Gary Community Ventures Grant

Overview

_NOTE: Once a year we issue a Request for Grant Proposals that reflect specific strategies for impact within our outcome areas. We also welcome the opportunity to connect with organizations engaged in aligned work at any time. Please feel free to reach out to the Directors of School Readiness, Youth Success, and Family Economic Mobility._

Mission & Vision

Our mission is to partner with our community to leverage business, policy and philanthropy, working together, to reshape the arc of opportunity for Colorado kids and families.

Our vision is that all children in Colorado have the opportunity to grow up healthy and reach their full potential.

What We Fund

Grant-making is one of the most powerful tools we use to catalyze opportunity for Colorado kids and families. All of our philanthropic grants support partners who focus on improving outcomes aligned with our strategies.

School Readiness

We believe all kids deserve to enjoy a foundation for a healthy life, with access to quality early learning and family support services that enable young children and their families to thrive.

Across our School Readiness initiatives, we prioritize organizations that share our values and advance the promise and potential of kids and families from low-income backgrounds and communities facing systemic barriers to opportunity. We specifically partner with values-aligned organizations focused on children and families in Adams, Arapahoe, Denver, and Jefferson counties.

Together, we aim to develop solutions that expand early learning and increase family supports.

* Expanding Quality Early Learning
* Strategic Focus Areas
* Quality Preschool:
* Our systems must provide high quality education experiences for our youngest learners. 
* We look for partners and innovations that are making preschool more accessible for families from low-income backgrounds and communities facing systemic barriers to opportunity. 
* We aim to ensure that programming achieves strong learning outcomes among preschoolers and that the system serves families well in a simple and unified early childhood education system. 
* Quality Childcare:
* Our systems must support all of the settings that families need and ensure families have accessible, affordable and high quality child care.
* We look for partners and innovations that expand access to subsidies, increase the supply of child care and support children’s learning in child care settings.
* Increasing Family Supports
* Strategic Focus Areas
* Delivering Healthy Births:
* Our systems must work to ensure healthy birth outcomes for all.
* We look for partners and innovations that center individuals and communities facing the greatest disparities in perinatal services and experiences in the design of these services.
* Enhancing Early Skills:
* Our systems must incorporate the latest science about how children learn into strategies that support children’s skill-building during critical periods. 
* We look for partners and innovations that work to ensure children have the necessary experiences through early relationships, language exposure, and practicing executive function skills to shape long-term developmental health outcomes.
* Expanding Parent Capacity:
* Our systems must value and support parents in their role in their children’s development. 
* We look for partners and innovations that help parents access supports that reduce the stress of poverty and increase capacity to support their child’s in their earliest years.

Youth Success

Across our Youth Success initiatives we prioritize organizations that share our values and advance the promise and potential of kids and families from low-income backgrounds and communities facing systemic barriers to opportunity.. We specifically partner with values aligned-organizations focused on children and families in Denver, Adams, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties.

Together we aim to develop solutions that help young people increase academic skills, advance youth wellbeing, and expand opportunities for postsecondary success.

* Increasing Academic Skills
* Our systems must dramatically reduce the gaps in student academic performance.
* We look for partners and innovations in the areas of math and literacy, with a focus on those students who have historically been least well-served by our schools.
* Advancing Youth Wellbeing
* Our systems must provide more youth with preventive supports, ensuring high acuity care is reserved for those in greatest need.
* We look for partners and innovations focused on prevention and early intervention in youth wellbeing, with an emphasis on supporting young people who may face greater challenges.
* Our work prioritizes building young people’s sense of purpose, fostering trusted relationships with peers and adults, and ensuring access to early screening and effective interventions.
* Increasing Postsecondary Success
* Our systems must equip more students with the skills and postsecondary plans that lead to family-sustaining careers.
* We focus on 9th grade success and the expansion of postsecondary and work-based learning opportunities in high school.
* We partner with organizations advancing outcomes in both of these areas.

Family Economic Mobility

Across our Family Economic Mobility initiatives we prioritize organizations that share our equity values and advance the promise and potential of kids and families from low-income backgrounds and BIPOC communities. We specifically partner with values aligned organizations focused on children and families in Denver, Adams, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties.

Together we aim to develop solutions that help help families grow income, cut expenses and build wealth.

* Growing Income
* Strategic Focus Areas
* Upskilling:
* Our systems must create pathways to livable wages without long-term debt, and provide learners of all ages access to information that allows them to make informed financial choices regarding their future career.
* We partner with higher education institutions, organizations and employers to expand the ecosystem of higher education pathways and job training programs.
* Public Benefits:
* Our systems must reduce barriers and streamline access to public benefits for families. 
* We believe hundreds of millions in approved public benefits dollars and tax credits should not go unclaimed each year while Colorado families struggle to make ends meet.  
* We look for partners who are ready to design, test, and implement solutions that help  families access public benefits in the form of cash or reduced expenses. 
* We also look for creative opportunities to smooth benefit cliffs that unfairly penalize families who are on the path to increasing their skills and wages. 
* Cutting Expenses
* Strategic Focus Areas
* Housing:
* Our systems must improve the supply and affordability of housing for families across the income spectrum. Whether transitioning from homelessness or aspiring to homeownership, we believe no family should pay more than 30% of their household income for housing, so that remaining income can be dedicated to other basic needs, such as food, childcare, and transportation. 
* We look for partners and innovators who are ready to finance, build, and preserve high quality housing options that improve options for families, and where possible, create pathways to equity and ownership.
* Debt:
* Our systems must enable access to low-interest loans and debt consolidation for families and workers too often shut out of mainstream lending. We believe families should not be held captive to predatory lenders who collect hundreds each month in high-interest debt payments because families have few other ways to deal with financial emergencies. 
* We’re testing out debt consolidation products that provide families and workers with access to low-interest loans that allow them to consolidate their debt and provide them with the financial coaching to manage their payments, meet expenses, and build their credit.
* Building Wealth
* Our systems must help families with lower incomes to actively participate in wealth building opportunities without having to sacrifice much-needed income. 
* We believe earning wages alone is not enough to help families attain economic mobility, and that wealth, through ownership of assets that appreciate in value over time, is the essential lever.  
* We look for partners creating new pathways to ownership in the following categories:
* Home Ownership
* Business & Employee Ownership
* Renter & Community Ownership
* Individual Savings & Assets

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

* All of our philanthropic grants support partners who:
* Focus on improving outcomes aligned with our strategies in School Readiness, Youth Success, and Family Economic Mobility; and
* Aim to advance the promise and potential of kids and families who have traditionally not had access to opportunity in Adams, Arapahoe, Denver, and/or Jefferson counties.
* Seek catalytic dollars that drive toward breakthrough solutions, scale, and/or systems change.

Ineligibility

* School Readiness - Outside Our Focus:
* The work below falls outside of our focus areas, where other philanthropic organizations may be better positioned to partner. 
* Funding for capital projects to build or renovate a child care facility
* Operations costs or supplies for a child care center or preschool Scholarships for families to attend child care
* Youth Success - Outside our Focus: 
* The work below falls outside of our focus areas, where other philanthropic organizations may be better positioned to lead.
* Areas outside our funding strategies (including areas typically funded by public dollars such as curricula, teacher professional learning, etc.)

* General ongoing operating costs
* Acute clinical services
* Scholarships 
* Capital construction
* Family Economic Mobility - Outside Our Focus: 
* The work below falls outside of our focus areas, where other philanthropic organizations may be better positioned to lead.
* Capital Campaigns
* Land acquisition 
* Land development
* Direct services/ emergency response