Broomfield Community Foundation celebrates 30 years of philanthropy

Corbett Stevenson, Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.
·4 min read

Jul. 11—Thirty years ago, Craig Johnson, Anne Crouse and David Smith met at one of Broomfield's local Italian restaurants, Papa Frank's, for a business meeting that would change the future of the city and county of Broomfield.

With the help of fellow founder Jack TerHar Jr., the group of Broomfield locals took the first steps to start the Broomfield Community Foundation. Decades later, the foundation is the leading philanthropic organization in the county.

"My intent was to be able to have a foundation that could immediately provide financial aid to those in need in the community. And also the entire community would become members of the foundation by a small donation, trying to build community support for it," Johnson said.

Since its inception, the foundation has done just that — providing aid to community members, businesses and nonprofit organizations.

"I've done a lot of things in the community over the years ... but this is one thing that is near and dear to my heart, something I'm very proud of," Johnson said.

Although the foundation began as a traditional community foundation, managing grants and funds for local nonprofits, it has spent decades evolving further into a multifaceted organization deeply rooted in the community.

The foundation hosts a variety of events, but one of the most well-known and longstanding is the Heart of Broomfield Awards.

In partnership with the Broomfield Enterprise, the awards aim to recognize important community members who have dedicated their time to philanthropy and growing the community. Winners of the award range from individuals helping immigrant families adjust to their new lives to the farmers market for providing the community with local produce.

This year will mark the 22nd annual Heart of Broomfield Awards, scheduled to take place in September.

In addition to the awards, one of the most well-known endeavors of the Broomfield Community Foundation is the iGive365 program. Through this program, community members are encouraged to give $1 a day, or $365 a year, to the foundation. Money from this program is then pooled together and distributed to nonprofits throughout Broomfield.

"It's a fund where 100% of the money donated is given away; there's no administrative cost to it," said Dave Manley, a former foundation board member with longstanding ties to the community.

One of the larger projects the foundation has taken on is that of the Legacy Fund. This fund is a permanent endowment, where the principal amount of the fund remains intact and the investment earned on the funds is used to aid nonprofits in the area.

The Legacy Fund was established in 1999, when at one of the foundations large events, TerHar Jr. of Sill-TerHar Motors along with Wells Fargo Bank, Aerosuds, Shirron, Inc. and Vectra Bank Colorado announced that they would be issuing a challenge to the Broomfield community to match their $145,000 pledge to start the permanent endowment for the foundation.

The Legacy Challenge, as it was called, ended in 2001, when 283 small businesses and families contributed $157,000 to beat the challenge. By 2013, the Legacy Fund reached a total of $1 million and 4% of its annual earnings are used to support nonprofits in the community.

Through the years, the foundation has continued its mission to support the Broomfield community. Although much has changed in the 30 years since the foundation's founding, much of the core mission has remained the same.

"I think at its core there hasn't been much change. The core of the foundation has been to pool contributions from community members, businesses and organizations and distribute those funds in the form of grants to nonprofits that serve Broomfield," said Lisa Herman, the president of the board of directors who has been working with the foundation in some capacity since 2006.

"At its core, it hasn't changed, but it's certainly evolved as the community has evolved," she added. "At the root of it, we're still very similar to the mission that was created 30 years ago."

In those 30 years, the foundation has distributed $4,367,153 of grant funding, with more than $1.5 million distributed within the last five years. It has also distributed $512,955 of scholarship money, more than $200,000 of which was distributed within the last five years.

"On the surface, Broomfield looks like a thriving community, but there's a lot of need that some residents don't often see or know about. And we hope to shed light on some of those organizations and programs that do give back to the community in ways that the residents might not know about," Herman said.