’s Golden Triangle. Our region includes the Great Falls Montana MSA (Cascade County) and a vast rural/tribal region that extends over 44,000 square miles.
Our economic development organization works on business attraction, business retention/expansion, business start-ups, and a wide range of efforts to make our region more competitive in attracting private investment and retaining/attracting talent. We are involved in downtown revitalization, brownfield redevelopment, workforce, infrastructure, and housing, amongst other things. We are a certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that provides gap and bridge financing to businesses, start-up entrepreneurs, real estate developers, and non-profits.
We host a Small Business Development Center (SBDC), a Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC), and a Montana Food & Ag Development Center. We provide office space for a team member of the Montana Manufacturing Extension Center. We have an affiliate SBA-certified Community Development Corporation, High Plains Financial, that we created to offer SBA 504 loans statewide. We are the developer of the Great Falls AgriTech Park, a BNSF-certified premier rail industrial park. Our newest initiative is talent attraction which we launched in January 2020.
We are a private sector driven organization supported by over 120 local businesses and community organizations. We are an entrepreneurial organization that generates over 86% of our revenue. We are formed as a Montana non-profit corporation with 501(c)3 status from the IRS. We are a 509(c)(2). Our Computation of Public Support Percentage for our most recent fiscal year was 99.6%.
GFDA was the first economic development organization in the Rocky Mountain West to earn accreditation from the International Economic Development Council. We have proudly displayed Guidestar’s Platinum Seal of Transparency since 2020.
The Great Falls Development Authority, Inc. and High Plains Financial, Inc. are proud to be Equal Opportunity Employers and Equal Opportunity Lenders!
