Burgess Group | Compass: Supporting Food Security and Selling the Coloradan Dream

Burgess Group | Compass is a Best for Colorado company and real estate group with 25 years of experience selling high end and luxury properties in Colorado’s most sophisticated markets. Their services include building, rehab and professional real estate services.

Along their exceptional success record and marketing expertise, Burgess Group | Compass takes corporate social responsibility seriously, regularly donating to 14+ charities and launching a project to support Coloradans experiencing food insecurity.

We spoke with Founder Catherine Burgess about Burgess Group’s commitment to their clients, communities and doing business better.

Best for Colorado: Tell us more about your company in general. What do you do? What is your mission? What makes you different?

Catherine Burgess: Burgess Group | Compass has over 25 years of experience, including building, rehab and professional real estate services. We have an exceptional success record selling hundreds of properties in some of Colorado’s most sophisticated markets, including Boulder, Boulder County and Denver.

As one of the top-ranking Boulder County real estate groups, we pride ourselves on providing our clients with concierge-level service, deep contract savvy and expert negotiating skills. Also, we are real estate data nerds! Every week, we analyze what happened last week in our local markets.

We scrutinize national trends and interpret their impact on our local markets. Our clients (and the agent community) thank us regularly for our weekly videos and blogs that explain how to be successful in our local real estate market. We have always taken corporate social responsibility very seriously.

Every year, we donate more than $150 for every property sold to 14+ charities, including Colorado Music Festival and Center for Music Arts, Impact on Education and Museum of Boulder. We recently launched the Food Security Project, too!

B4CO: How did your company first hear about Best for Colorado, and why did you decide to join?

CB: We first heard about Best for Colorado via a ColoradoBiz newsletter. We wanted to join the many highlighted businesses that create a wonderful state to do business. We also wanted to highlight our new project, The Food Security Project, to inspire people to take steps to fight food insecurity.

B4CO: What is a challenging aspect of your work?

CB: The perpetual challenge in this market is tight inventory. This topic is getting enormous national attention right now, but locally it has been a seller’s market since 2011 in most of the market, and occasionally since 2014 within the luxury market. Deeply understanding the markets and the contract, plus preparing clients to engage so that they can be competitive, is the secret sauce that helps us serve more than 100 clients yearly to sell or buy their piece of the Colorado dream.

B4CO: What is an achievement your company is proud of?

CB: In 2020 food security hit its lowest rate in 20 years, with over half a million Coloradans expected to experience food insecurity in 2021. We recently launched The Food Security Project, using our listing of the historic 80-acre McKenzie Farm in Boulder, to grow thousands of pounds of produce for Boulder and Broomfield counties.

We provided a donation to nonprofit Community Food Share, a food bank serving Boulder and Broomfield counties. The donation supported Community Food Share in hiring a farmer, Katie Ketchum, to work the land that the charitable McKenzie family is donating. Community Food Share is also contributing financially to this project, as well as managing the farmer and distributing produce.

Boulder-based public benefit corporation Boundless Landscapes, which advises on, builds and plants micro-farms, is sharing their valuable farm tools, while nonprofit Earth’s Table, an organization that works to eliminate hunger by maintaining seven garden sites, is mentoring Katie, our farmer.

We encourage people everywhere to do what they can to create food security by growing valuable fruits and veggies in their own pandemic victory gardens. Whether you grow a container garden, plant a small strip of land or turn your yard into a full micro-farm, you can donate your surplus produce to a local community food bank like Community Food Share. If gardening is not your bag, consider making a monetary donation to your local food bank and/or volunteer for organizations like Community Food Share and Earth’s Table.

B4CO: Why would you recommend joining Best for Colorado to other companies?

CB: It can be hard to do publicity for your own company, and this is a great way to get the word out about your own business!

Best for Colorado is a program of The Alliance Center. It allows Colorado companies to measure and improve their social and environmental impact, regardless of where they are on their corporate social responsibility journey. Best for Colorado offers programming and tools for all Colorado companies, including B Corps, to improve their practices and connect participating companies with local resources, education and support.