This afternoon E.W. Scripps Co. executives announced that tomorrow is the last day we’ll ever see the Rocky Mountain News in print. As some of you know, I was a statehouse reporter for the Rocky until last June, when I came to work for The Community Foundation Boulder County. So I take this news with a lot of sadness for my former colleagues and for the shabby state now of Colorado’s Fourth Estate. It’s also a moment when I’m counting myself among the blessed who managed to not only get out in time, but to find a new positive career path.
The Rocky’s closure reminds me that as hard as things seem in the economy, and in particular in the nonprofit world where agencies are struggling to serve spiking client needs at a time when donations are way down, things are not as bad as elsewhere. It is a time to be thankful. It is a time to take stock. It is a time to realign ourselves and get creative about not just surviving, but thriving once the economy picks back up. And it will.
To that end, I want everyone connected to the Boulder County nonprofit world to know about two upcoming opportunities. One will help your organization survive. The other will help you thrive.
The first is Community Ventures, our annual technical assistance seminar to provide skills and entrepreneurial ideas to assist nonprofit leaders in organizational vitality. It’s happening March 5 from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Xilinx, 3100 Logic Drive, Longmont. The theme is “Lemons to Lemonade: Collaborating and Cutting Costs in Sour Times.” Nonprofit guru Richard Male will give the keynote: “How nonprofits can survive – and even thrive – during the economic recession.”
The second opportunity I want everyone to know about involves money. As some of you know, we challenged the community 10 years ago to help us build a new endowment to respond to emerging needs in the new millennium. We appropriately called it The Millennium Trust, and thanks to more than 6,000 people who gave their last hour’s wage of the last millennium, the endowment grew to $1.8 million.
Each year, those donors are selected at random to serve on the committee that decides which Boulder County nonprofits should receive grants from the fund. Well, this year’s committee has convened and determined that this year’s funding focus will be nonprofits who need to increase their own capacity to respond to increased demands for services due to the recession.
If you work or volunteer for an organization that you think is a candidate for that kind of funding, please send them to this link for information on how to apply by March 31: https://www.commfound.org/giving/mt/fundingfocus.html
And tomorrow, remember to pick up the last copy of the Rocky Mountain News that you’ll ever see. It will include a 52-page special section looking back on what would have been 150 years in business, if they’d lasted two more months. I’ve got to hand it to them. They are going out with a bang. My heart goes out to all of you I had the privilege of working with on the state’s greatest newspaper.
