Circles USA began in Ames, Iowa, as the Move the Mountain Leadership Center, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to find long-term solutions for reducing poverty.
During the 1990s, Move the Mountain developed and researched a community-led support system, and by 2001, it was obvious that the effort was working—families were moving out of poverty for good. The term Circles was coined to represent the relational approach of getting people off of welfare and into jobs through peer support from middle-income volunteers. In 2004, Iowa State University confirmed the success of Circles, having studied 57 participants who got off welfare after 10 months, despite being on welfare for an average of four years.