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Tag: Colorado nonprofits

Top Company 2022: Nonprofits

The outpouring of applications for this year’s Top Company awards is a testament to the resilience and adaptability of enterprises that do business in the state. Applications for the 35th annual awards numbered in the hundreds, and it was particularly encouraging to see so many companies rebounding from two years of COVID restrictions, with most posting revenue and employee gains approaching—and in some cases, exceeding—pre-pandemic numbers.

This year’s Top Company winners and finalists represent 13 industry categories, plus a startup category for companies in business less than four years. Entrants were judged on three criteria: outstanding achievement, financial performance and community involvement. The judging panel was made up of ColoradoBiz magazine’s editorial board and two representatives from the business community.

 

WINNER — We Don’t Waste

Denver

What began as a one-man operation run out of founder Arlan Preblud’s station wagon has evolved into an 11,570-square-foot Food Recovery and Distribution center operated by 19 full-time employees. We Don’t Waste looks to keep perishable food out of landfills in order to distribute it to underserved and food-insecure communities of the Denver area.  

We Don’t Waste has grown to become the largest food recovery-focused organization in Colorado. As of this year, it has recovered and distributed more than 165 million servings of quality food, equal to more than 61 million meals, to food-insecure community members while also diverting roughly 41 million pounds of food from landfills since 2009.  

Part of We Don’t Waste’s success has been due to the company’s fundraising efforts to keep operations excelling, even amid the pandemic. As in-person volunteers waned during COVID-19, the nonprofit turned its focus to available grants. We Don’t Waste won the Bank of America Neighborhood Builders grant, amounting to $200,000 over two years, and the Front Range Waste Division grant. Both helped to support the nonprofit during a crucial time.   

Finalist — Common Sense Institute

Greenwood Village 

The Common Sense Institute has one clear goal: to educate Coloradans on policies, initiatives and proposed laws that will impact their lives. Founded in 2010, originally under the name Common Sense Policy Roundtable, CSI has become a juggernaut of information Coloradans can rely on to develop informed views on new policies, proposals and laws. Understanding its sphere of influence, CSI doesn’t just help educate the people of Colorado, it provides information to aid those in positions of power as well. In 2021, CSI hosted the inaugural Free Enterprise Summit, an event that featured the release of the “Colorado Free Enterprise Report” and “The Rankings Book: 2022 Edition,” which has served as a road map for policymakers across the state. 

Nonpartisanship is one of the organization’s guiding principles. “We believe it is critical to work across the aisles on positive solutions to address Colorado’s biggest challenges,” says CSI Director of Communications Cinamon Watson. “All research is conducted from this lens, and the company culture is based on it — collaborative, diverse, open.” 

The nonprofit has shown no signs of slowing down. Among all Colorado think tanks, CSI measured in at 59.5% of the total mentioned volume of online discussions and mentions. As of June this year, CSI had garnered more than 300 media mentions, which puts CSI well on its way to surpassing its number of 346 for 2021.  

FINALIST — Youth on Record

Denver

Youth on Record works with more than 3,000 young people annually to provide enhanced art- and music-centric programs to some of Denver’s most under-resourced communities.  

“YOR’s education, music and community programs are designed to help young people become more free, more rooted in their personal power, and better able to thrive in spite of systems and circumstances that dis-empower and marginalize them,” YOR’s website states.  

Part of YOR’s educational model is the fact that teachers and instructors are all local and professional musicians. It takes an artist to teach art, and YOR knows that investing in marginalized musicians is a way to continue to support potential future educators. Currently building a Music & Entertainment company, YOR wants to create a pathway for aspiring artists that re-imagines the talent landscape. 

“The design for the M&E company emerged through conversations with YOR’s oldest participants (ages 17-24) and its Teaching Artist staff members, as well as through conversations and dialogue with industry professionals who have identified gaps in the training, preparation, and professional development for creators of color and other minoritized groups,” the company says. 

YOR’s M&E company would be the first of any agency groups in the Western region to prioritize, support and promote artists specifically from minority communities.  

Project Greer Street: Guiding Young Black Scholars 

Ron Sally’s high school experiences were pivotal to his future success, and he wants today’s African American male students to have a similar opportunity. The longtime Denver business executive is the founder of Project Greer Street, a nonprofit aimed at helping African American male students fulfill their potential academically and gain admission to elite colleges and universities.  

“One of the reasons that I started Project Greer Street was my belief that high school was the last formative stage in one’s life that can have a significant impact on your life trajectory,” he says. “High school is a fork in the road.”  

Sally grew up on Greer Street in North St. Louis, an area that he describes as different from how most people picture St. Louis. “It hasn’t changed, which is part of the problem,” he says. “It’s always been a stereotypical inner city terrible neighborhood.”  

What changed Sally’s path was that he attended an excellent college preparatory school located 40 minutes away from his home. “It wasn’t 100 percent positive,” he says. “But it gave me some building blocks.” 

Project Greer Street Wes Ogsbury Sports Center Interview Photo 1
Project Greer Street and Harvard alumnus Wesley Ogsbury on ESPN’s Sportscenter.

Sally went on to Duke University, where he played quarterback and captained the football team while earning a bachelor of arts degree and making the Dean’s List. After a year of pro football with the Tampa Bay Bandits of the United States Football League, Sally returned to the classroom, earning his law degree from UCLA’s School of Law. Over the course of his career, he’s worked as an attorney and business executive in the sports, entertainment, and venue development industries. 

Project Greer Street is an academic enrichment program open to African American male students at Denver East High School. Each cohort has 10 to 20 students who meet approximately once every two weeks to listen to Sally or to guest speakers talk on topics such as leadership, self-esteem, ambition and work ethic. The sessions also cover college preparation, written and oral communications, and employment and internships.  

The students are selected from a list, provided by East High School, of ninth-grade students who show academic promise. “We are not a correction program,” Sally says. “It’s not parents saying, ‘Can you fix him?’” Many of the students have high test scores and low grades and have the potential to excel with motivation and the right environment. Project Greer Street provides a safe place for these students to be academic superstars, Sally says, and the environment encourages competition. Students end up wanting to have the highest GPA, to be accepted to a summer program, or to land an internship. Some are striving for an academic scholarship to an elite university.  

Those goals are different from students’ often misguided ambitions. Many students think the only way they will be able to attend college is with an athletic scholarship, Sally says, and that points to several misconceptions. Students don’t realize that athletic scholarships represent only one-year agreements, and the student can lose the scholarship due to injury or poor performance. Academic scholarships that are based on financial need and academic merit are a better option.  

That’s an important distinction for students who overestimate their own athletic skills. “I get people who think they are the second coming of [NBA player] Kevin Durant, particularly if they are halfway decent as a 13-year-old,” Sally says. “This has been exacerbated by media attention to the financial aspect of sports.”  

The same goes for youth who hope to become the next superstar rapper, so Sally tries to show students there are other careers. His own executive positions have included president and chief operating officer of the arena football team Colorado Crush, senior vice president of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, general counsel for the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and Pepsi Center, and assistant general counsel and director of business affairs for the Denver Nuggets.  

He and the Project Greer Street guest speakers help students reevaluate how they view success. Instead of striving for the extreme unlikelihood of being the next sports or entertainment superstar, students learn they can have careers in vital but less visible roles in these and other fields. Guest speakers have included Mayor Michael Hancock, attorney C.J. Chapman, culinary historian Adrian Miller, Nike executive Ramsey Watkins, and others.  

Ray Pryor, who graduated from East High School in 2015, says Project Greer Street expanded his horizons and also taught him specific tasks he needed to address to succeed. “I had good grades,” he says. “I had no idea what it took to go to college.”  

The after-school sessions included exercises such as drafting a resume, writing an email to someone they hoped to network with, or researching a successful person with a compelling story. Sessions also covered preparing for the SATs and completing college applications.  

Pryor went on to graduate from Duke University in 2019. “It meant a lot to me to graduate in four years,” he says. “Mr. Sally kept in touch with me to make sure I was on track to do that.” Today, he works for an educational nonprofit that, similar to Project Greer Street, helps high school students through the college prep process.  

Ron Sally and his wife, Yvette Sally, started Project Greer Street in 2009. Yvette Sally, also a graduate of Duke University, is chief visionary officer for Project Greer Street. In 2014 the Sallys were awarded the Beyond Duke Service and Leadership Award. Locally, the program won an Everyday Hero Award from the ABC affiliate Denver7.  

“We expand what’s possible,” Sally says. “When we talk about the definition of success, it’s not so narrowly focused.”   

Rising Food Costs Create Unique Challenges for Hunger-Focused Agencies

The cost of groceries has steadily climbed over the last year, with a new record increase of 13.5% set in August (Consumer Price Index). On the heels of a pandemic, that led to unprecedented demand for food services. The rising cost of food is leading even more community members to find themselves in need of help, even as less assistance may be available.

The increase in food costs has created unique challenges for hunger-focused agencies. While many were receiving an influx of support at the height of the pandemic, much of that support went away at the same time they were experiencing growing demand. This shift can be attributed, at least in part, to inflation. There is no room in would-be donors’ budgets to purchase food beyond what is necessary for their own business operations. Whereas an increase in donations during the pandemic helped nonprofit operating budgets, the decrease in donations amid rising prices is forcing organizations to spend more of their budgets on food than ever before.

To continue aiding organizations that support underserved communities, it’s crucial that we increase focus on establishing direct connections between the food industry and those in need. We Don’t Waste is a conduit between the food and hospitality industry and hunger relief agencies. Our organization recovers quality, unused food including healthy proteins, fresh produce and dairy products from grocery stores, purveyors, caterers, restaurants, meal kit services and the like, and redistributes it to pantries and other community services or via their own mobile food markets.

So far in 2022, We Don’t Waste has served more than 100 nonprofit agencies via our distribution routes, and added an eighth monthly mobile market to meet increased need; however, more opportunity exists to build bridges between the industry and neighbors in need. We introduced an app, for example, which assigns restaurant pickups—those that don’t make sense for an 18-foot truck to handle—to volunteers who then courier rescued food back to the distribution center or deliver it directly to nonprofit agencies.

It’s advancements like this one that will prove to be pivotal in uncovering as many direct lines as possible from those with excess to those with far less in the ongoing fight against hunger.

 

Arlan Preblud Founder And Executive Director Of We Dont WasteArlan Preblud is the founder and executive director of We Don’t Waste.

What can nonprofits expect in 2021?

BKD CPAs & Advisors recently released its 2021 State of the Nonprofit Sector Report. The nonprofit wellness study was created to identify how nonprofit organizations are responding and surviving amid the COVID-19 global pandemic. The findings show that a majority of nonprofits have increased their services, yet reduced staffing. The study highlights how many nonprofits are coping under added pressure, both financially and operationally. “The goal of this study is to highlight how organizations are adapting to the pandemic and what effect it’s having on their ability to provide programs and services. Its essential funders, elected officials and community leaders understand the current condition of nonprofit organizations as they consider the scale of necessary intervention,” said Senior Managing Consultant Dan Prater. The survey comprised 18 questions or scenarios, including general questions about organization location, size, area of focus and questions about the COVID-19 crisis. BKD received responses from 319 organizations between September 23 and October 23, 2020. “In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, nonprofits across the country have helped to propel our communities forward and respond to increasing demands. It’s our desire this report would offer leaders insights to help stabilize their organizations and continue meeting the needs of those they serve,” said National Industry Partner Tondeé Lutterman. BKD CPAs & Advisors can help nonprofits with accounting and auditing needs. Their team offers many service offerings in nonprofit consulting, strategic planning and much more. Visit BKD’s website to learn more about BKD’s nonprofit services. Download a free copy of the study, which can help nonprofits plan for what’s ahead in 2021.

Crisis Clarifies: Delivering Results During COVID-19

About a month before the coronavirus came to dominate our lives, I got lucky. I’d been tracking the spread of the epidemic purely out of curiosity to see if SARS-CoV-2 would develop the way other coronaviruses had before it. My entire professional life was focused on public health and infectious disease, so I was interested to see how this played out. I didn’t anticipate how important that information would be to the months that followed.

Casually, in passing, one of our volunteers mentioned their excitement about an upcoming trip to Italy. I asked around and sure enough, several other volunteers and three staff had trips to Europe planned in the next few months. Suddenly I could see the direct line between the epidemic overseas and our operations in Colorado.

My organization, Project Angel Heart, provides medically tailored meals to adults and children living with chronic and terminal illness. We interact every week with the most fragile people outside of a hospital, and, I felt certain, this thing was headed our way. We needed a plan.

In mid-February, I pulled my team together to come up with a way to reinvent our operations – moving from an organization with 40 staff and over 500 weekly on-site volunteers to a skeleton crew designed to get more than 10,000 meals to 1,300 people every week without pause. We set up clear “triggers” – events that would move us from one phase of our response to another (e.g. the first confirmed infection in Colorado) and we agreed on how we would make key decisions.

By early March, we were moving through our “triggers” faster than any of us anticipated. Schools closed. Family members lost jobs. My senior team and I managed a tight list of risk factors to our organization and one factor remained at the very top: staff anxiety, morale and fear of the unknown. Our plan wasn’t enough. What I did next boiled down to three big ideas that have helped navigate our team through this pandemic:

1. Purpose is power

Everyone on our team was drawn to our organization because they believe in our mission. I needed to remind them of that. So, we talked at length about why we were an essential service and what would happen to our clients if we stopped serving meals. We fought back fear with purpose. They needed to know their jobs had value and meaning and the sacrifices they made to keep coming to work had a lasting impact on other people’s lives.

I also knew that if we were going to keep our office running, we needed to be explicit about how we were protecting the health and wellbeing of our team. Everyone was assigned specific safety tasks (e.g. cleaning work spaces, reporting travel away from home) and collective accountability quickly became a value. We openly discussed concerns, sometimes contentiously, and updated safety protocols often to address them. Team members ran daily mindfulness and meditation sessions and created a mini pantry of supplies to cover items that were hard to find at grocery stores. We took caring for each other as seriously as caring for our clients.

2. Triage

Effectively managing through crisis requires knowing what you have control over versus what you don’t. The most tangible thing I could do as a leader was foster calm predictability to our work. My leadership team and I tried to provide focus, clearly delineating what was important (developing a new delivery

method for clients in apartment buildings with confirmed COVID outbreaks) from what was not. That new organizational strategy we began planning in early first quarter – it is still on hold. I have no regrets about that.

3. Communicate, communicate, communicate

In the beginning, I thought the last thing my team needed was another meeting. I thought for sure they wanted to stay focused and undistracted. I was wrong. Hearing from me and from the rest of our senior team was what allowed everyone to stay focused. Similarly, our volunteers, donors, and partners wanted to hear from us, and they wanted to know how they could help. Amidst so much uncertainty, over-communicating and transparency were important and necessary to keeping our team at ease.

Leaders use crisis to clarify what matters most. If you continue to function as if everything is the same – as if those performance goals developed in 2019 are still equally relevant – you will seem out of touch, and, as a result, without control. That doesn’t mean just going with the flow. It means setting a course that recognizes and even embraces the crisis to serve the mission of the organization. That’s what we have done at Project Angel Heart. While our organization had to pivot, like so many others, we are learning what true resiliency is about and we are taking this challenge as an opportunity to make us stronger, more nimble and ultimately better in the long run to continue to serving our clients.

Project Angel Heart prepares and delivers medically tailored meals to people living with life-threatening illnesses across the Denver metro area and in Colorado Springs. For more information, visit www.projectangelheart.org.

Oryan Headshot Owen Ryan is the President & CEO of Project Angel Heart.

Nonprofit grants athletes a way to ‘Suffer Better’

Suffer Better ignited when aging endurance junkie Bob Africa dominated at a 2013 trail running race high in Colorado’s mountains. At the finish he declared, “You might be younger, faster or have a bigger engine, but I can suffer better.”

The catch phrase led to a nonprofit when Africa, who went on to work for PopSockets, joined forces with training partner and competitive ultrarunner Peter Downing. His cohort, a multigenerational Denverite, had previously practiced law but was looking for something more fulfilling.

Since then, Suffer Better has helped connect a historically disparate community of endurance athletes. Leveraging the inspiring and energizing nature of the outdoors, athletes are easily encouraged to accomplish bigger things with an obligation to give back — and in a figurative sense suffer better.

Today the virtual 501c3 and 1% for the Planet member runs community-building endurance events on local trails — and even Downing’s private easement-protected mountain property. Fundraising is aimed at two core causes: preserving public lands and improving air quality.

Most recently, Suffer Better lofted its “Give Your All and Give Back” philosophy through a new grant program. The nonprofit is partnering with outdoor brands, such as hemp extract supplement maker iKOR Labs and Hydrolight Outdoor Gear, to back up to $1,000 grants. Athletes can apply for grant money to stage their own creative events. Brands get to share the good works through website content, images, and public relations, according to Downing.

“One of our primary goals is to help individuals realize that one person can indeed make a difference by doing something positive,” he says. “Most of our grant applicants are individuals looking to inspire groups or kids about the importance of the outdoors and why it’s worth exploring and protecting.”

But Suffer Better’s internal fundraising approach isn’t always about asking for cash. Last year the organization put on an outdoor farm-to-table dinner. “We got nearly 70 people to come in a spectacular setting and for a delicious dinner, with all food raised on our friend’s farm, to raise enough money for at least a couple of grants,” Downing says.

The first Suffer Better grant went to Boulder-based runner Kunlong Babatunde Cousin, who Downing calls “an incredibly humble, caring human.” With the grant money, Cousin turned his 50th birthday into a 50-mile fundraising run for a local family whose daughter is suffering from a progressive neurometabolic disorder called Leigh’s disease. Most didn’t go the distance, but it didn’t matter.

“He’s [Cousin] the first to say that running, especially ultrarunning, is a primarily selfish endeavor,” Downing says. “But when he inspires others to join and support him, the result is the community recognizing that runners can — and should — put that energy to something positive and bigger than their personal health and fitness.”

How a Boulder nonprofit served throughout the pandemic

No business was safe from repercussions surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, but what about those who had no choice but to stay open? While some businesses were able to shift business models and have their employees work from home, nonprofit organizations, in particular, had to adapt quickly and creatively  in order to continue serving the communities whose livelihood relies on their programs and services.

“At the end of the day, we’re all in this fight together,” says Chris Nelson, CEO of Attention Homes. If you have no other option but to remain open, be sure you’re doing whatever it takes to ensure the safety of your customers and your staff.”

Attention Homes is a nonprofit organization based in Boulder that serves young people ages 12 to 24 who are facing homelessness. The organization was founded in 1966 and has grown to serve over 12,000 individuals, helping them become healthy, productive members of the community.

Among their programs are the Residential Care Program, which provides 10 bed for youth, ages 12 to 17, who are placed through social services due to family disruption and other crises; an Emergency Shelter and Drop-In Center, which provides services around education, employment, family reunification, physical and mental health, and overall well-being; the Transitional Living Program, which provides youth with subsidies to find housing; and Attention Homes Apartments, a 40-unit, apartment project with on-site services for young adults, ages 18 to 24.

However, as coronavirus hit Colorado, Attention Homes had to rethink these services, many of which rely on in-person interactions and contact. ColoradoBiz talked to Nelson to hear how Attention Homes was adapting and get advice for other nonprofits and businesses.

ColoradoBiz: How and when did coronavirus start to impact your business? What was your initial response?

Chris Nelson: Along with the rest of the world, we have been carefully evaluating the ever-changing COVID-19 situation and remain in rapid-response mode to make adjustments to our organization as needed. Due to school closures and families in lockdown, our country is seeing a rise in domestic violence and child abuse calls, and it is only expected to get worse. When in mid-March the coronavirus crisis became apparent, we began immediate efforts to mitigate its impact on the work that we do and the young people we serve.

It remains crucial — and life-saving — to have Attention Homes up and running 24/7 throughout this pandemic. First, we implemented the recommended cleaning and hygiene practices in our programs in an attempt to curb the spread of the novel virus. Then, we halted our Street Outreach Program to prevent our volunteers and staff from having unnecessary contact with individuals and prepared isolation spaces in each of our programs in case COVID-19 enters our facilities. We have lowered our census in both our Residential Care Program and Emergency Shelter to minimize the amount of individuals in our programs, and have temporarily closed our daytime Drop-In Center. We’ve also stopped all on-site volunteering for the foreseeable future and remain to operate a team of staff in our programs.

Throughout the situation, we’ve hosted biweekly organizational updates for the public to keep our community informed, and we remained in communication with schools to provide support while young people are still at home to prevent displacement and/or abuse. And as difficult as it was to make this decision, we rescheduled our annual spring gala for a later date.

CB: As the situation has progressed, what services/solutions have you modified/come up with?

CN: At Attention Homes the safety of our program participants, staff, board members, volunteers, and community are always our No. 1 priority. To aid our efforts, we created a financial modeling plan to responsibly spend our funds and ensure the sustainability of Attention Homes programming. Plus, we developed a continuity of operations plan to ensure our programs can remain running safely and effectively with our program participants’ best interest as our primary concern, which was shared county-wide as a best practice example.

Because many of the young people at Attention Homes are employees of establishments that were forced to shut down, they are suffering through unforeseen adversity. Consequently, we are working to ensure that nobody in need faces food insecurity or loss of housing due to the pandemic. This involves requesting donations and additional support from our community to ensure these young people not only have access to food, can keep their housing and remain safe and healthy, but also, to ensure Attention Homes staff has the resources they need to continue doing important work as they walk alongside young people experiencing this adversity.

We continue to support youth in school as remote learning becomes the new normal. Plus, we are providing virtual case management to ensure young people are staying on track with their goals, and we are checking in with each program participant regularly to offer mental health support. We are also looking at opportunities to support families to prevent displacement. Most importantly, we are remaining open for those young people who need a safe place to be with the support they deserve.

Additionally, we’ve made temporary adjustments to our PTO/sick leave to ensure that no staff member who is asked to stay home will face undue financial hardship. We’re readdressing our consistent systems in place for keeping our spaces disinfected and postponing large group trainings and meetings. And as always, we continue to remind program participants the importance of healthy hygiene practices. Finally, we started a resource hotline for individuals to navigate available resources during this crisis.

CB: What advice would you give to other businesses who have no option but to stay open during COVID-19?

CN: At the end of the day, we’re all in this fight together. If you have no other option but to remain open, be sure you’re doing whatever it takes to ensure the safety of your customers and your staff.

Whether that means altering your operating hours, utilizing a contactless strategy for to-go and delivery orders, offering products or services online, offering reduced or free shipping to encourage online orders or getting creative, do it. Adhering to safety regulations while finding ways to adapt to the reality of social distancing will help your employees and customers get through these tough times — and help your business come out stronger on the other side.

CB: As the state begins to enter a period “safer-at-home,” what advice and warnings would you give to businesses as they start to re-open?

CN: More or less the same as before, but I would add to not rush to reopen before you and your staff are comfortable doing so. Times are already stressful enough, you don’t want to increase the pressure your employees are undoubtedly feeling by forcing them into a difficult situation where they’re worried about their health and overall well-being.

Follow the recommended health and safety guidelines, wear masks and make sure employees and customers are keeping a safe distance from each other. If you don’t have to reopen at full capacity, don’t risk it. Exercise caution and take personal responsibility. We are talking about life and death, so take your choice to reopen seriously.