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Week of January 12, 2023
JEFFERSON COUNTY, COLORADO
A publication of
JeffcoTranscript.com
VOLUME 39 | ISSUE 25
Jefferson County nonprofits receive unexpected Internal $350K in grants from Community First Foundation investigation fails to find cause of December Jeffcowide shelter-inplace order BY ANDREW FRAIELI AFRAIELI@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
At left, Raelene Whiteshield does a jingle dress dance as members of Cozad Jrs, background right, play the drum and sing during the Oct. 2 Autumn Fest at Golden History Museum & Park. The museum recently received a grant from Community First Foundation FILE PHOTO BY CORINNE WESTEMAN toward its work with Indigenous communities. BY CORINNE WESTEMAN CWESTEMAN@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Nonprofits across Jefferson County are starting 2023 with a little more money in the bank. Over the holiday season, Arvadabased Community First Foundation awarded 18 organizations $350,000 total in grants. The funds will go toward furthering art, science and culture-based projects that promote civic engagement. Several recipients said the funds were a complete surprise. Nathan Richie of Golden History
Museum & Park said grants like this typically have a very involved application process. However, the museum didn’t apply for it. Instead, CFF reached out to the museum based on other grant applications. “This never happens in the grant world,” Center for the Arts Evergreen’s Lisa Nierenberg said. Lakewood Arts Council’s Dorothy Lessem described how she and her colleagues “looked at each other and thought, ‘Is this real?’” when they first heard about it. Community First Foundation confirmed the grants ranged from
$700 to $30,000. It partnered with the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District to identify Jeffco nonprofits actively working to increase inclusivity in the county. SCFD shared grant applications it’d received, and CFF worked quickly to award the grants before Jan. 1. “The information we needed was already in the grant applications nonprofits submitted to SCFD,” Jaime Aguilar, program officer for Community First Foundation, said in a Dec. 23 press release. “ … Now, SEE GRANTS, P5
INSIDE: VOICES: PAGE 14 | LIFE: PAGE 16 | CALENDAR: PAGE 19 | SPORTS: PAGE 24
EMOTIONAL LEARNING, ART, GOOD MEDICINE P16
Last month Jefferson County sent out an emergency shelterin-place order meant for a small number of Jeffco residents. Instead, it was sent to most of the county, and the county still doesn’t know why. According to a press release from Jeffcom 911, Jeffco’s communication authority, human error was ruled out. Rave Mobile Safety, which provides the infrastructure for sending out the alerts, was unable to replicate the situation causing the alert being distributed too wide, according to the press release. The internal investigation found that the filter meant to limit the amount of residents that received the alert was not applied, but again, for reasons unknown. The press release continues that Jeffcom 911 has transmitted 20 emergency alerts since the incident and has had no issues with any of them. It continues that, “Jeffcom 911 has implemented additional administrative oversight measures when administering emergency notifications as further precaution…” Residents of Jeffco can sign up to receive these emergency alerts at Jeffcom911.org.