News

GFF grantee Colorado Water Trust has issued its second annual Call for Water to encourage short term leases of agricultural water that support healthy flows in Colorado creeks and rivers in dry years. 

A new study released by the Colorado Children’s Campaign, “Digital Learning in Colorado: Opportunities and Recommendations,” outlines steps the state could take to expand learning opportunities for all Colorado students.

Click here to learn more about Ecosystem Services 

ColoradoSchoolGrades.com is an online tool that helps parents, students, educators and community members better understand how their local schools are performing. The website provides parents the information they need to make better school-choice decisions.

We are excited to announce that Mary Seawell will be joining the Gates team as Grants Manager/Program Officer starting in December of 2012. 

Gates Family Foundation partnered with iCAST and Funding Partners (both Colorado-based nonprofits) to launch an energy efficiency program earlier this year.

Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) and the Colorado Youth Corps Association (CYCA) announced today that applications are available for $500,000 in GOCO/Lottery funds for awards to local government and open space organizations to hire youth conservation corps. Applications are due by September 24.

The Intermountain West Funders Network has initiated a small grants program. Grants of $2,500 - $15,000 will be made to support projects engaged in innovative problem solving in their communities. Proposals that are in alignment with the guidelines are due by September 14, 2012. For more information on grant guidelines and application materials.

Davian Gagne has been hired to coordinate the Mile High Connects coalition, beginning September 10.

Dr. Kirk Johnson, the popular and talented Chief Curator and VP for Research and Collections at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science has been tapped to run the National Museum of Natural History at The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. We will miss him.

On June 19, the Great Outdoors Colorado Board approved 8 grants totaling $29.5 million in lottery funds for a special initiative to foster outdoor recreation and land preservation along Colorado’s rivers. Funded projects include five along the Front Range (on the Poudre and South Platte Rivers, Clear Creek, Triple Creek and Fountain Creek) and three on the western slope (on the Colorado and Yampa Rivers).

On June 8 dozens of local homeowners, volunteers, partners and others gathered to recognize a three-year partnership that brought $4 million to plant trees, restore critical watersheds, reseed thousands of acres and put youth to work on the landscape damaged by the 137,000 acre Hayman Fire in 2002. The Gates Family Foundation partnered with the National Forest Foundation and dozens of other partners to support this important work, the long-term relevance of which is increasingly clear this summer as the state faces multiple large-scale forest fires.

Governor Hickenlooper recently signed HB 1032 which extends forest restoration programs by 5 years and encourages the use of youth corps on those projects. The bill encourages local wildfire protection groups to contract with accredited Colorado youth corps to provide labor for these projects. Colorado youth corps have been involved in 30 of the 68 total projects that have been funded thus far.