Who We Are
2025 Annual Report
MAY 2025
Caring for Colorado’s Community Investments in 2025
Caring for Colorado’s mission is to create equity in health, well-being, and opportunity for Colorado’s young people and their families. Our 10-year strategic direction — launched in 2025 — focuses on interconnected funding strategies that advance our mission. They include statewide responsive grantmaking in Youth Health and Well-Being and Public Policy Advocacy, our place-based Caring for Pueblo County strategy, and initiatives in Reproductive Health Equity and Youth Mental Health in Schools. In addition, Caring for Colorado provided transitional funding to grantee partners under our prior strategic plan.
In 2025, we awarded 206 grants to 185 nonprofit organizations across Colorado, totaling $16.8 million, a 29 percent increase over the $13 million of grantmaking in 2024. The average size of our grants in 2025 was $81,000.
Youth Health and Well-Being
A total of $9.3 million — over half of Caring for Colorado’s 2025 total grantmaking — was dedicated to advancing the health and well-being of Colorado’s young people ages 9 to 25 who experience health inequities. We awarded an average grant size of $189,000 to 49 nonprofit organizations across the three focus areas of our Youth Health and Well-Being grantmaking: Supporting Young People, Strengthening Families, and Building Youth-Centered Communities.
In addition, we awarded $3.4 million to grantees with a two-generational (“2Gen”) approach combining our Supporting Young People and Strengthening Families areas.
Caring for Pueblo County
Our place-based philanthropy strategy, Caring for Pueblo County, is guided by local community wisdom to create equity in health, well-being, and opportunity for Pueblo County’s children, youth, and families. In 2025, we awarded over $1 million to 23 Pueblo-based nonprofits working to support long-term, equitable solutions. We invest in and support our Pueblo County partners through responsive grantmaking and nonprofit capacity-building.
Read more about our place-based approach in Pueblo County here.
Public Policy Advocacy
We believe that well-designed, adequately funded, and accessible public policies, programs, and systems are key to creating equitable pathways to thriving adulthood, particularly for young people who face the greatest barriers to opportunity.
In 2025, Caring for Colorado awarded $1.4 million to 24 nonprofit policy and advocacy organizations, working across Colorado on local and statewide policy solutions to advance policies affecting the health and well-being of young people, enhancing public systems and financing, and maintaining reproductive rights in Colorado.
Read more about our Public Policy Advocacy grantmaking here.
Initiatives
Caring for Colorado invests in targeted initiatives to address pressing health needs among Colorado’s young people. Through multi-year funding, technical assistance, and field building, these efforts aim to strengthen communities, drive local and statewide systems change, and explore innovative solutions to longstanding health inequities.
Reproductive Health Equity
ReproCollab, Caring for Colorado’s reproductive health equity initiative, advances reproductive justice in Colorado with three interconnected strategies: improving access to person-centered contraceptive care, increasing access to sexual and reproductive health education for young people, and supporting policy and advocacy efforts to improve and maintain reproductive rights in Colorado.
ReproCollab’s funding partners include The Colorado Health Foundation, The Colorado Trust, Craig-Scheckman Family Foundation, Colorado Gives Foundation, Rose Community Foundation, and the Chambers Initiative.
In 2025, ReproCollab awarded $2.1 million to 17 safety net health clinics across Colorado working to improve access to person-centered contraceptive care.
A core component of ReproCollab’s approach to sexual and reproductive health education is SOMOS. The program brings Latina youth and trusted adults together for meaningful conversations about healthy relationships, bodily autonomy, consent, and increasing knowledge about sexual and reproductive health. ReproCollab contracts with Vuela for Health, a community-based organization, to implement the program. In 2025, we also made a $55,000 grant to expand SOMOS to Glenwood Springs.
Moving forward, Caring for Colorado is transitioning ReproCollab into new areas of funding in reproductive health equity. This decision is not an end to our work, but a strategic evolution to shift to broader, responsive grantmaking and to invite a wider range of partners to join us in our reproductive health equity efforts.
Choose When
Choose When aims to ensure that all contraceptive methods are affordable for all Coloradans. This initiative provides grants to safety net health clinics in communities where contraceptive care is limited and increases access to contraceptive care among people who are uninsured, underinsured, or require confidential services. Choose When is supported by grants from the Colorado Access Foundation, Rocky Mountain Health Foundation, The Rowan Foundation, and contributions from family foundations, donor-advised funds, and hundreds of individuals across Colorado.
In 2025, we awarded $747,700 to 26 organizations to purchase contraceptive methods.
Youth Mental Health in Schools
Youth Mental Health in Schools supports the healthy growth and development of young people by investing in students’ social, emotional, and mental health. This multi-year Caring for Colorado initiative reaches 42 public school districts across Colorado. Of those, Caring for Colorado awarded grants to 33 school districts across Southeast Colorado and the San Luis Valley to implement plans to address mental health disparities among students and staff.
In addition, Youth Connections supports 13 school districts across Colorado in strengthening safe, supportive school environments, with funding from Caring for Colorado and the Colorado Health Access Fund, managed by The Denver Foundation.
In 2025, Caring for Colorado awarded $25,000 general support grants to 29 school districts in the San Luis Valley and Southeast Colorado to support health and well-being activities within schools. When added to the Youth Connections grants made in FY2025, Caring for Colorado invested almost $900,000 in Youth Mental Health in Schools.
Accountability to CFC’s Priority Populations: Our Grantmaking Profile
Caring for Colorado works to improve health outcomes for Colorado’s young people ages 9-25 and their families. We seek to build a more equitable future for people experiencing the greatest disparities in health, well-being, and opportunity. In 2025, we explicitly named the priority populations we will serve through our grantmaking strategies. To gauge how well we are serving these populations, we collect data from our partners and share it here.
Who Our Grantees Serve
Around half of Caring for Colorado’s grantee partners are organizations that serve populations who predominantly live on low incomes, reside in rural areas, and/or identify as people of color. For additional context, the graphic below includes population estimates as an approximate point of comparison.*
Grantee Spotlight
Street Fraternity
Street Fraternity uses its Caring for Colorado support to create a relationship-centered space in Denver where young men build trust and find alternatives to violence through music, fitness, and peer support.
El Centro Amistad
Support from Caring for Colorado has helped sustain El Centro Amistad’s culturally grounded youth leadership, mental health support, and intergenerational connection in Boulder’s Latine communities.
The graphic below takes a different angle. It displays the percentage of grantees indicating that their work — as proposed in their application to Caring for Colorado — focuses primarily on one or more of Caring for Colorado’s priority populations. For example, over half (61%) of grantees that submitted data indicate that their work focuses on young people/families living on low incomes. Many grantees serve multiple populations listed below, acknowledging that individuals often identify multiple characteristics, such as identifying as both 2SLGBTQIA+ and experiencing housing instability.
Grantee Spotlight
Inside Out Youth Services
With support from Caring for Colorado, Inside Out Youth Services in Colorado Springs expanded its access to safe adults, affirming programs, and a dedicated youth-centered space.
The Family Resource Center
The Family Resource Center in rural northeastern Colorado is using its grant to support families navigating financial strain, isolation, and limited access to services through youth programming, parenting education, and multi-generational support.
The Geographic Reach of Our Grants
The map displays the distribution of Caring for Colorado’s grants and grant dollars by geographic region in 2025. The numbers in each county represent the number of grantee organizations headquartered there, though the majority of our grants (61%) went to organizations serving multiple Colorado counties.
Grantee Spotlight
Compañeros
With support from Caring for Colorado, Compañeros: Four Corners Immigrant Resource Center has expanded culturally responsive services for immigrant families in rural Southwest Colorado.
2025 Board of Directors
Caring for Colorado board members serve as volunteers and live throughout Colorado, representing the interests of young people and their families in our state.
Lynn Borup, Telluride
Kraig Burleson, Denver
Kristina Daniel, Alamosa
Steven Federico, Denver
Anne Garcia, Denver
Will Hayes, Grand Junction
Brenda Holland, Delta
Landon Mascareñaz, Denver
Luis Murillo, Alamosa
Nim Patel, Denver
Connie Rule, Denver
Brian Turner, Canon City
Christopher Urbina, Littleton
Kathleen Wasserman, Steamboat Springs
Caring for Colorado Staff
We welcome questions and input. Feel free to contact members of our team.