The Denver Foundation embeds and experiments with GEO’s effective grantmaking practices
In 2025, a confluence of crises is forcing grantmakers to rapidly respond to evolving community needs and inequities. The political, social, and environmental realities of this time have threatened every community’s ability to thrive through massive cuts to our domestic social–safety nets, violent natural disasters, international aid stripped, marginalized identities under attack and a dismantling of our democracy. Our communities have urgent needs, which require philanthropy to wield its power and privilege to push for change.
Right now, philanthropy must use its creative autonomy, resources and voice to support their nonprofit partners and community members to weather and adapt during this difficult time while also envisioning what our collective freedom and liberation can and will feel like. To effectively and equitably support communities, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO) advocates for specific grantmaker practices that make the difference to nonprofit leaders and the people they serve. GEO’s work to transform philanthropy has never been about hypothesis or theory; it has been about the necessary, equitable and real practice change of grantmakers as they work in service of nonprofits and communities.
For 100 years, The Denver Foundation has been a leading philanthropic organization dedicated to creating a strong and thriving Metro Denver, Colorado and beyond. This community foundation has worked alongside its staff and community members to embed some of these practices. But its work also includes new questions and opportunities for experimentation within these same practices.
This piece highlights how funders can show up differently and future opportunities or curiosities on the horizon — because the work is far from done.
Community-Driven Philanthropy
Philanthropic practice becomes truly transformative when we center the expertise of those closest to the challenges we aim to address. This approach involves nurturing relationships and repairing and fostering trust, particularly with groups whose insights have been historically undervalued and systemically omitted. By elevating these voices as issue experts, key leaders and decision-makers, we unlock new possibilities for effective and equitable grantmaking that resonates with the real needs and aspirations of communities.
The Denver Foundation uses a community–driven approach as a default way of doing business. When undertaking new work, the foundation engages community through surveys, focus groups and in-depth strategy sessions. This has shown up in places such as:
Developing a strategic framework, which guides all efforts. The foundation received nearly 8,000 points of feedback from the community to inform this framework.
Introducing the youth mental health focus area. The foundation interviewed multiple nonprofit and government partners and held five listening sessions with youth themselves across different identities to inform this part of grantmaking
Developing a federal context response. The foundation interviewed all grantees and donors and held strategy sessions with the community-driven Advisory Committee for Community Impact, before bringing potential strategies to staff and board for approval
Key questions: How do we continue to uplift the voices of those most impacted, particularly in an environment that is increasingly hostile and has made them afraid to speak out?
➡️ READ MORE about building stronger relationships with nonprofits and centering community leaders in GEO’s most recent publication on Community-Driven Philanthropy: Participation, Partnership and Power
➡️ ENGAGE WITH GEO by joining the Community-Driven Philanthropy Peer Community Call on September 16, 2025 – 3:00 – 4:00 pm ET
Flexible, Reliable Funding
Flexible, reliable funding makes a difference to nonprofits in their focus on mission rather than reporting. Since GEO’s inception over 25 years ago, nonprofit leaders have consistently named general operating support and multiyear grants as clear needs to make a substantial and lasting impact. Funders have typically used restricted grants to prove their own Theory of Change or to hold nonprofits accountable to certain deliverables. When foundations consider funding the full cost of programs through unrestricted support, nonprofits are able to nimbly respond to community needs, make adjustments to how they are serving the community and have adequate staffing to ensure quality services. This can be even more critical for nonprofits led by and serving communities of color, which are less likely to have financial reserves and access to major funding streams.
The Denver Foundation’s Community Grants Program, the foundation’s flagship discretionary grantmaking program, prioritizes general operating support, often even offering it if someone applies for program support.
The Denver Foundation also educates donors about the need for general operating support and encourages those types of grants from their donor-advised funds.
The Denver Foundation offers limited multi-year support to long-term partners of the foundation in each cycle of the Community Grants Program.
Key questions: How can we overcome the accounting issues that make it difficult to offer multi-year grants to more organizations? How do we offer multi-year support and still leave room for new emerging organizations and innovations in the sector?
➡️ READ MORE in GEO’s publication on Centering Equity through Flexible, Reliable Funding
➡️ ENGAGE WITH GEO by joining the Embedding Effective Practice Remote Learning Series on September 30 – October 29, 2025
Capacity Building
During this confluence of crises, the needs of nonprofits and community members will inevitably and rapidly change. Staffing, technical infrastructure, leadership and culture will all be impacted by our communities’ evolving needs. By holding the principles of making capacity building support contextual, continuous, and collective, grant makers can be deeply supportive co-conspirators and move beyond a transactional relationship. Capacity building can be creative, allowing for different forms of funding streams, cohort programming or technical assistance.
The Denver Foundation has long offered capacity building grants to anyone receiving a discretionary or donor-advised grant from the foundation. This has always included a wide range of capacity-building supports, including fundraising and fund diversification. The foundation recently added scenario planning, as well.
The Denver Foundation is exploring how to support harder conversations that may be coming for the sector, including scaling back programs, responsible staff reductions, and forming new kinds of strategic alliances.
Key questions: How do we best support a sector that will have to transform because of loss of federal funds in a way that feels supportive and partnering, not prescriptive?
➡️ READ MORE in GEO’s publication on Reimagining Capacity Building: Navigating Culture, Systems & Power
➡️ ENGAGE WITH GEO by joining the Reimagining Capacity Building by Navigating Culture, Systems & Power workshop on September 18, 2025 – 9:30 am – 4:00 pm ET in Washington, D.C.
Learning and Evaluation
In the process of responding to this moment, there is true fidelity to our organizations’ missions and goals. We all want to make a significant and measurable impact to counter the systems of oppression – the systems that continue to exacerbate inequities in the communities that we care about. Within foundations, our learning and evaluation efforts have been the mechanism for reaching this intention. However, these same efforts have simultaneously been used by other funders to monitor, judge and even punish nonprofits for certain activities that do not specifically align with a grantmaker’s Theory of Change or vision for how the nonprofit “should” be run. Requiring nonprofits to extensively report on specific data, which does not serve their own learning goals, is an example of pedestaling the foundation’s priorities over their grantee partners. GEO has advocated for conducting evaluations in a way that truly centers a grantee’s goals and their own dimensions of success. Adopting a learning mindset allows for any mishap or failure to be viewed as a necessary precursor to change management, growth, and iteration.
The Denver Foundation measures success by how partners report the foundation’s funding makes a difference in helping them meet their mission, not on programmatic outcomes (which belong to the nonprofit partner).
The Denver Foundation takes a learning, rather than knowing, approach. The foundation asks partners in a regular feedback loop to understand their experience and whether we are amplifying their impact.
The Denver Foundation allows partners to set and report on their own metrics in their work, driven by what their constituents tell them is most important and most impactful in community.
Key questions: How do we satisfy stakeholders who want “hard numbers” and our defined impacts, while being true to our values around learning?
➡️ READ MORE about GEO’s approach to learning and evaluation in our Learning in Philanthropy: A Guidebook
➡️ ENGAGE WITH GEO by joining our Strategic Learners Network Quarterly Call on December 4 – 3:00 – 4:30 pm ET
Collaboration
This phase in our collective history has taught us a great deal of what’s missing in our movements to address systemic inequities. One truth has been reaffirmed: philanthropy cannot address the complex issues of our time on its own. Grantmakers will need to work together and beyond the walls of philanthropy to form meaningful multi-sector partnerships to truly influence systemic change. When we leverage joint resources and collaborate with other funders and nonprofit partners, we deepen relationships and the impact of our work. Funders can also support field-strengthening organizations, including capacity builders, network-weavers, intermediaries and nonprofit collaboratives, with more trusted reach in marginalized communities.
The Denver Foundation works closely with other funders, particularly around capacity building, grantmaking and impact investing. The foundation shares diligence, runs joint applications and is often a lead funder for emerging efforts that are later supported by larger funders in the community.
The Denver Foundation engages in policy and advocacy work at the state and local level and has dedicated staff in that role, working across sectors to create meaningful systems-level change.
The Denver Foundation supports capacity builders such as Philanthropy Colorado and Colorado Nonprofit Association. The foundation recently invested in a new initiative with the Colorado Nonprofit Association to expand legal support to nonprofits trying to understand executive orders, new laws, and the changing federal context.
Key questions: What new partnerships are needed as we weather these new and challenging times? How do we go deeper and make things even more streamlined for nonprofit partners?
➡️ READ MORE about GEO’s work on collaboration in What Mindset is Needed to Support Collaboration?
➡️ ENGAGE WITH GEO by joining our Embedding Effective Practice Remote Learning Series on September 30 – October 29
Culture and Change Management
The success of all of these practices hinges on a grantmaker’s internal operations and staff, which embody new ways of being and doing. The act of interrogating an internal culture is typically very challenging because norms and behaviors are hard to perceive over time, especially when those elements of the status quo benefit you or your colleagues. The positive and negative elements of your organization’s culture permeate beyond your staff’s experiences; grantees and community members can also palpably feel the practiced values of your organization through application processes, gatherings, interactions and reporting. “Culture not only eats strategy for breakfast,” but it can exacerbate distrust and power imbalances. When tended to with love and thoughtfulness, it can also be a great tool of co-creation, belonging and agency. Paying attention to culture (and the change management necessary to shift that culture) is imperative for lasting evolution of grantmaking practice and your staff’s ability to commit to practice change.
The Denver Foundation underwent major culture work when it decided to center racial equity in its strategic framework. The foundation spent two years working with a consultant and explicated its practices on a personal, interpersonal, institutional and systemic level. The foundation’s grantees are very aware of the foundation’s laser commitment to racial equity.
The Denver Foundation also developed a cultural framework and works with this framework constantly in mind. This focuses on collaboration, curiosity, respect, and trust. The foundation introduces people to the framework at orientation, actively works to embody it every day and measures progress annually to ensure it does even better.
Key questions: How do we continue to uphold our values and culture when the things we believe in most deeply are under serious and constant attack in this federal context?
➡️ READ MORE about the elements of internal culture in The Source Codes of Foundation Culture
➡️ ENGAGE WITH GEO by joining the Upleveling Governance: A Cohort for Foundation Trustees and CEOs role-based convening on September 17 – November 10
Grantmakers can have an effective response to this moment by having a strong analysis of their own power and privilege to address systemic oppression faced by the communities they serve. It’s not enough to just listen to grantees about what they need. Grantmakers need to take meaningful steps toward change. We know this work does not happen without pushback or pain, which is why the GEO community is here to support you to make these practice changes come alive within your day-to-day operations. We would like to connect you with the resources and peer-to-peer relationships needed to ensure that these changes are relevant and palpable within your context. The experiments and curiosities listed above demonstrate how much this work is iterative, ongoing, and incomplete. There are always more ways to use our creative autonomy in the sector to influence equitable change. You may be living these practices, or have questions of your own. Please reach out to GEO or The Denver Foundation to tell us what you’re grappling with, or how you’re changing practice as a grantmaker.
Jaser Alsharhan (he/him) is the Director of Programs overseeing cohort development and peer-to-peer programming at GEO. Prior to his role mobilizing philanthropy, he worked for academic institutions and nonprofits focusing on public health projects. He enjoys hiking, watercolor painting and giving back to diverse communities throughout his home state of Colorado.
Dace West (she/her) is the Chief Impact Officer at The Denver Foundation, where she oversees the Impact Group, which brings together all the foundation’s philanthropic activities from work with donors to nonprofit grantmaking. Prior to her work at the foundation, Dace held several leadership positions in the nonprofit and public sectors, working on social issues across the Denver Metro area.