Education  October 17, 2014

‘Community Capitalism’ takes off as G.Town wins new funding

G.Town Promise – an initiative of the city of Greeley, several local business and community leaders – has secured a $20,000 commitment from an area company to send 200 students to G.Town’s annual youth leadership summit.

Greeley city manager Roy Otto declined to identify the company until the deal is finalized. But the pledge is the first major victory in what G.Town organizers hope will be a long string of them as they ramp up fundraising to achieve G.Town’s  goals.

Spun out of the city’s Achieving Community Excellence initiative, G.Town is a general push to help Greeley and Evans high school students explore career opportunities and the tools needed to attend college. Specifically, the capstone goal of G.Town is to create a $3 million endowment to enhance the 7-year-old College Promise scholarship program started by local car dealer Scott Ehrlich.

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The initiative also includes several “building block” goals that help make the mission of College Promise more robust. These include:

• Gathering support from local businesses to provide at least 100 paid internships per year for local high school students;

• Raising $42,000 per year to provide year-round free bus for all kindergarten through 12th -grade students to encourage participation in extracurricular activities.

• Providing shadowing and mentorship opportunities for high school kids as well as the sponsorships to the youth leadership summit.

The goals are designed to boost Greeley’s human capital for the future by tapping into the idea of “community capitalism” – investing the wealth developed by successful businesses in advancing the community.

“You’re educating your workforce,” Otto said. “These are your people that are going to help you achieve the success that you want to see as a businessman or businesswoman.”

In addition to the youth leadership summit pledge, Otto said the city has committed to providing 20 of the 100 internships each year, and several business people have come forward to volunteer for the shadowing program since a G.Town launch event last month that drew 850 people. Tangible results of at least one initiative are already being seen. The busing program – which began this school year and is initially being funded by the city and school district – has already led to a 300-percent local ridership increase.

The G.Town Promise is an idea conceived by a group of 25 Greeley community and business leaders – including Otto and Ehrlich – who attended an Impact and Legacy Summit on leadership in Kalamazoo, Mich., in May. But its roots are in the broader Achieving Community Excellence, or ACE, program.

ACE started about three years ago after Otto reconnected with one of his college track coaches, former longtime Colorado State assistant Bob Parry. Together, they started a program to help develop coaches in the city’s recreational youth sports leagues. That eventually morphed into the city’s rec leagues filling a gap for the local middle schools, which had been forced to cut sixth and seventh grade athletics programs due to budget constraints.

ACE was expanded to include arts and leadership development programs. But ACE is more than just youth programs. It also includes relationship building in neighborhoods and thinking about how to achieve catalytic projects for the community, like building a new downtown hotel.

Otto says ACE isn’t any one thing but rather “a mindset that you need to work on aligning principled relationships toward a common goal.”

The trip to Kalamazoo was an idea floated to city council by Otto in the spirit of ACE. Otto’s charge to the local participants was twofold: to have a good time and build camaraderie, and also to select one “next step of excellence for Greeley.” The group ended each day at the conference by swapping notes on individual takeaways from the speakers as they related to Greeley.

The group came up with a list of about 25 potential next steps of excellence, which was narrowed down to 10. At the top was enhancing College Promise. But as Otto and others looked at the list, they realized many of the other pieces aligned with that goal and could help improve the outcomes of College Promise participants by helping kids discover what types of careers they were interested in pursuing after high school.

“Each and every one of those things are good, but they’re great when they’re connected to something that’s even bigger,” Otto said. “And that’s what you’re trying to do with ACE. You’re always looking for how you can give of yourself to something that’s bigger.”

College Promise was founded in 2007 as a way to help local high school graduates attain their associate’s degrees at Aims Community College. The program espouses a last-dollars-in philosophy. That means that applicants to the program are assisted in applying for any financial aid they might otherwise be eligible for first, and then College Promise helps fill those students’ funding gap for their first year at Aims.

City officials, businesses and other groups are focusing on raising cash to support free bus passes for Greeley’s K-12 students, high school internships and scholarships to Aims Community College. Jonathan Castner/For BizWest

Julie Buderus, executive director of the Aims Community College Foundation, oversees College Promise and said the program has been a key driver in fostering a relationship between Aims and local high school guidance counselors. But more importantly, the program has seen results.

Since it began disbursing funds in 2008, College Promise has raised more than $458,000 and disbursed nearly $350,000 in scholarships. About 475 students have enrolled at Aims under the program, receiving some combination of federal or state financial aid, College Promise dollars, and other scholarships. More than 200 have earned certificates or other credentials. Sixty-eight have earned their associate’s degrees, and 26 of those went on to other institutions to earn their bachelor’s degrees.

“That proves that it’s helping them to stay on track and stay in school,” Buderus said.

To date, College Promise has been raising funds year by year. The $3 million endowment, which G.Town is aiming to raise within five years, would provide more than $200,000 annually in scholarship funds. That would help the program expand to provide support for local high school graduates who wish to attend other colleges and universities in Colorado besides Aims, as well as provide renewable scholarships beyond students’ first year of college.

Ehrlich – who grew up in Greeley and now owns five car dealerships in town as well as one in Longmont and another in Fort Morgan – started College Promise because he cares deeply about the community. But from a business perspective, he said encouraging other leaders in the community to contribute to initiatives like G.Town only helps strengthen the economic health of the area in general.

“Maybe their customers and employees are more likely to want to live in Greeley or stay in Greeley if we continue to help provide a good community,” said Ehrlich, who started College Promise after a conversation he had with Colorado Rockies co-owner Charlie Monfort about the economic health of Greeley. “We need to retain and attract good companies. We need good government, and good government needs good revenue. And we need a better workforce with people earning better incomes.”

Raising a $3 million endowment in five years is an ambitious task in a city the size of Greeley. Julie Kron, executive director of the Success Foundation, a 5-year-old local non-profit that provides grants to local schools for things like providing students with iPads, said she welcomes G.Town, and thinks the various programs in town geared toward enriching the lives of youth can coexist.

“I think it is all of our intent that we figure out how it all fits together so we are not duplicating efforts and are maximizing all of the limited resources our community has,” said Kron, whose organization has been raising about $120,000 per year.

Once the goals of G.Town Promise are achieved, he’d like to see things like College Promise and other initiatives expanded beyond the Greeley and Evans borders to Weld County. And his hope for ACE in general is to look back 20 years from now and see not just the benefits of G.Town but other examples of community leaders banding together as well.

Otto isn’t shy about dreaming big and going after it. “My vision is basically this,” he said. “As soon as we get (G.Town) done, and we’re successful with that, you sit down with the same group of people, that hopefully now has even expanded, (and say) ‘What’s our next step of excellence?’”

G.Town Promise – an initiative of the city of Greeley, several local business and community leaders – has secured a $20,000 commitment from an area company to send 200 students to G.Town’s annual youth leadership summit.

Greeley city manager Roy Otto declined to identify the company until the deal is finalized. But the pledge is the first major victory in what G.Town organizers hope will be a long string of them as they ramp up fundraising to achieve G.Town’s  goals.

Spun out of the city’s Achieving Community Excellence initiative, G.Town is a general push to help…

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