Get Grounded Foundation Awards $84,375 to 26 Local Organizations During 2023 Grant Cycle
We are excited to announce that this year we are providing $84,375, in grants from the Get Grounded Foundation to support local nonprofits. We received a record amount of grant applications and are thrilled to share that the following organizations have been awarded Get Grounded Foundation grants.
A Precious Child
Location: Broomfield
Mission: A Precious Child provides children in need with opportunities and resources to empower them to achieve their full potential.
Grant Awarded: $4,250
Grant Impact: Funds will help grow the food pantry that supports families impacted by the loss of the emergency SNAP benefits.
Art Students League of Denver
Location: Denver
Mission: The Art Students League of Denver empowers people to experience the joy of art in their own way.
Grant Awarded: $4,000
Grant Impact: The Youth Violence Prevention Through Art program offers four behavioral health workshops including: iPad Digital Art, Graffiti Art, Fundamentals of Art and Financial Literacy, Education & Employment Preparedness. These classes provide Westwood youth a safe and supportive environment to explore their identity and emotions while learning to self-express through art with the goal of improving mental health and reducing teen violence.
Black Parents United Foundation
Location: Aurora
Mission: The Black Parents United Foundation (BPUF) is a 501(c)3 community-based non-profit organization created to empower parents of black and brown children to empower their children, and to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion through confidence building, community development, and community engagement.
Grant Awarded: $2,500
Grant Impact: Funds will provide trauma-informed training for volunteers.
Blue Sky Bridge
Location: Boulder
Mission: Blue Sky Bridge fosters safe communities, healing, and justice to end child abuse.
Grant Awarded: $2,500
Grant Impact: Funds will support three core programs: Child abuse intervention, therapeutic healing and prevention education. Together, these services foster healing and justice to end child abuse in Boulder County.
Boulder Voices for Children (CASA)
Location: Boulder
Mission: Boulder Voices for Children builds a healthier community by delivering services, support, and advocacy to children who have experienced trauma.
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: Funds will provide trauma-informed training for volunteers.
CMDance
Location: Denver
Mission: Founded in 1999, CMDance strives to build healthy, thriving communities through world-class arts education programs that bring the global culture of both solo and partnered vernacular dancing to youth and adults.
Grant Awarded: $3,000
Grant Impact: Funds will support a new after school dance program for middle and high school students in the Capitol Hill and Five Points neighborhoods. The program curriculum will align with dance standards and goals of cultural expansion.
Colorado Meth Project, Inc.
Location: Broomfield
Mission: Rise Above Colorado is a statewide prevention organization that measurably impacts teen perceptions and attitudes about the risks of substance misuse to help youth make empowered, healthy choices.
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: The Lead the Change youth engagement initiative at DSST-College view was launched with the support of a 2022 Get Grounded Foundation Grant. Funds this year will support expansion of the program that focuses on the critical need for fentanyl prevention efforts among youth to prevent future overdoses and save lives.
Colorado Uplift
Location: Denver
Mission: The Guild is a group of dynamic women who band together to make an impactful difference for the staff and students of UpLift, allowing them to develop into the leaders of tomorrow!
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: Funds will support students as they prepare for post-secondary education by assisting them with college enrollment, financial aid applications and scholarships.
Denver Children’s Advocacy Center (DCAC)
Location: Denver
Mission: DCAC’s mission is to prevent abuse, strengthen families, and restore childhood.
Grant Awarded: $3,510
Grant Impact: Funds will support the Creative Kids Arts Program, an 8-week program offered to kids between ages 8-12, three times a year. The group creates a safe and nurturing space for kids to find solace and connection through art, allowing them to explore their potential through diverse mediums while fostering strong bonds with their peers.
Denver City Lax
Location: Denver
Mission: Denver City Lax’s mission is to create educational and enrichment opportunities for youth in underserved Denver neighborhoods through the sport of lacrosse.
Grant Awarded: $2,500
Grant Impact: Funds will provide professional mental health counselors for Denver City Lax youth, coaches and parents. In addition, middle and high school teens will have access to team workshops and individual support.
Denver Inner City Parish
Location: Denver
Mission: The Denver Inner City Parish loves and supports individuals and families in our community, empowering them to break the cycle of poverty.
Grant Award: $4,250
Grant Impact: Funds will support the purchase of fresh ingredients to be used in meals and snacks prepared by the Greens-N-Grains Food Truck. The GNG Food Truck is a mobile community meal distribution program, serving 100 free meals each day, four days a week, at four schools and after-school partner sites during the school year. Each weekend, the GNG Food Truck donates an additional 200 free meals at school sporting events, celebrations and other youth activities in the community.
Denver Young Artists Orchestra (DYAO)
Location: Denver
Mission: The mission of DYAO is to expose young musicians and audiences to the joy and beauty of symphonic music, pursuing excellence through exceptional orchestral training, unique & diverse performance opportunities, and new pathways to symphonic experiences. Ultimately, we seek to cultivate the next generation of musicians who will reimagine the future of symphonic music in our community.
Grant Awarded: $2,000
Grant Impact: Funds will support the DYAO Musical Pathways Initiative – an extension of their Tune Up afterschool program and scholarship fund to include support for underserved students. The Musical Pathways program is designed to cover the cost of transportation, apparel, private lessons, technology and instrument repair or purchase.
Developmental FX
Location: Denver
Mission: Developmental FX seeks to prepare children with developmental differences for a bright future of engaged belonging by equipping them, their families, therapists, and teachers via innovative programming in Colorado and around the world.
Grant Awarded: $4,000
Grant Impact: Funds will build upon a previous grant to extend the individualized, multidisciplinary care offered in their clinic to the homes and schools of children who are grappling with developmental challenges and mental health issues.
Food For Thought Denver
Location: Denver
Mission: Food for Thought Denver strives to eliminate weekend hunger for children in the Denver area by providing food PowerSacks. Doing so allows them to contribute more positively to their school environment and the communities in which they live, regardless of economic and social class. We believe that no child should go hungry.
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: Funds will extend a previous grant to provide PowerSacks throughout the school year to students attending 73 elementary schools, two middle schools and three high schools.
Gateway Domestic Violence Services
Location: Aurora
Mission: Aurora/Arapahoe Battered Women’s Shelter’s mission is to prevent and eliminate intimate partner violence through counseling, residential care and empowering people for social change.
Grant Awarded: $2,500
Grant Impact: Funds will upgrade two youth and community rooms serving children in their residential programs that help create a secure, caring and community-oriented, child-focused environment.
Girls on the Fly
Location: Pine
Mission: Girls on the Fly inspires girls to be an advocate for themselves, helping to build confidence and implementing positive internal dialogue using an interactive, fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates fly fishing and outdoor adventuring.
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: Funding will provide transportation for girls to experience the transformative power of the great outdoors from Denver and surrounding counties.
Hunger Free Colorado
Location: Denver
Mission: Hunger Free Colorado’s mission is to connect people to food resources to meet existing needs and drive policy, systems and social change to end hunger.
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: Funds will support implementation of their high-impact Healthy School Meals for All (HSMA) project for youth.
Illuminate Colorado
Location: Denver
Mission: Illuminate Colorado strengthens families, organizations and communities to prevent child maltreatment.
Grant Awarded: $4,000
Grant Impact: Funding will play a key part in ensuring the expansion of their HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) training program. HOPE aims to inspire a movement that fundamentally transforms how health and well-being is advanced for children, families and communities. Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) allow children to form strong relationships and meaningful connections, cultivate positive self-image and self-worth, experience a sense of belonging and build skills to cope with stress in healthy ways. Illuminate seeks to help Colorado become more HOPE-informed.
Jeffco Action Center
Location: Lakewood
Mission: The Action Center’s mission is to provide an immediate and compassionate response to those in our community experiencing hardship and by offering the resources and services needed to stabilize lives and promote pathways to lasting change.
Grant Awarded: $3,000
Grant Impact: Funds will assist community members with addressing long-term goals and sustainability through their Family Development program. This program strives to build stability by pairing family coaches with families who use a strength-based, trauma-informed lens to provide support for families. The Family Resource Center Association (FRCA) model is designed to help strengthen protective factors that are known to prevent child abuse and neglect.
Mercy Housing Mountain Plains
Location: Denver
Mission: Mercy Housing seeks to create stable, vibrant, and healthy communities by developing, financing, and operating affordable, program-enriched housing for families, seniors, and people with special needs who lack the economic resources to access quality, safe housing opportunities.
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: Funds will support the Out-of-School Time (OST) programs at three multifamily affordable housing communities that MHMP operates: Grace Apartments, Clare Gardens and Holly Park. The OST program provides safe and supervised space for children to be during their after-school hours, resulting in improved success in school, leadership skills, overall self-confidence, behavior and increased physical ability.
PlatteForum
Location: Denver
Mission: Using the Arts as a Bridge PlatteForum connects youth and artists with the resources needed to reach their full potential while addressing social issues that are of utmost importance to them and their communities.
Grant Awarded: $2,500
Grant Impact: Funds will expand their previous Get Grounded Grant for the ArtLab Underground to reach more youth in need of access to art and attract more interns to lead the program.
Project 1.27
Location: Aurora
Mission: The mission of Project 1.27 is to engage, inspire, recruit and resource churches and families to serve children in our community through faith-based family preservation, kinship care, foster care and adoption.
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: Funds will support a strategic alliance between Project 1.27 and the Neighbor Program (formerly Foster Together) to address caregiver stress by matching 20 of their current families with a volunteer to take meals and provide care for the caregiver.
Project PAVE
Location: Denver
Mission: Project PAVE is ending violence by empowering youth to build healthy relationships.
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: Funds will allow PAVE to hire additional interns for their Youth Community Educator Program (YCEP), a paid youth cohort which will provide peer-to-peer education focusing on healthy relationships, to youth across the Denver metro area. Through YCEP, participants receive professional development training, individual growth plans and are strengthened to become the next generation of community leaders.
STAR Center Foundation
Location: Centennial
Mission: STAR Center Foundation’s mission is to impact quality of life by developing and promoting best practices for sensory health and wellness through treatment, education, and research.
Grant Awarded: $3,500
Grant Impact: Funds will cover supplies for class and home during a 10-week program to create a sensory-informed parenting program for New Legacy Charter School, which serves teen parents and their children.
Whiz Kids Tutoring
Location: Denver
Mission: Whiz Kids offers one-to-one tutoring, positive mentoring relationships and spiritual nurture to students below the literacy and poverty lines with the Spirit of Christ.
Grant Awarded: $3,000
Grant Impact: Funds will provide trauma awareness volunteer training for one-on-one tutoring to build positive mentoring relationships and provide spiritual nurturing for youth, as well as training for BIPOC tutors.
Zuma’s Rescue Ranch
Location: Littleton
Mission: We are a partnership-based behavioral health center, offering animal-assisted learning and therapy programs where the rescued animals and people meet in an equal partnership to heal the mind, body, and spirit.
Grant Awarded: $2,500
Grant Impact: Funds will provide scholarships for students of the Native American Indian Academy to return for interactive equine therapy. Horses are entwined in Native American history and provide a connection to their heritage, as well as life skills for their future.
The Get Grounded 2024 grant application will be available June 14, 2024. Grant applications are due by 5 p.m. on Mon., Oct. 7, 2024.