GreenLight Denver: Listening, Learning, and Leading Together

At GreenLight Fund, community engagement is not just a checkbox or a formality. It is the engine of our Method and approach, defining how we show up and grounding us in the local reality. This commitment is held across our national network and embedded in the GreenLight Method – an approach that is powerful because it is uniquely and locally adapted. Our cities and communities are different and have unique qualities and infrastructure. To achieve meaningful impact, our approach must match our community. 

GreenLight Denver launched in early 2024 as the 13th city in our national network. From the beginning, our focus has been on authentic community engagement in order to have a meaningful and comprehensive understanding of Denver’s challenges and opportunities. We understand that this requires trust, which we build through a continuous, iterative cycle of relationship building, listening and learning, integrating and acting on feedback, communication, and holding ourselves accountable. The result is investments that are pulled into the community,  bringing solutions that are wanted and needed.

Our commitment is to make community engagement an ongoing practice, the way in which we navigate our annual process. It’s integral for our team at every stage, informing key decision points as we move toward an investment and as we support that organization to take root and address a community-identified need.

To ensure we have the full picture, we engage a wide range of stakeholders: residents, nonprofit staff, community organizers and leaders, funders, business leaders, and government officials. We are thoughtful and strategic about asking the right questions at the right time and in the right context, ensuring that those most impacted and proximate to our focus areas are involved at every stage. 

In our first selection cycle, we began by broadly surveying the community, posing two key questions: 1) What are the major challenges to economic mobility that Denverites face?, and 2) What are the greatest areas of opportunity or improvement? 

We invited people to reflect not only on their own needs but also on the needs of their families, neighbors, and the people they served. Of the many themes that emerged, the community consistently came back to the deepening cost-of-living crisis, the fear of losing housing and being displaced, and the need to support newly arrived immigrants and refugees. As we explored potential models, we returned to the community, asking them to think about programs and resources they wished they had access to.  In our inaugural year, over 400 people engaged with us throughout our process. 

This wide-ranging community input eventually guided us to our first investment in HomeStart’s Renew Collaborative, an eviction prevention and stabilization program.

We recognize community members as change agents and leaders with lived experience. To ensure we are bringing in and hearing from diverse voices, we reduce barriers to participation. This means that we meet people where they are: at direct service organizations, libraries, neighborhood meetings, community events, and back-to-school festivals, partnering with trusted organizations that are foundational in our community.

When we host events, such as our listening sessions and focus groups, we prioritize accessibility. We offer both virtual and in-person opportunities and host events in the evenings and on the weekends to accommodate varying schedules and availability. We compensate community members for their time and expertise, provide stipends for childcare and transportation, and provide simultaneous interpretation and translated materials so that everyone can speak the language of their hearts.

The Selection Advisory Council (SAC) is a critical component of our community engagement strategy. Composed of members from the nonprofit, government, academia, and business sectors, the SAC provides essential expertise and diverse perspectives to our work and investments. For any solution to successfully take root in our city, it must be validated by the people who know our community best. 

We launched our second selection cycle earlier this year with the goal of building upon the foundation of the first cycle. Recognizing that many of the previously identified focus areas remained urgent, we sought to deepen our understanding and engagement and deployed new strategies to strengthen community collaboration. 

New this year, we hosted Community Action Tables. We invited participants to think beyond the immediate realm of possibility and share bold ideas and approaches that would address identified community needs. The ideas shared clearly indicated what resources and programming the community values and would actually use.

Our GreenLight Denver team is rooted in this community. As community members ourselves, we feel a deep sense of accountability to our community, to our neighbors, to our colleagues. Because of this, we welcome, reflect on, and incorporate feedback from all stakeholders on every aspect of our process, from focus areas and investments to the methods we use to engage and the questions we ask. Ultimately, we recognize that people are the experts on their own lives and needs.

The closing of our second selection cycle is not a finish line but rather a key milestone in an enduring partnership. GreenLight Denver is committed to being a community resource and trusted partner for Denverites. We remain focused on building and strengthening reciprocal – not transactional – relationships. By centering the community’s vision, hopes, and dreams in our work, we can drive sustainable, positive change that addresses economic and racial inequities across our city.