WFCO Activates New Catalyst Fund to Meet Urgent and Emerging Community Needs
Current Grantee Partners, Community Cornerstone Organizations Serving Colorado Women, Families, and Colorado’s Most Vulnerable Populations Receive $500,000
Our communities face a long road ahead. Federal and state budget cuts are pulling lifesaving resources away from women and families. Policies to promote their vitality and protect their rights are being dismantled. And inflation continues to outpace wages while unemployment reached a four-year high in August 2025.
What’s more, as threats to women’s and communities’ wellbeing converge, many corporations and philanthropic institutions are turning their backs on organizations with gender-specific missions.
However, The Women’s Foundation of Colorado (WFCO), founded in 1987 to address the feminization of poverty, is leaning in with increased resources for our community’s greatest catalysts.
WFCO Leans in for Women and Families While Many Corporations, Institutions Opt out
WFCO activated our new Catalyst Fund, dedicated to rapid response support for emerging community needs and innovative solutions to meet them. In the first wave of funding in this summer, The Catalyst Fund infused $500,000 into WFCO current grantee partners and additional cornerstone nonprofits that make up an essential tapestry of organizations serving Colorado women, families, and our state’s most vulnerable populations.
“We will not sit on the sidelines while access to opportunity and safety for women, gender-expansive people, and immigrants are taken away,” said The Women’s Foundation of Colorado President and CEO Renee Ferrufino. “We are committed to strengthening the vital support these essential nonprofit organizations provide to improve the lives of Colorado women and their families. They serve as lifelines for our communities, and we stand firmly beside them as they continue their critical work through these uncertain times.”
All grants made through the Catalyst Fund are unrestricted and grantee partners are encouraged to use the funds where they are most needed. The Women’s Foundation of Colorado expects that many nonprofits may apply them to contingency planning, physical and digital security measures, and legal defense.
“This is amazing news coming just in time. As our funds are getting tighter and tighter, surprises like this reinforce all we do. Your acknowledgement of the San Luis Valley Housing Coalition and our staff for helping our community brings a refreshing new joy to our hearts today,” said Dawn Melgares with the San Luis Valley Housing Coalition.
Catalyst Fund to Help Offset Turbulence, Uncertainty for Nonprofits
As a statewide community foundation, WFCO is committed to remaining agile and responsive to our nonprofit partners in times of turbulence and uncertainty. The Catalyst Fund allows WFCO to respond swiftly during a crisis, expand impact investing strategies, and strategically invest in our grantee partners’ innovative responses to change. The flexible funding is also intended to offset recent events negatively impacting Colorado’s nonprofit landscape, such as:
- Frozen reimbursable federal funds for victim service organizations. Without these dollars they depend on to operate, they face layoffs, not being able to pay bills, and reduced ability to support survivors.
- Cuts to Medicaid, Housing & Urban Development funding, and subsidies to farmers. These events have disrupted services our grantees provide in maternal health care, rental assistance, and no-cost grocery programs.
- Threats to the safety of Colorado’s immigrant communities. Immigrant-serving organizations have needed to quickly expand their reach and services to ensure immigrants can access critical services, especially in rural communities.
- Disappearing resources for the LGBTQ+ community that is overwhelmed seeking access to mental health and gender-affirming care and finding safe places to live and work.
“WFCO is providing such strong support in a time when it feels like the rug keeps getting pulled out from beneath us,” said one Catalyst Fund grantee partner.
This Moment Reinforces Our Existing Strategies, such as WINcome and the Women & Girls of Color Fund
In a moment of escalating threats to our communities’ and state’s wellbeing, it has become increasingly clear that our existing grantmaking priorities are also the right priorities in this moment. Priorities include increasing flexible cash assistance through WINcome as well as investing in the leadership of women and gender-expansive people of color with The Women & Girls of Color Fund.
In addition to the influx of Catalyst Fund dollars to more than 50 current grantee partners in July, WFCO was proud to increase our Women & Girls of Color Fund grantmaking by 40 percent earlier this year and remove any restrictions tied to WINcome grants to give our partners flexibility in their work.
WFCO’s support gives us strength to persist in our mission to advance equity and justice,” expressed another Catalyst Fund grantee partner
Current WINcome, Women & Girls of Color Fund Grantee Partners Receiving Catalyst Funding
- 9to5 Colorado
- Action Is Safer
- Alianza NORCO
- Asian Girls Ignite
- Bread & Roses Legal Center
- Center for Community Wealth
- Collaborative Healing Initiative within Communities (CHIC)
- Colorado Center on Law & Policy
- Colorado Children’s Campaign
- Colorado Circles for Change
- Colorado Fiscal Institute
- Colorado Jobs with Justice
- Colorado People’s Alliance
- Colorado Poverty Law Project
- Colorado River Valley Team
- Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition
- Construyendo
- Deaf Overcoming Violence through Empowerment (DOVE)
- Denver Indian Family Resource Center
- Elephant Circle
- First Generation Near Peer Mentoring PROJECT
- Food to Power
- Fortaleza Familiar
- Ignacio Out & Equal Alliance
- Impact Charitable
- Ladies First
- Lamar Unidos
- Latina SafeHouse
- Light Carrier
- Mama Bird Doula Services
- P.M.GRAN.TE
- Promotores De Esperanza
- QueenShipp
- Rise Above Violence
- S.A.C.R.Ed Eco-Center
- San Luis Valley American Indian Center
- Soul2Soul Sisters
- STAR Girlz Empowerment
- Storytellers of the Ancestral Red Road
- Sweetgrass Advocacy
- The Bell Policy Center
- The Compound of Compassion
- The Gathering Place
- The Learning Council
- Transformative Leadership for Change
- Tu Casa, Inc.
- Urban Sanctuary Nonprofit
- Voces Unidas for Justice
- YAASPA
- Youth of Culture Program
- Youth Seen
Cornerstone Partners Hold Together Society’s Fraying Safety Net
Catalyst Fund cornerstone partners pillars of our communities that hold together the very fabric of our society’s safety net together for women, girls, and families across Colorado. Public and philanthropic funding cuts combined with the deconstruction of policies that protect women are impacting the ability of these longstanding Colorado nonprofits to operate and serve their communities.
Many of these cornerstone organizations did not receive funding they expected in 2025, yet they continue to bridge gaps in health care and child care services; provide respite for care workers; create safe spaces for immigrants, trans and queer communities; and ensure that women can have babies safely or have access to the full range of reproductive services, including abortion care.
“(The Women’s Foundation of Colorado’s) leadership in proactively reinforcing the vital work of grassroots organizations like ours reaffirms what we already know to be true: WFCO is not only a funder, but a steadfast champion for women, girls, and families across Colorado,” said Tammy Tyner of the Women’s Resource Center of Durango, one of 20 cornerstone partners.
Cornerstone Partners Receiving Catalyst Funding
- Center for African American Health
- CPCD
- CWEE
- Eagle Valley Community Foundation
- EFAA
- Families Forward Resource Center
- Florence Crittenton Services
- Mi Casa Resource Center
- Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains
- Project Self-Sufficiency
- Respite Care
- Rural Communities Resource Center
- San Luis Valley Housing Coalition
- The Aurora Asian/Pacific Community Partnership
- The Center on Colfax
- Valley Settlement
- Village Exchange Center
- Warren Village
- Women’s Resource Center of Durango
- Northern Colorado Early Childhood Education (Policy)
- Roaring Fork Valley Early Childhood Education (Policy)
- Colorado Rural Health Center (Policy)
- Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault (Policy)
Ensuring the Sustainability of Our Community Catalysts
“While we know that philanthropy cannot fully replace federal funds that have been taken away as community needs surge, The Women’s Foundation is committed to doing everything we can to ensure that every woman thrives,” said Ferrufino. “Our Catalyst Fund grantee partners have expressed deep appreciation and motivation sparked by this support. Our hope is that other philanthropic institutions will stretch themselves alongside WFCO to ensure the sustainability of our community catalysts amid unprecedented legal challenges, funding cuts, and community struggles.”
As a community-funded statewide foundation, The Women’s Foundation of Colorado is thankful for donations that support our Catalyst Fund.
