News: Natural Resources

Mary Seawell, Senior Vice President

The mission of Gates Family Foundation’s K-12 education program is to ensure that all children in Colorado have access to education opportunities that support their long-term success.

To advance this mission, we focus our resources to seed innovation and support effective and diverse autonomous public school models; pursue system-level reforms that create the conditions necessary to sustain effective schools; support community-based programs in rural areas; develop more robust human capital pipelines across the state; and sustain media, advocacy, research, and engagement efforts that strengthen the education ecosystem.

In 2019, the education program awarded $2,745,750 in strategic grants to 23 organizations and $214,765 in responsive capital grants to seven organizations. These commitments are detailed in the list below, and we’d like to spotlight just a few of the organizations that are changing lives:

RISE Colorado is training principals and school leaders and increasing their knowledge and capacity regarding best practices relating to family engagement, educational equity, systemic racism, and how power and privilege impacts education and school systems.

Keystone Policy Center is working with Ute Mountain Ute tribal leaders to design a new tribal school to be located on the reservation. Financial and technical support from Gates has helped the tribe-led team explore the concept and feasibility of such a school, and then define the pathway to execution and operation.

Climb Higher Colorado is providing a fellowship for education leaders to gain skills, develop a network, and construct and implement strategies necessary to address systemic educational challenges facing students and families.

Colorado Future Farmers is providing professional development and mentoring to agriculture teachers across Colorado in an effort to increase embedded support and retention.

National Black Child Development Institute launched The Denver Journal of Education and Community, a community-based academic journal and multi-media platform that aims to build awareness of community perspectives of Pre-K to 12 education in the Denver metro region.

In addition to grantmaking, the Gates education team also worked closely with strategic partners on some exciting new initiatives in 2019:

We joined with local and national partners to launch Lyra Colorado, an independent nonprofit dedicated to supporting educator and community empowerment by creating more responsive education systems and structures. Lyra works with the three Denver Public Schools Innovation Zones to ensure their long-term sustainability and advance their mission to create systems that support and elevate educators.  Lyra also supported the creation of a regional partnership in southwest Colorado to help five school districts partner and two higher education institutions to create more opportunities for students.  Gates long-time partner Empower Schools is leading that work with financial support from Lyra.

We wrapped up a multi-year process with the Roaring Fork School District and regional charter schools that resulted in a District-Charter Collaboration Compact of shared, formal agreements that benefit students and families. The Gates team continues to provide implementation support to the district and schools to ensure they are meeting their shared goals of achieving equity and equal access to public education in the Roaring Fork Valley.

We worked with three rural communities – Cañon City, Durango, and Alamosa – to advance local initiatives in K-12 education. The effort was a partnership with Wend Collective to harness the creative capacity of rural communities to solve problems within their own education systems. With The Civic Canopy as an implementation partner, Gates and Wend supported local groups in each geography with targeted facilitation, analysis, and strategy development to advance big ideas for their schools, students, and communities. Gates published a case study on the effort to share learning on the initiative.

Through all of this work, the education team at Gates strives to leverage all of the Foundation’s resources – dollars, people, relationships, credibility, access, convening capability, and physical space – to make progress in advancing educational equity and access to opportunity for all children in Colorado. We are grateful for the opportunity to work and learn alongside our partners, and we celebrate their successes.

2019 Grants and Impact Investments Awarded: Educational Equity

Laia Mitchell, Senior Program Officer
Whitney Johnson, Program Officer

Colorado’s rapidly changing rural and urban communities are both an opportunity and a challenge in ensuring stronger, more resilient communities for all. In 2019, Gates Family Foundation advanced vibrant communities through our Community Development, Informed Communities, Capital Grants and Impact Investing programs by supporting projects that built upon each other to create leverage and integrate cross-sector solutions.

In a thriving and inclusive ecosystem, entrepreneurship and community wealth-building empowers individuals, improves standards of living, and creates jobs, prosperity, and innovation in the economy. While the Denver Metro Area continued to experience unprecedented growth in 2019, small business ownership is in danger of drifting further from the hands of local entrepreneurs, especially with the economic upheaval in 2020. Very little capital flows to entrepreneurs who are women, people of color, or living in rural Colorado. Gates is working strategically to help weave together an entrepreneurial ecosystem that bridges market gaps through its partnerships with organizations that reach extremely marginalized entrepreneurs who are poised for growth.

Transportation plays a huge role in the lives of individuals, our communities, and the way communities grow. With increasing population growth and limited funding, Colorado’s aging transportation system is outdated and insufficient, and fossil fuel vehicle emissions continue to be a significant contributor to climate change. In 2019 we prioritized supporting organizations focused on engaging communities in re-envisioning transportation and mobility options, creatively solving problems, and holding government leaders accountable for setting and achieving ambitious goals.

Gates also has served an important role in catalyzing a growing network of food hubs here in Colorado. The aggregation and distribution of local food products are an essential component of scaling up local food systems, and food hubs have the potential to be financially viable businesses that demonstrate a significant commitment to place while building a strong local economy.

In 2019, the Community Development program committed $932,500 in strategic grants to 13 organizations and $465,000 in responsive capital grants to 12 organizations. New impact investments supporting vibrant communities in 2019 included a $500,000 MRI to Greater Colorado Venture Fund to support entrepreneurs in rural Colorado, a $500,000 PRI to DreamSpring to support its Small Business Impact Fund, and a $3 million MRI to Rose Affordable Housing Fund V to provide safe, energy efficient and affordable housing as a stable base for families and seniors and to connect residents with a range of health, educational, and social services.

A few additional highlights include:

ELEVATION COMMUNITY LAND TRUST: Joined with six foundations and Urban Land Conservancy to launch a new public-private partnership to acquire or develop 700 permanently affordable homes and serve 2,000 residents in five years in Front Range communities from Ft. Collins to the Denver metro area.

EAST COLFAX  / SUN VALLEY REDEVELOPMENT: Helped catalyze the Federal and Colfax cloverleaf redevelopment project, which received major investment from Colorado Department of Transportation and the City and County of Denver in 2019.

COLORADO MEDIA PROJECT: Committed $1.125 million over three years to launch the Colorado Media Project with the University of Denver and national and local funders. The goal of the initiative is to strengthen public-service journalism across Colorado through collaboration, business innovation, and community engagement.

2019 Grants and Impact Investments Awarded: Vibrant Communities

Russ Schnitzer
Senior Program Officer

2019 marked a year of continued evolution within the Gates Family Foundation’s Natural Resources program. Most notably, we welcomed Whitney Johnson as a new program officer. Whitney’s role is shared between Community Development and Natural Resources, which will help these programs further define complementary priorities, such as rural economic development and sustainable and regenerative agriculture.

The program awarded a total of more than $1.3 million in strategic grants to 15 organizations and $255,000 in responsive grants from our capital program went to five organizations in 2019. In addition, we made several significant new natural resources impact investments, including $3 million in an industrial impact fund focused on resource efficiencies in energy, transportation, and the built environment and $1 million in a fund focused on mitigation banking and carbon sequestration.

Our Focus Landscapes initiative, a key element of our Natural Resources program, underwent a comprehensive review, revision, and re-launch in 2019. This initiative was launched in 2011 to help Colorado achieve landscape-scale conservation through the protection of private lands in specific geographies. A great deal of progress was made in North Park, southeast Colorado, and the San Luis Valley, resulting in more than 200,000 acres of farm and ranch lands conserved, along with their associated ecological values. The strategic review process was done in close partnership with the land trust organizations representing those geographies, providing lessons-learned and an exploration of emerging opportunities. The revised Focus Landscapes initiative will first focus on two geographies: southeast Colorado and the San Luis Valley. Our five-year commitment to these landscapes is also more ambitious in scope, working with the partner organizations, Palmer Land Trust and Rio Grande Headwaters Land Trust, to implement a more comprehensive conservation strategy with outcomes that emphasize organizational sustainability, collaboration, community, and innovation that extends well beyond traditional private land conservation easements.

2019 also highlighted the significance of other Natural Resources program priorities, to address challenges exacerbated by a changing climate and continued population growth – trends very likely to persist well into the future. Such variables also continue to shape how the Foundation invests in strategic priorities. Increasingly, Natural Resources investments are being made collaboratively with other foundations and public funding partners. The scale of these challenges is staggering, but the opportunities for private philanthropy to work together toward common objectives are increasingly evident.

Continuing to leverage the entrepreneurial and collaborative approach that has come to define the Natural Resources program, significant achievements made in 2019 include:

The development and successful launch of the RESTORE Colorado Fund in partnership with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Great Outdoors Colorado, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The fund’s first round of awards totaled approximately $2.7 million to eleven different large-scale habitat restoration and enhancement projects across the state.

The launch of the Rocky Mountain Restoration Initiative (RMRI), led by Gates grantee the National Wild Turkey Federation and in close partnership with the United States Forest Service. The RMRI is focused on large-scale implementation of forest health and watershed restoration beginning in southwest Colorado, helping to break down jurisdictional barriers to forest health treatments and creating a 10-year collaborative watershed restoration strategy.

Continued work to advance key water sustainability objectives, including the identification of new durable sources of funding for the full implementation of Colorado’s Water Plan.

The conservation of Trinidad’s iconic Fisher’s Peak, formerly known as Crazy French Ranch, which in June 2020 become Colorado’s newest and second-largest state park with more than 19,000 acres of wilderness to explore, which is also expected to drive economic growth in southern Colorado.

Finally, the Foundation’s commitment to Colorado’s land trusts remains steadfast. 2019 was the first full year for Keep It Colorado, the hub organization co-launched by Gates and Great Outdoors Colorado to serve the state’s diverse land trust community. In the past year, Keep It Colorado has hired additional staff, implemented policy, communications, and fundraising strategies, and engaged land trust leaders statewide with learning and organizational development opportunities. While much work remains to ensure the long-term sustainability of Colorado’s land trust community, Keep It Colorado continues to serve as a shining example of conservation leadership and collaboration, even in trying times.

Supporting the conservation and stewardship of Colorado’s natural resources is an exercise in continual learning and adaptation. It is also a humbling privilege to contribute to the Foundation’s long-standing conservation legacy. Our work is only as strong as our grantees and funding partners, and that strength is growing. As we look ahead, I am confident that the relationships we continue to build at every level will result in great progress and keep us on the leading edge of conservation in Colorado.

2019 Grants and Impact Investments Awarded: Natural Resources