17 Grantee Partners Demonstrate Benefits of Cash Assistance Entering Year 3
WINcome Evidence Clear As Year 3 Begins: 17 Grant Partners Continue to Demonstrate Benefits of Cash Assistance
“The WINcome grant placed a lot of trust in organizations like ours without having to determine how that aid should be spent. Gave women and organizations agency around the decisions of this program. When a foundation allows this sort of latitude, both our organization and our clients benefit.” – WINcome grant partner during focus group
WFCO Grants Over $2,800,000 to WINcome Partners In Three Years
Since 2021, WINcome grant partners have demonstrated that with flexible cash assistance, women progress toward achieving their personal, economic security goals. As we enter the third year of WINcome, we are thrilled to share the incredible impact 17 WINcome grantee partners have in their communities and throughout Colorado.
This year, WFCO granted over $900,000 to WINcome grant partners working in 36 counties across the state, and several partners working statewide. The grand total for WINcome grantmaking since 2021 reached over $2,800,000. Direct-service grant partners pair cash assistance with holistic services to the women and gender expansive people in their communities, such as employment education and training, entrepreneurship resources, and support for meeting basic needs. WINcome public policy grant partners advocate for systems change to improve access and increase public investment in flexible cash assistance. See the list of 2023 grant partners below.
WINcome Evaluation Data Show Benefits of Cash Assistance
WINcome’s Year 1 Evaluation results showed the clear benefits of cash assistance on the advancement of women and gender expansive individuals participating in cash assistance programs, and on the grant partners distributing the funds. In WINcome Year 2, WFCO again partnered with Point b(e) Strategies to evaluate the grant’s effectiveness in meeting its nine, grant partner-driven outcomes. The results are strikingly similar to year one for cash assistance participants — 95% of participants agreed that cash assistance through WINcome is having a significantly positive impact on meeting their personal goals.
Support Beyond the Individual
The top three uses of cash assistance relate to meeting basic needs and averting emergencies, and include rent, mortgage, housing; transportation or car expenses; and home expenses. Participants shared how the cash is not only supporting them, but also their entire families and communities. This further underscores what we have known all along – only good happens when women have more money. As the graphic illustrates, when cash is distributed to a participant, they can focus on achieving safe and secure housing along with reliable transportation. This ripples out into their community, providing a stable home environment for their family and increased opportunities for employment. It’s what we call the Ripple Effect of WINcome.
WINcome Year 2 Evaluation Seeks Grant Partner Feedback around Partnership
The WINcome Year 2 Evaluation also illuminated the experience of WINcome grant partner organizations and their relationship with WFCO. The results show WINcome’s continued positive impact on organizations and opportunities for The Foundation to support grantee partners further. 92% of partners agree that WINcome funding increased their ability to meet community needs either to a great extent or quite a bit and further themes of extending trust to participants, and providing cash assistance without restrictions continue to be highlights grant partners see in this work. Partners also shared specific improvement recommendations for WFCO, such as continuing to amplify their work, sharing the WINcome funding model with other funders, and hosting further peer learning opportunities. We are grateful to our grantee partners for sharing this invaluable feedback. We are eager to address both immediate questions and long-term considerations.
Reconnect with our 17 WINcome grantee partners and learn about the incredible work they are leading in our state.
WINcome Year 3 Grantee Partners
9to5 Colorado
9to5 Colorado, a chapter of a national organization, led the coalition effort of the implementation of FAMLI, Colorado’s statewide Paid Family Medical Leave (PFML) insurance program which began in January 2024. This will continue to be a focus area for 9to5 in the final year of WINcome, along with advancing renters’ rights and affordable housing, transportation, and expanding their climate justice advocacy. You can read more about 9to5’s leadership within the passing of FAMLI by reading our interview with 9to5 Colorado’s senior organizer, Kaitlin Altone. WFCO also partnered with 9to5 to strengthen our state’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act.
Headquarters: Milwaukee
Location: Denver
Serving: Counties statewide
Action Is Safer
Action Is Safer supports Black, Indigenous, and people of color who hold additional intersectional identities, including various gender and disability statuses, with ongoing cash assistance and mutual aid support. Support has included helping individuals get to food banks/trucks, taking food to individuals who cannot leave their homes, and ensuring individuals can stay housed as the rising cost of living in these areas of Colorado continues to soar. In most cases, individuals participating in the cash assistance through Action Is Safer cannot find, or safely access, support through other avenues.
Headquarters: Grand Junction
Serving: Delta, Dolores, Eagle, Garfield, Grand, Gunnison, Hinsdale, La Plata, Mesa, Moffat, Montezuma, Montrose, Ouray, Pitkin, Rio Blanco, Routt, San Juan, San Miguel, Summit, Archuleta, Mineral, and Saguache counties
Alianza NORCO
Alianza NORCO assists women with cash aid to access various legal services, including filing for a U Visa (for victims of crimes), asylum, and naturalization, through its own on-site Immigration Legal Services center. The process of obtaining work authorizations and documented status is long and costly, and Alianza NORCO continues to fill in gaps for individuals working to advance their economic goals while in need of this necessary documentation.
Headquarters: Fort Collins
Serving: Larimer and Weld counties
Center for Community Wealth Building (CCWB)
CCWB primarily distributes cash assistance to participants in their Family Business Preservation Program. Participants of the cash assistance all identify as Spanish-speaking women entrepreneurs who are working to strengthen their business operations, grow their business, and ensure their legacy by creating a plan to eventually transfer ownership of their business to family, employees, or community members. You can hear from three entrepreneurs share their story of participating in cash assistance and from Yessica Holguin, CCWB’s executive director, by watching this video.
Headquarters: Denver
Serving: Adams, Arapahoe, and Denver counties
Center for Work Education & Employment (CWEE)
CWEE provides cash assistance to all of their Steps to Success participants. This program is designed for CWEE participants who have gained employment, but are experiencing the negative impacts of the Benefits Cliff; the distressful situation where an increase in income or assets can tip someone over the public assistance income eligibility limits, leaving them with not enough to cover their basic needs, but too much to qualify for assistance. WINcome cash assistance is utilized to alleviate the impacts of this cliff.
Headquarters: Denver
Serving: Arapahoe and Denver counties
Centro De La Familia
Centro De La Familia’s WINcome work supports women-headed households living at or below the poverty line with emergency cash assistance to fulfill basic needs, including securing transportation, rent assistance, medical bills, and helping women escaping abusive relationships. Centro offers this support to the Latinx community along with culturally and linguistically responsive mental health services, navigation support of the criminal legal system, and navigation support of other American systems, such as public education and public transportation.
Headquarters: Colorado Springs
Serving: El Paso and Teller counties
Clayton Early Learning
WINcome funds have been utilized to support the Clayton Community Ambassador Program, an initiative for Clayton parents, educators, staff, members of their campus community, and neighbors in their surrounding community to grow their leadership skills to advocate at all levels for systems change that improves families wellbeing and the state of early childhood education. Recently, the ambassadors led Clayton to prioritize a bill that would make the phone calls made to those who are incarcerated free of charge. Ambassadors identified how families were directly impacted by the high cost of these calls, so much that many families had to make the decision between calling their loved ones and sending their children to childcare. Ambassadors will continue leading the policy advocacy of Clayton Early Learning.
Headquarters: Denver
Serving: Counties statewide
Collaborative Healing Initiative within Communities (CHIC)
CHIC provides stipends to women participating in their construction and trades pre-apprenticeship cohorts. Sixty-eight percent of the women identify as Black or African American and close to 20% identify as Latina, Native American, or Multiracial. Common uses for the cash assistance are work-related attire needs for their new employment opportunities, as well as covering emergency expenses. Many women working with CHIC to secure gainful employment are also faced with the challenges of accessing affordable and stable housing, and some of the stipends have been used for general rent assistance and payment for storage units. CHIC also leads Justice for Black Coloradans and Educational Justice for Black Coloradans, which are leading a Racial Equity Study bill in 2024 to better understand the lasting effects of slavery and how ongoing and systematic racism continue to negatively impact Black Coloradans.
Headquarters: Aurora
Serving: Arapahoe and Denver counties
Colorado Center on Law and Policy (CCLP)
CCLP’s policy advocacy work in WINcome is guided by three different lenses: Benefits Cliff mitigation and elimination, Colorado Works/TANF implementation (the state’s cash assistance public benefit), and the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). CCLP has joined communities across the state in the fight against poverty by advocating for increased CTCs and EITCs, and Colorado Works and Benefits Cliff reform. In the 2023 legislative session, CCLP successfully led HB23-1126: Medical Debt Credit Reporting Protections, which effectively stops medical debt from being included on credit reports, among other consumer protections.
Headquarters: Denver
Serving: Counties statewide
Colorado Children’s Campaign
The Colorado Children’s campaign led efforts on the implementation of the recently established Department of Early Childhood and the beginning of Universal Preschool in Colorado. Their continued leadership in the Growing Our Future Coalition has supported many key family and provider voices from across the state in being part of this implementation work, while also shaping future advocacy efforts. Alongside their early childhood engagement, the Colorado Children’s Campaign is also leading on key policies to advance family economic security including co-convening the Colorado Cash Assistance Policy Working Group with WFCO and other partners.
Headquarters: Denver
Serving: Counties statewide
Colorado Fiscal Institute (CFI)
In 2023, CFI successfully led a coalition that expanded Colorado’s CTC and EITC (HB23-1112), and expanded outreach efforts to ensure more employees know about the federal EITC, the state EITC, the federal CTC, and the state CTC by way of their employers (HB23-1006). Looking forward, CFI plans to defend and advocate for permanent expansions of these critical tax credits along with taking a leadership role in the Colorado Cash Assistance Policy Working Group with WFCO and other partners.
Headquarters: Denver
Serving: Counties statewide
Denver Indian Family Resource Center (DIFRC)
DIFRC supports American Indian and Alaska Native families who are navigating child welfare cases, or are at-risk for involvement in the child welfare system, by offering case management services with supplemental cash assistance to that fills in gaps to cover basic needs or emergency expenses. All of the families served by DIFRC are below 300% of the Federal Poverty Level. Much of the cash assistance helps families reunite and stabilize after separation.
Headquarters: Denver
Serving: Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, El Paso, Fremont, Jefferson and Weld counties
Full Circle of Lake County
Full Circle distributes cash assistance via monthly, unrestricted payments to Latina women with children/dependents or who are currently pregnant and participating in their family resource center’s Family Goal Planning Program. In addition to the cash assistance, women participate in monthly check-ins with Full Circle to discuss their goal plan. You can read more about how WINcome cash assistance helped participants Belem and Lina alleviate financial burdens that are associated with living in a Colorado mountain town, and watch Belem’s interview with Colorado’s CBS News about how she makes ends meet.
Headquarters: Leadville
Serving: Lake County
Posada
In their WINcome work, Posada is providing women and their children housing resources and supportive case management paired with cash assistance. The main uses of cash have been transportation-related costs, rental and utility assistance, and education assistance (e.g. tuition payments.) Posada is keenly aware that many of their clients have other public benefits which are at risk if they received even a small amount of cash assistance. Because of the potential for Benefits Cliff, Posada works with each participant individually to determine if gift cards or payments to third-parties (e.g. landlords, retail stores, utility companies) would support the individual without tipping them over the cliff.
Headquarters: Pueblo
Serving: Pueblo County
The Bell Policy Center
The Bell Policy Center’s work in public spending, the care economy, closing equity gaps, and telling the economic story of Colorado has led them to dive deeper into more community engagement work by partnering with various direct service and other community organizations to center those most impacted in their overall approach to changing and improving systems. In the final year of WINcome, they will continue to deepen their focus on the care economy and monitor the implementation and protection of many bills they led in recent legislative sessions, including financial empowerment, consumer protection, and age discrimination bills.
Headquarters: Denver, CO
Serving: Counties statewide
The Gathering Place (TGP)
TGP’s WINcome cash assistance has supported majority Black, Indigenous, and women of color, transgender and non-binary individuals, and their children who are experiencing poverty and/or experiencing homelessness. Funds are distributed to TGP’s members–individuals TGP works with–as they are accessing general resource navigation and housing access services. The most common requests for cash aid include rental assistance, temporary storage units, car repairs and other transportation-related costs, and costs associated with accessing vital documents (e.g. identification cards).
Headquarters: Denver
Serving: Denver County
The Initiative
Through WINcome, The Initiative works with individuals who identify as having at least one disability, are struggling with facing eviction or are currently unhoused, and are experiencing financial hardship as a direct result of COVID19 and domestic violence, family violence, caregiver abuse, or other forms of violence. The Initiative works with partner organizations to support a client’s move toward safety, and the cash assistance is distributed to fill in gaps that other cash assistance is not able to fill. Common uses of the cash were rent payments and transportation-related costs, such as gas and RTD fare.
Headquarters: Denver
Serving: Denver County
What’s next for WINcome?
The Women’s Foundation of Colorado will continue grantmaking beyond the third year of WINcome. The next open grant cycle for the evolution of WINcome grantmaking will be announced in summer 2024. Please contact Crystal Ayala-Goldstein, WFCO programs manager, with any questions.
Read the full WINcome Year 2 Evaluation here
