• Inspiring Jewish teenagers to be involved in Jewish life
• Supporting refugees in adapting to life in Greater Denver and Boulder and becoming self-sufficient
• Supporting people who are homeless in becoming self-sufficient
• Supporting individuals with special needs in becoming self-sufficient

The grants were awarded at a celebration on May 6 for members of Rose Youth Foundation, their families and grant recipients. Since its inception in 2001, Rose Youth Foundation has granted $520,600 to organizations serving the seven-county Denver/Boulder community.

This was the 11th year of Rose Youth Foundation. This year’s group was comprised of 23 Jewish youth in grades 10 through 12 from 11 different schools, representing a wide range of Jewish backgrounds. Meeting since November 2011, the group studied Jewish philanthropic traditions, strategic philanthropy and community needs. In February, Rose Youth Foundation issued a Request for Proposals, which yielded 22 requests totaling $279,700. Rose Youth Foundation’s members reviewed the proposals, made site visits and reached decisions on which projects they would fund.

Following is a list of Rose Youth Foundation’s 2012 grants and descriptions of the projects for which the grant funds will be used. Locations indicate the organization’s headquarters, not necessarily the geographic area served.

African Community Center (Denver): $4,000 to establish a computer lab for refugee students. 

Colorado African Organization (Denver): $7,500 to provide onsite child care during adult ESL, computer literacy and social integration classes. 

Goodwill Industries of Denver (Denver): $4,500 to train and certify refugee women as doulas.

Jewish Family Service of Colorado (Denver): $10,000 to support citizenship classes for refugees.

Jewish Student Union (Port Chester, NY): $10,000 to support Jewish Student Union clubs in Denver-area high schools.

Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains (Denver): $5,000 to support job training and placement for young adult refugees.

Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center (Denver): $7,000 to create a community-wide art initiative organized for and by Jewish teens.

SHALOM Denver (Denver): $6,000 to develop employment sites for groups of individuals with special needs. SHALOM Denver is a division of Jewish Family Service of Colorado.

Warren Village (Denver): $6,000 to support homeless families with secure housing, early childhood education, case management and adult education.

Jewish youth who will be in grades 10  through 12 in the 2012-2013 academic year, and who are interested in participating in Rose Youth Foundation, can visit rcfdenver.org/RYF, or contact Sarah Indyk at 303.398.7416 to learn more. View a list of 2011-2012 members.

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“Howard and Carol Boigon, each in their own way, exemplify Jewish leadership today,” said Rick Kornfeld, chair of the JCRC. “Howard has demonstrated his dedication to Jewish community locally, nationally and internationally and has been a tireless supporter of JCRC and our efforts.” Kornfeld went on to say, “Carol Boigon is a trailblazer for policies affecting children, families and education here in Colorado. A long-time public official, Carol has often been an important voice of the Jewish community and instrumental in educating others about the Jewish perspective on the issues. We are thrilled to have the privilege of honoring both Howard and Carol Boigon this year.”

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Howard Boigon

Howard L. Boigon is a partner in the Denver office of Hogan Lovells, a global law firm.  His practice focuses on oil and gas and energy, both domestic and international.  Recently he has spent considerable time assisting a Colorado-based client in the acquisition and exploration of oil and gas licenses offshore Israel. Mr. Boigon is the immediate past chair of the Colorado chapter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (“AIPAC”), and is a member of AIPAC’s National Council.  He has served on the Israel/ National/Overseas Board of Federation and on JCRC. Other community activities include current service on the board of Energy Outreach Colorado and Civic Center Conservancy.  He tutors a third-grade class at Cheltenham Elementary School in west Denver.  He is a past member of the Board of Trustees of Temple Emanuel and reads Torah there on a regular basis.  He is also a past board member of AJC Colorado and is a past president and current board member of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.

Carol Boigon

Carol Boigon’s extensive professional, volunteer and educational background reflects her long-time commitment to the children and families of Denver. Ms. Boigon was elected to Denver City Council in May 2003 and served eight years where she represented the entire City. She chaired or co-chaired the Government Affairs and Finance committees and was a member of the Health, Safety, Education, & Services committee. She was a founding board member of the Denver Preschool Program and a member of Colorado State Board of Human Services. She is immediate past chair of Great Education Colorado. Formerly, Ms. Boigon served as the first executive director of the Mayor’s Office for Education and Children, where she created and ran Denver Head Start, started a school-to-career program in every Denver public middle school, and provided literacy grants to local community coalitions. Ms. Boigon has been a reading teacher and newspaper reporter. She served in the administrations of Gov. Roy Romer, and Mayor Wellington E. Webb.

The cost to attend the luncheon is $50 per person.  For more information or to make a reservation, please contact the events department at events@ajfcolorado.org or 303.316.6466. Reservations may also be made online at www.jewishcolorado.org/jcrcluncheon.

About the Jewish Community Relations Council

The mission of the JCRC is to advocate for domestic and international policy issues that affect the Colorado Jewish community, to represent these views to the Jewish community and to the general community of Colorado, and to organize the Jewish community in times of crisis. JCRC consists of 37 member organizations in Colorado and is affiliated with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA).

Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado

Founded in 1946, the Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado’s mission is to build and sustain Jewish life in Colorado, Israel and around the world.  As a proud member of the Jewish Federations of North America, which is among the top ten charities in North America, Federation raises and allocates funds to a wide variety of partner agencies and organizations in Colorado, Israel and in more than 60 countries worldwide.  Last year, Federation’s annual campaign raised $10.1 million.  Federation’s endowment arm, the Jewish Community Foundation, houses more than $40 million in long term assets for individuals, agencies and synagogues in the community.  For more information, visit us at www.ajfcolorado.org.

Although these might be interesting and important points that enhance stakeholders’ comfort with an expanded view of corporate citizenship, for some business executives they are not the raison d’être for making social investments in the communities in which they operate.

Kent Thiry, chairman and chief executive of DaVita, is one of those executives. With headquarters in Denver, DaVita is an international provider of kidney dialysis services with 42,000 employees, serving 142,000 patients a week, with 18 million treatments a year. Net revenue for 2011 totaled nearly $7 billion.

Although Thiry is aware of the business case for corporate philanthropy, that is not his motivation for leading a company with a core commitment to community investment and active corporate citizenship. Rather, Thiry thinks “companies can be an amazing and formidable force for good without sacrificing capitalist goals” and encourages DaVita’s employees and his peers to “use social innovation to harness market forces along with philanthropy to solve the scale of the social problems we face.”

Businesses, working alongside nonprofit groups and government, bring unparalleled resources to address pressing community needs in health, education, environment, housing, poverty, employment and equity.

DaVita’s philanthropic initiatives include employee volunteerism, corporate donations, support of kidney-disease awareness and education initiatives. In an employee-driven community investment program called “DaVita Way of Giving,” more than 600 DaVita clinics across the country select locally focused charities to receive more than $1 million in combined contributions. By empowering employees with the responsibility of selecting local charities to support, DaVita creates a sense of pride and ownership in the company. Observing the pride DaVita employees have in their company, Thiry quips, “No one ever washes a rental car.”

Thiry says companies choose between being “residents” of the communities in which they operate and being participating “citizens.” As DaVita’s leader, he asserts that “no community is self-sustaining” and that it is “not reasonable to expect communities to be business friendly, if the businesses that operate there are not community friendly.” Contending that “business decisions are profoundly and inherently moral,” Thiry encourages companies to invest in their internal and external communities.

There are many resources for business leaders who wish to expand their roles as corporate citizens. The Corporate Community Investment Network is a Colorado-based organization comprised of local professionals who have primary responsibility for managing community investment programs for businesses.

The Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy is a large and impressive network of global CEOs committed to corporate philanthropy that highlights “best practices” and provides resources to corporations.

Boston College’s Center for Corporate Citizenship offers excellent training in the field of business philanthropy. A Billion Plus Change is a national campaign to inspire the largest commitment of corporate skills-based and pro bono services to nonprofits ever. The Council on Foundations has a division specifically focused on corporate grant makers.

Thiry leads a Fortune 500 company that strives to be a good corporate citizen, rather than merely a resident, of the many communities across the U.S. and beyond in which it operates. Thiry opines: “Most human beings want to be part of a team that is trying to do something that’s good for the world” and promotes business philanthropy and responsible corporate citizenship not merely for their business justifications, but “because it’s the right thing to do.”

This article originally appeared in the Denver Post on 4/22/12, and is posted here with permission of the author.

Bruce DeBoskey, of the DeBoskey Group

Bruce DeBoskey, principal of the DeBoskey Group and a BJN contributor, joined Boulder Jewish News’ supporter group this week.  BJN caught up with Bruce just before Passover for one of our “4 Questions” interviews about creating a consultancy around philanthropy.

1. You were a Colorado lawyer for 25 years and then became the Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League. Why did you then become a Philanthropic Advisor? How did that prior experience prepare you for this work?

As ADL’s Regional Director I had the challenge of raising money to support our work. Although individuals, families, businesses and foundations made donations for different reasons, I learned they often were disorganized and not strategic about their philanthropy. As a trial lawyer I had learned about strategy, confidentiality and fiduciary duties. As a nonprofit executive, I learned about how the nonprofit sector works – and doesn’t work. As a Philanthropic Advisor, I use those experiences to help individuals, families, businesses and foundations organize, strategize and maximize the impact of their philanthropic investments.

2. Explain a typical engagement. What should a person, family, business or foundation expect?

The first step is to ascertain and understand the reasons why the client chooses to be philanthropic. Then, utilizing different methodologies, we determine which style of philanthropy (traditional, venture, transformational, etc.) the client is most comfortable with, and the causes or issues they wish to address. If it is a business, we ascertain whether employee engagement and volunteering is a part of the overall philanthropic initiative, who their customers are, and in what ways their business might impact, or be impacted by, social issues. Then, we develop a strategy to achieve the client’s goals, and metrics and other evaluation tools to help determine the impact of their approach. For businesses, we work to align their philanthropic goals with their other business objectives. We help clients view their philanthropy as a social investment…and help them achieve the return on that investment – for themselves and the people or causes they wish to help.

3. Is there a particularly Jewish perspective you bring to the work? Does that fly even with non-Jewish clients?

Although the teachings of Tikkun Olam (“to repair the world”), Tzedek Tzedek Tirdoff (“Justice, Justice shall you pursue”), and Tzedakah (“Charity”) are Jewish values that motivate and inspire me in my work, such values are universal and appeal to people of all faiths or none.

4. How do you know when things are really clicking -or not- with clients?

When successful people bring their business and other skills to bear upon their philanthropy, it is an entirely different experience that goes beyond the act of writing a check. When parents engage their children, young or grown, in meaningful conversations about money, philanthropy and legacy, families develop new bonds and discover shared values about their place in the world and their ability to make a difference together. When foundations focus on a mission and develop strategies to achieve it and tools to evaluate their efforts, their ability to have an impact soars. And when business leaders understand that the ultimate profitability and success of their business depends upon their participation in creating healthy, safe, educated, inclusive and life sustaining communities, everybody wins.

Thank you Bruce, for supporting the Boulder Jewish News.

Relay for Life is a fundraising event for the American Cancer Society. The American Cancer Society not only helps those who have have already been diagnosed with cancer, but also invests in finding a cure. The Relay for Life event requires one member from each team to walk on the track inside the Rec Center all night long. This exemplifies the idea that “cancer never sleeps, so for one night neither will we.”

As of April 4th, two Jewish organizations on campus are in the top three fundraising teams. Sorority, Sigma Rho Lambda, and fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi, hold the second and third place respectively. This year, I will be walking and participating on AEPi’s team.

Donations, of any amount, would be greatly appreciated. To donate to Relay for Life, please click HERE. Thank you very much for your support.

Devon Schad, YAD Director at AJF, calling on Super Sunday

March 11^th phones across Colorado rang during Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado’s (Federation) annual phone-a-thon, Super Sunday. In addition to the traditional calling sessions, Federation offered a special bonus to the agency that closed the most donors during Super Sunday and Monday. This added incentive brought many local agencies and their devoted staff and volunteers out to the event and heightened the excitement in the room. It was with gusto and enthusiasm that the winner of this bonus, Denver Academy of Torah (DAT), closed 104 donors during the calling! Congratulations DAT!

The Denver Academy of Torah community is passionate about Jewish day school education and about Jewish community in general,” said Rachel Rabinovitch, President of Denver Academy of Torah. “We were thrilled to work together as a team on Super Sunday (and Super Monday) in support of the Allied Jewish Federation and the wider Jewish community! It was not only rewarding, but a lot of fun.”

BBYO Teens Calling On Super Sunday

More than 40 teenagers from BBYO joined the calling in the afternoon on Sunday. Their enthusiasm was infectious and really got the room charged up. Robyn Loup, Co-Chair of Super Sunday said,

Bob and I loved making calls with the BBYO teens. It was such a joy with their positive energy, sincerity and fun attitudes! Super Sunday, as a whole, had great energy and was well executed by staff and lay leadership.”

In the evening, the young adults took over and during their “Smile and Dial Happy Hour,” made an incredible amount of phone calls and assisted the Federation to meet the goals. The different organizations, passionate about their fields, were able to put a human voice behind the work Federation supports.

There were over 230 volunteers present and many represented these agencies: BBYO, DAT, Kabbalah Experience, Jewish Experience Teens, Yeshiva Toras Chaim, Hillel of Colorado students, JConnect—Hebrew Educational Alliance, Chabad of Colorado, CAJE, Denver Jewish Day School, Robert E. Loup JCC, B’nai Akiva, Allied Jewish Senior Apartments, Anti-Defamation League, Stepping Stones, Keshet—GLBT, BMH-BJ, and Colorado Hebrew Chorale.

Overall, Super Sunday was able to raise over $250,000 from over 530 donors! But Federation is not stopping there. Federation staff and dedicated volunteers will continue to contact members of our community in the hope of ending the 2012 Annual Campaign on a high note.

Super Sunday is an incredible momentum builder in the middle of the campaign year,” said Amy Toltz-Miller, Federation’s Annual Campaign Chair. “We did amazing work around the JFNA General Assembly and now we are bringing the community back together to close the Campaign with flair.”

Federation is hoping to increase donations in the non-restricted/allocable category. The Flagship Fund is the cornerstone, enabling Federation to assist local agencies to complete their fundraising goals for critical community programs and services. Additionally, it funds Federation programming like the Young Adult Department (YAD), the legislative arm of Federation – Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), and communal events like Federation’s upcoming Israel Memorial Day event, Yom Ha’Zikaron.

Federation would like to thank all of the dedicated donors who have given in the 2012 campaign but there is still time to get your donation in! Go to AJFColorado.org for more details.

Bruce DeBoskey of the DeBoskey Group

Venture capital takes financial capital and expertise and provides it to high-potential, high-risk, startup businesses. Venture philanthropy uses the same approach and applies it to philanthropic donations in the nonprofit or social enterprise sector.  Both VC and VP involve a commitment of time and resources, carry a high degree of risk and can produce outsized returns.

Many people think of charitable donations as social investments.  Just like business investments, charitable social investments come in different varieties for different types of investors.  Some donations to nonprofit organizations are like investing in bonds: They involve low risk and generate more conservative social returns.  Many charitable organizations do excellent and important work, and such donations produce meaningful and largely predictable results.

Venture philanthropy, on the other hand, is more like investing in hedge funds: The risks are greater and the potential for outsized social returns and impact from the donation is enormous.  As a philanthropist, you can evaluate your risk tolerance and determine which types of philanthropy work best for you.

There are many examples of successful VP.  The Growald Family Fund, with others, made a relatively small donation to a startup nonprofit initiative called Beyond Coal that recently received a $50 million grant from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to help the U.S. create a clean-energy future.  The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation has generated big social returns by providing funding and business mentoring to 38 early-stage, high-impact nonprofits.

In 1997, George Roberts, the founder of leveraged buyout firm KKR, established the nonprofit VP fund REDF generating thousands of jobs and producing millions of dollars of social-enterprise income for nonprofits.  The Acumen Fund is a global nonprofit VP fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.  In its first decade, Acumen invested $73 million in 65 enterprises that serve the poor.  Social Venture Partners with 25 nonprofit affiliates across the U.S., Canada and Japan, including in Denver and Boulder, combines financial contributions and professional skills to strengthen the capacity and effectiveness of local nonprofits.  New Profit Inc. is a nonprofit VP fund that invests in innovative nonprofit organizations with the potential to create significant, long-term impact on the social mobility of low-income Americans.

Venture philanthropy often involves:

•  More due diligence than typical charitable donations.
•  An emphasis on capacity building for the nonprofit recipient.
•  The potential that a small social investment will allow the nonprofit to scale its impact to reach a much larger group of beneficiaries and attract much larger donations.
• Heavier involvement by the venture philanthropist, more akin to a partnership and often including board service.
• Specific goals, benchmarks and metrics for the nonprofit to achieve.
• An exit strategy for the venture philanthropist when sustainability and scale have been attained.

Joanna Messing, president of Positive Ventures, a VP advisory firm, cautions that there are several pitfalls for the VP investor to be aware of:

• The risks are greater than traditional philanthropy, and there might not be any return on the social investment. In other words, the donation could produce lackluster results or even fail in achieving its goals.
• VP is potentially more time-consuming than traditional philanthropy.
• Unless you are comfortable taking high risk with your philanthropy, VP should be part of a broader and diversified social-investment portfolio, to balance risk and continue to sustain proven nonprofits.

Messing observes:

Through a focused, researched and strategic approach, it is possible for VP to create real leverage and social change along with a deep sense of satisfaction and passion.”

You don’t need to be wealthy to be a venture philanthropist. Rather, by making strategic social investments on your own, or by pooling your resources with others by donating to venture-philanthropy funds, you can have an enormous impact on our nation’s and the world’s most challenging social problems.

This post originally appeared in the Denver Post on March 18th, 2012.  The author has re-posted here with permission.

This piece originally appeared on March 1, 2012 in EJewishPhilanthropy at

“Anything can be Jewish giving.” This comment caught my eye as I thumbed through feedback forms from teen members of Rose Youth Foundation following a recent meeting. It gave me pause. Actually, it set off my internal alarm bell.

Exploring what it means to give Jewishly is a core component of Rose Youth Foundation. Each year, 23 teenaged participants in the program are charged with the responsibility of granting $60,000 to help solve community problems they identify in Greater Denver and Boulder. While the grantmaking process and funding decisions are entirely in the hands of the teens, there are a couple of rules.

First, they must grant all of the money. Second, their grantmaking must support nonprofits serving Greater Denver and Boulder. Finally, they have to make grants that are primarily Jewish in nature – and in order to do so, the 16-, 17-, and 18-year old participants must grapple with the question, “What is Jewish philanthropy?”

The answer or answers determine the impact of the group’s grantmaking, but the process of answering the question provides a unique opportunity to explore the intersections of Jewish and personal values, community need and communal responsibility, thousand-year-old teachings and contemporary issues.

By giving teens the freedom to define Jewish philanthropy for themselves, on their own terms, we seek to send the message that there are no right or wrong answers and that discussing and deeply understanding the question is more important than arriving at any one particular answer. Yet I worried that this member’s conclusion that “anything can be Jewish giving” meant that we were somehow missing the mark and opening the door to facile conclusions. Was this an unconsidered answer? Or a thoughtful and powerful one?

In a recent eJewish Philanthropy piece, Richard Marker described a tension between philanthropic support for the universal, the world of issues and needs beyond the Jewish community, and for the particular, the smaller world of issues and needs within Jewish communities. He concluded that both are essential.

Year after year, teens who take part in Rose Youth Foundation express this same conclusion in their grantmaking, choosing to fund both the universal and the particular.

To say that “anything can be Jewish giving” is an embrace of the universal, but not necessarily a denial of the particular. The Jewish tradition has a lot to say about philanthropy. A wide range of teachings outline our responsibilities to our families, our communities, humanity and the world we inhabit. Other texts provide direction for how and how much we should give. Judaism gives us so many directions about where, how and to whom we give, that we can see our Jewish responsibility to repair the world everywhere we see need.

That our youngest philanthropists, a generation already marked by their commitment to service and social justice, would view any giving they do, any service they engage in – and we know it’s a lot – as Jewish philanthropy, means that Judaism is infusing their lives in a profound and all-encompassing way. It is not just a piece of their identity they dip in and out of depending on where they are, who they are with and what they are doing.

But if “anything can be Jewish giving,” then maybe there is no such thing as Jewish philanthropy. It is easy to imagine the particular quickly becoming subsumed by the universal. Perhaps, but consider these examples of how Rose Youth Foundation members have applied Jewish teachings to make grants that are “primarily Jewish” over the last 11 years:

• Guided by the responsibility to “ … open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor, to your needy, in your land,” (Deuteronomy 15:11) they have chosen to fund support and services for people who are homeless.
• Because of our history of displacement and persecution, and the directive that “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt,” (Leviticus: 19:34) they have funded programs that help refugees resettled in Colorado adapt to their new communities.
• Inspired by Maimonides’ teaching that the highest level of tzedakah is to aid someone in becoming self-sufficient, they have supported education reform efforts, specifically those that empower students to advocate for educational improvements and change in their own schools.

And at the same time, every year for the past 11 years, they have embraced the particular, alongside these universal causes. Every single group of Rose Youth Foundation members has set as a grant priority support for compelling programs that help Jewish teenagers connect to and find meaning in Jewish life. In fact, it is the only funding priority that has been consistent over the life of the program.

Truth be told, there are always young people in the group who ask, “How can we fund programs for Jewish teens when there are people sleeping on the street and it is our responsibility, as Jews, to support those with the greatest needs in our community?” But there are always others who answer, “Funding programs to connect people to Judaism will help ensure there are always people who, like us, feel a responsibility to care for those who have the greatest needs.”

From the teen members of Rose Youth Foundation, I have learned not just that the universal and the particular are both essential components of Jewish philanthropy, I have also learned that considering them in opposition to one another – as two separate choices – creates a false dichotomy.

They are two sides of the Jewish philanthropy coin, or two points on a continuous feedback loop.

Supporting the explicitly Jewish cause of creating compelling pathways to Jewish life leads to more people serving as Jewish champions of universal needs and as advocates for Jewish engagement too. At the same time, funding to address universal needs through a lens of Jewish values and tradition can serve as a powerful, illuminating and reinforcing expression of one’s Judaism.