One of the best moments running GroundFloor Media (GFM) and its sister agency, CenterTable, is when we announce that our Get Grounded Foundation has awarded its latest round of community grants. Today we get to do just that. This year we were honored to be able to provide more than $38,000 to seven outstanding local community programs that are getting a new or innovative program off the “ground floor” in the areas of child abuse and neglect, youth behavioral health and/or childhood hunger relief. Since our launch in late 2015, we have been able to distribute more than $158,000 in community grants funded from agency profits.
Created as the primary charitable giving arm of GFM and CenterTable, the Get Grounded Foundation provides one-year grants to nonprofits for new, entrepreneurial programs that directly support at-risk or neglected youth between the ages of 3 and 15 in the Denver area.
In addition to the grant, the CenterTable video team develops a compelling video for each grantee that they can use to promote their organization and further their development efforts.Our digital team also provides guidelines and information on how best to utilize the video to raise awareness or generate funds from the community.
The next deadline for submitting grant applications will be 5 p.m. MT on Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. Learn more on the Get Grounded section of our website.
2019 Get Grounded Foundation Grant Recipients
Each of our nonprofit grantees are selected after careful consideration from our grant review committee to ensure they meet the specific criteria set out in the Get Grounded Foundation process. If something sparks an interest, don’t hesitate to reach out to me and I will put you in touch. The more, the merrier. It takes a village and we have a pretty good village here in Colorado to provide support and change lives in our community.
A Precious Child provides children in need with opportunities and resources to empower them to achieve their full potential. In its first 10 years, the organization has helped more than 286,000 children challenged by poverty, abuse, neglect or crisis situations. It provides children and their families with basic essentials such as clothing, toiletries, school supplies, educational opportunities and access to extracurricular activities. All of A Precious Child’s services are provided free of charge.
Get Grounded Foundation Grant Awarded: Support for an evaluation of the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths Assessment pilot for 66 families or a total of 281 individuals.
PlatteForum was founded in 2002 to provide opportunities for learning through the arts to Denver’s most vulnerable youth and expand public access to programming high in artistic excellence. GFM provided four grants to PlatteForum over the past four years in recognition of their high-quality programming. The in-depth, curriculum-based arts education experiences meet state educational standards and are provided over an extended period of time to allow for long-term relationships between youth, staff and professional artists. These experiences improve academic performance, prepare youth for postsecondary success and inspire them to create positive social change in their communities.
Get Grounded Foundation Grant Awarded: Support for expansion efforts to focus on partnerships with other arts and youth-serving organizations and schools that serve historically marginalized youth populations.
Connect Our Kids is leveraging modern technology to replace the existing paper-based, bureaucratic system with a cloud-based family-recruiting platform. This tool will help social workers quickly place foster kids into permanent homes using three components: family tree finding (similar to Ancestry.com), family engagement and data integrations (similar to Facebook).
Get Grounded Foundation Grant Awarded: Support for a pilot facilitator who will be responsible for training and technical assistance to the seven counties served by the CASA Denver metro region. GFM works closely with Colorado CASA and several other local CASA organizations have been recipients of Get Grounded Foundation grants, including Child Advocates-Denver CASA and CASA of Jefferson and Gilpin Counties.
Foster Together is the brainchild of a foster mom, Hope Forti, who knows firsthand how many foster parents experience high burnout, especially in the first year or two as a new foster family. Many foster parents quit before their second year, most frequently citing “lack of support” as their reason. This cycle means that foster children move from home to home and cannot find the stability they need to heal from abuse and neglect.
Forti started a program to connect neighbors with nearby foster parents to provide support such as delivering a feast at dinnertime or transportation to a child’s therapy appointments. That Foster Neighbor program is so successful that Forti is now expanding the vision for Foster Together to prioritize children in post-foster care reunification or out-of-home placement with relatives, also known as kinship care.
Get Grounded Foundation Grant Awarded: Support to match 15 kinship or reunified families with a foster neighbor to bring a vital sense of normalcy, friendship and no-strings-attached practical support to the children.
Colorado Humanities,established in 1974, has created more than 85 unique initiatives in its 44-year history. It provides programs at no cost to participants and reaches an estimated 200,000 people each year. The organization believes that humanities education is fundamental to the fabric of the state and its individual communities. Colorado Humanitiesseeks to enhance and inspire learning through the humanities and aims to continue delivering traditional programs and take steps in new directions for future programming.
Get Grounded Foundation Grant Awarded: Support for Motheread/Fatheread Colorado (MFC), which trains facilitators to work with groups of parents of infants through early elementary school in a series of sessions proven to raise children’s Language Scores and help them to discover the vital link between literature and life.
Children’s Farms of America (CFA) isdedicated to helping local neighborhoods establish small-scale farms where kids learn to grow and sell healthy food.GFM is providing the largest Get Grounded Foundation grant to-date, and the second grant to CFA, to expand the program to three additional schools and launch a program for 4 to 12-year-olds in Denver’s Montbello neighborhood.
Get Grounded Foundation Grant Awarded: Support to fund a farm-school garden specialist to consult on urban agriculture and increasing yield in small spaces, and work with children and adults on topics such as growing environments, pest management, nutrition and food preparation.
PowerSacks. It’s so smart. And so important to help break the cycle of hunger in Colorado. Food For Thought Denver works to eliminate childhood hunger during the school year by providing PowerSacks to low-income students every Friday. Each PowerSack contains enough non-perishable food to make eight meals. Currently, 55,000 children qualify for PowerSacks and Food For Thought Denver is only able to meet the needs of less than 20% of those children.
Get Grounded Foundation Grant Awarded: Support for an additional 2,500 PowerSacks a week. We love kiddos. It’s clear that Food for Thought is passionate about our most vulnerable kids. We are grateful to be able to help support this incredible work they are doing in our community.
