Denver, CO – Rose Community Foundation announced $2,195,000 in grants to 46 organizations leveraging policy and advocacy efforts to advance inclusive, engaged and equitable Greater Denver communities. Funding was directed to a diverse slate of programs and projects that are working to improve outcomes for populations furthest from opportunity.
“As a community foundation, we are uniquely situated to weigh in on systems and policies that impact our region, whether as a thought leader, convener or funder,” said Rose Community Foundation President and CEO Lindy Eichenbaum Lent. “This policy and advocacy grant slate represents an exciting opportunity for us to lift up the dynamic work of community-oriented nonprofits that are advocating for short- and long-term policy changes to advance equity and justice in our region, foster an inclusive and engaged Greater Denver, and unlock resources to strengthen our community.”
The investments aim to empower historically under-resourced communities to ensure they are included in recovery efforts, emerge from the pandemic stronger, and cultivate additional opportunities to thrive. Grant recipients include grassroots and grasstops organizations whose efforts range from advancing legislation at the state and local level, to overseeing effective and equitable implementation of recently passed laws or ballot initiatives, to building advocacy, civic engagement and policy capacity for underserved communities. Community-focused efforts to elevate community voice and advance inclusion and equity in the nonpartisan redistricting process also received funding.
The Foundation prioritized funding for organizations serving populations that have been most impacted by the pandemic and/or have been historically marginalized by unjust systems, including people of color, immigrants and refugees, the LGBTQ+ community, individuals with disabilities, low-wage workers, individuals involved with the justice system, and women. Priority was also given to groups that represent and are proximate to the communities they serve, with BIPOC-led organizations representing 52 percent of the grant recipients.
In an effort to advance inclusive grantmaking practices and respond to the emerging needs of our diverse community, the grant slate also includes many organizations and ideas that are new to the Foundation. Twenty percent of organizations are first-time Rose Community Foundation grant recipients, and grantees work across pathways that include both longstanding focus areas, such as health, early childhood, P-20 education, fiscal reform and workforce development, as well as issues that are newer to the Foundation but align with our mission and strategic objectives, such as civic engagement, housing, criminal justice reform and transit.
Details about the 46 grant recipients and their work are outlined below.
To help preserve affordable housing and increase renters’ rights.
To advance justice in the criminal legal system.
African Leadership Group via Colorado Nonprofit Development Center
To help create tools for African-immigrant families to advocate for fair and equitable funding, quality school options, and improved access to workforce pathways.
be well Health and Wellness Initiative via The Foundation for Sustainable Urban Communities
To help increase BIPOC community members’ knowledge and capacity to serve on local and statewide boards, committees and commissions that impact the social determinants of health.
To develop budget, public investment and tax narratives from an economic mobility and equity perspective and advance a public education initiative.
Center for African American Health
To help create a leadership training curriculum aimed at empowering community leaders to build their capacity to advocate for issues related to health equity for Black and African American communities.
To advance policies designed to create affordable, quality health coverage options that include all Colorado immigrants, regardless of documentation.
To advance efforts to implement various ECE-focused bills passed during the 2021 legislative session.
Colorado Asian Culture and Education Network
To elevate the voices of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the redistricting process.
Colorado Center on Law and Policy
To support eviction prevention and housing issues, unemployment services, and efforts to equitably distribute federal stimulus dollars.
To support and monitor implementation of policies that support child and family wellbeing and remove barriers for children and families who face the most obstacles.
Colorado Common Cause Education Fund
To train and organize community members and partner with grassroots organizations across Colorado to ensure that underrepresented communities have a voice in the redistricting process.
Colorado Consumer Health Initiative
To advocate for effective and equitable implementation of recently passed, consumer-focused statewide health policies.
Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition
To advocate for social justice for people with all types of disabilities.
Colorado Education Initiative (CEI)
To maximize funding and policies to enable equitable student access to opportunities and to develop accountability policies that incorporate local community priorities and promote timely and actionable data.
Colorado Education Organizing Funders Collaborative via Rose Community Foundation
To create a sustainable resource for grassroots education organizing in Greater Denver and to strengthen funder collaboration regarding grassroots advocacy investments.
To advocate for Colorado’s economic recovery efforts to center BIPOC, immigrant and low-income communities, and for state and federal investments and fiscal reform efforts to advance a more inclusive economy.
Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC)
To support access to affordable health care, pandemic relief for immigrants, ICE reform efforts and labor rights for immigrant workers.
To support worker roundtables in the West Colfax area aimed at addressing essential worker needs regarding housing and development.
Colorado Latino Leadership, Advocacy and Research Organization (CLLARO)
To build the capacity of Colorado Latinos to advocate for equity and increased representation through redistricting maps that prioritize Latino communities of interest.
Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR)
To support implementation of the Reproductive Health Care Program, with a focus on ensuring reproductive health care coverage expansion for immigrants regardless of immigration status.
Colorado People’s Alliance
To advocate for economic justice, with a focus on fighting for worker rights, increased wages, tax fairness and corporate accountability.
Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition
To advocate for families’ and children’s rights to affordable child care, equitable educational opportunities, health care and immigration.
Colorado Trustee Network via Colorado Education Initiative
To begin developing the Colorado Trustee Network, a start-up organization working to promote equitable outcomes for post-secondary students by bringing together higher education trustees to learn together, discuss issues facing higher education, and find ways to use their collective voice to advocate for students.
Colorado Youth Congress via The HadaNõu Collective
To support high school leaders’ advocacy at the school-district level, including a mental health campaign and a racial justice campaign.
Denver Street Partnership via Bicycle Colorado
To increase public funding for transit service and support walking, biking and rolling infrastructure.
Early Care & Education Workforce Policy Coalition via The Women’s Foundation of Colorado
To advocate for a strengthened ECE workforce in Colorado and monitor state policy and federal stimulus funds to determine impact on the ECE workforce.
To support the equitable design and implementation of Colorado’s new universal preschool program.
Ednium: The Alumni Collective via Rose Community Foundation
To help Denver Public Schools alumni ensure successful implementation of the Financial Literacy and Cultural Competency components of DPS’ revised graduation requirements.
To support advocacy regarding emergency housing relief and equitable recovery and resiliency measures at the state and local level.
To support engagement in the 2022 legislative session, with a focus on increasing access to affordable housing, increasing access to affordable health care, ensuring small-business pandemic relief and advancing tax reform to level the playing field for small businesses.
To engage Latinx communities in Great Education Colorado’s work to help develop, pass and implement fiscal reform to ensure the adequate and equitable public-school funding necessary for every student – especially those furthest from opportunity – to recover and thrive.
To partner with state offices to identify gaps in state systems, improve crisis response and clarity regarding mental health patients’ rights, and allocate COVID-relief funding for mental health care and access to housing, supports and services.
Mi Familia Vota Education Fund
To educate, mobilize and empower Latinos across Colorado to advocate for proportional representation in the redistricting process.
Mile High Health Alliance via Colorado Nonprofit Development Center
To support the sustainability, effectiveness and capacity of medical-legal partnerships in Denver.
To affect policy changes that reform or eliminate restitution fees impacting youth in Colorado.
National Black Child Development Institute – Denver Affiliate
To partner with various advocacy coalitions to center racial equity in early childhood education.
To advocate for various federal and state policies that advance equity for LGBTQ Coloradans and their families, and oppose anti-LGBTQ legislation as it emerges.
Padres y Jóvenes Unidos
To support implementation of the 2020 Denver Public Schools School Board resolution to reduce law enforcement presence in schools and to conduct research and advocacy focused on shifting resources and practices from traditional policing toward evidence-based restorative justice efforts.
Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains
To test the effectiveness of race-class narrative messaging on increasing public support for advancing equitable health-care access.
To empower low-income immigrant, refugee and BIPOC students and families in Aurora Public Schools to advocate for educational equity.
Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning
To ease licensure pathways for internationally trained physicians by advancing a policy change that would no longer require three years of residency for internationally trained medical graduates (compared to one year for U.S. medical graduates).
The Task Force to Reimagine Policing & Public Safety via The Center for Trauma and Resilience
To support the Task Force’s collaboration with public agencies to refine and implement its set of recommendations to advance public safety efforts that prevent, reduce and heal harm.
To advance local and statewide policy efforts around affordable housing and homelessness and criminal justice reform.
To develop the leadership and civic engagement of BIPOC and low-income people in Adams County, with the goal of advancing policies that increase the rights of renters and build a more equitable and racially just Colorado tax code.
Young Aspiring Americans for Social and Political Activism (YAASPA)
To support youth participatory action research around concurrent enrollment, public health and public safety in schools, as well as follow-up actions to monitor, research and push for equity-focused policy changes in local school districts.
About Rose Community Foundation
Rose Community Foundation strives to advance inclusive, engaged and equitable Greater Denver communities through values-driven philanthropy. The Foundation envisions a thriving region strengthened by its diversity and generosity, and it utilizes the varied tools at its disposal – grantmaking, advocacy and philanthropic services – to advance this aspiration. Since its founding in 1995, the Foundation has granted more than $331 million to nearly 2,000 organizations and initiatives, including $55 million in facilitated grantmaking from donor-advised funds. The Foundation has also supported nearly 70 nonprofit organizations in creating and growing endowments to sustain their vital work into the future, currently stewarding $49 million in endowed assets. The Foundation has $330 million in total assets under management, with annual grantmaking of nearly $25 million.