“No matter how much or how little I’ve made, I always felt it was my responsibility to give. I would encourage all of us to give, and to teach our children by being givers ourselves.”
For Ann Cooper, establishing the Cooper Family Fund with the Community Foundation was a natural course of action.
“I admit, I’m not your typical donor,” says Ann, a local real estate agent and former foundation trustee. “Thanks to my commission on a multi-million-dollar house I sold, I was able to start a Donor-Advised Fund…but it wasn’t always that way.
“I grew up in the South, dirt poor, in public housing. But we went to church and gave 10% of everything we had. We were raised to give and share, but I would argue that we don’t raise givers today.
“I just don’t get it. There’s a lot of money here, and yet we’re a community where giving isn’t the norm.”
According to Ann, giving both time and money is requisite to thriving communities. “While I still give to a number of individual organizations, especially those focused on women and girls, I give to the Community Foundation because they address the needs of everybody in Boulder County,” she says. “The foundation knows where the needs are, and they have a better sense of what’s happening – and what needs to happen – in our county, overall,” she explains.
Given her professional passion, Ann is especially concerned about the lack of affordable housing here – illustrated in the foundation’s TRENDS Report – and an insufficient supply of smaller homes, even for those who can afford them.
“We’ve done an incredible job preserving our open space,” she says. “We’ve protected and preserved our environment here, but we didn’t think about how to keep it so people could afford to live here. I think it’s wrong that kids who grew up here can no longer live here…my daughter lived in Boulder all her life, but she can’t afford to buy a place of her own here.”
Adds Ann, “It makes me sad when somewhere around 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. I see commuters driving in, then leaving again in the evening. You see that, and you can tell that people can’t afford to live here. Most of the people who work here have to live farther away.
“I supposed it was inevitable, and should have been addressed years and years ago. Even people who’ve lived here a long time can no longer afford to live here – so you see people renting rooms, basements, or some other part of their houses so they can accommodate rising costs.
“Among people in the 50-plus age-range, especially, they’re asking me for a place with space they can rent, with a walk-out basement and a separate entrance.”
That said, Ann has also observed positive changes to meet the affordable housing crunch head-on. “The city is really trying to address this issue,” she says. “There are efforts underway to work with builders to develop smaller, more affordable homes. And concepts of cooperative housing and tiny houses are becoming more popular.”
At the same time, says Ann, each of us can do our part to improve the lives of everyone who calls Boulder County home. “I believe giving should be a family effort. No matter how much or how little I’ve made, I always felt it was my responsibility to give. I would encourage all of us to give, and to teach our children by being givers ourselves.”
