Rose Community Foundation works with individuals, families and corporations to support the causes they care about. With over 26 years of grantmaking and fund stewardship in the Greater Denver region, our staff has developed deep community knowledge, relationships and resources that empower our fundholders to maximize their philanthropic impact.

At Rose Community Foundation, we are always looking for ways to make giving more inclusive and to cultivate a culture of generosity throughout Greater Denver. We know our community is best served when more donors are able to give at the intersection of their interests, values and opportunities for local impact. Recently, we lowered the minimum gift to open a donor-advised fund at Rose Community Foundation to $10,000, making opening a fund a more accessible and available option.

Donor-advised funds are a flexible and popular giving option that allow donors to make charitable contributions to establish and grow their fund, receive the maximum allowable tax benefit in the year of the contribution, and then recommend grants to nonprofits of their choosing on a timeline of their choosing. They are a streamlined, powerful and personal way to give.

Checking in on donor-advised fundholder giving

Over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Foundation profiled donor-advised fundholders who were responding to emerging challenges in our community. We recently reached back out to some of those donors to ask about the changes they have made to their giving that they plan to sustain moving forward. Here is how they responded:

Stephanie Stein

“At the start of the pandemic, my family focused on helping organizations that were fulfilling basic needs, such as food insecurity, utility assistance and remote learning. As time has passed, while we are still helping provide support for immediate needs, we find ourselves also gravitating to organizations that are working toward systemic changes with the goal of longer lasting and community empowered growth.

Judy Altenberg, the Foundation’s director of donor funds and legacy giving, has been an invaluable asset to us. She is always available to share Rose’s institutional knowledge and to identify more information as our interests evolve.”

Read Stephanie’s Coming Together Through Giving profile

Irit Waldbaum

“In 2020, we modeled our giving off of the Foundation’s programmatic grantmaking to local nonprofits responding to the pandemic’s inequitable impacts. But because this is a global pandemic, our family is responding to those same issues on a larger scale by supporting national organizations such as Feeding America and World Central Kitchen. We’ve taken the foundational approach and the tools we received from Rose’s philanthropic services team to expand our giving in and beyond our community.”

Read Irit’s Coming Together Through Giving profile

Dr. William Silvers

“Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when Rose Community Foundation reached out regarding areas of need, their philanthropic services team gave me options to support various health care community agencies I had not previously supported. This outreach and background gave me the incentive I needed to enlarge my palate of contributions.

The philanthropic services team gives me guidance in not only continuing to give to projects I personally am committed to, but introducing me to other programs I would not otherwise be tuned into but can be supportive of.”

Read Dr. Silvers’ Coming Together Through Giving profile

To learn more about giving options or to open a personal or corporate donor-advised fund, please contact Judy Altenberg, the Foundation’s director of donor funds and legacy giving.