Expanding Support for Education in Gunnison County

There Are Many Ways to Make an Impact on Education

The Gunnison Valley Education Foundation (GVEF) (originally called “Kids Kount”) has been a CFGV component fund since the Gunnison Area Community Foundation and the Crested Butte Community Foundation merged to form CFGV in 2007. This long partnership has allowed GVEF to continue to support innovation in classrooms for many years. Their flagship program has been the annual Teacher Innovation Grant Program. They have traditionally awarded funds to innovative ideas that promote engagement, motivation, and achievement across the school district that show promise as sustainable programs. These grants have empowered individual teachers to pilot programs that can later influence district-wide practices.

CFGV and the GVEF are currently introducing a new process for evaluating grant proposals from teachers which adds more flexibility and efficiency. In the past, there was a single annual grants cycle with a grant application deadline in the spring every year. Now, GVEF and CFGV will make a pool of funds available at the start of each school year. Teachers will have the opportunity to request a grant at any time during the school year for projects that introduce new ideas, methods, or approaches that enrich student learning and go beyond the ordinary. Teachers will complete a short form and submit it to CFGV. After CFGV staff confirms that the proposal meets the criteria for funding, they will notify the district that funding should be disbursed to the project. Projects will be funded on a first-come, first-served basis until the funds for that school year are gone.

Childcare options in Gunnison County are both limited and expensive. For many families with young kids, the cost of childcare is roughly equivalent to the cost of their mortgage or rent each month. Local childcare providers also feel the crunch, with the costs to run the centers making it extremely difficult to keep them open, even when tuition is often out of reach for local families. 

Just last month, one local daycare closed abruptly on September 19, leaving the families of 34 children scrambling to find care. Immediately, the Gunnison-Hinsdale Early Childhood Council (ECC) started working to find solutions for those families and to support the teachers and staff who lost their jobs when the center shut down. Some of the families hardest hit by this closure are the ones with children enrolled in the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCCAP), which subsidizes childcare costs for families based on their income level. Only certain providers can accept this state assistance, so the ECC sprang into action to help former teachers become qualified exempt providers for CCCAP. When the ECC asked CFGV to collaborate with them to address these urgent needs, we put out a message to Donor Advised Fund holders. Eight individuals and families stepped up, giving a combined $14,000 that the ECC is using for a variety of stopgap measures including:

• Assisting families in accessing care through nanny-shares, open slots at other childcare programs, or care provided by family, friends, or neighbors
• Providing additional funds to the qualified exempt providers for each day they care for CCCAP-qualified children

Early childhood education provides our children with safe care so their parents can work and contribute to our local economy. It’s so much more than that though. It lays the foundation for our k-12 education system, providing students with essential academic and social skills that can help ensure they are successful in the classroom. If you’d like to support early childhood education in Gunnison County, please give our office a call or email info@cfgv.org and we can point you towards opportunities to contribute.

If you’re interested in supporting education in Gunnison County, you might want to consider opening a Field of Interest Fund at CFGV. By establishing a Field of Interest Fund, you can work with our team to identify specific parameters within education that you’d like to fund. For example, you may be interested in supporting local grassroots programs offering mentorship. Or, you may decide to direct your charitable dollars to quality early childhood programs, which have been shown to yield high returns on investments in education. Maybe you have a love of reading and want to support the Gunnison County Libraries and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library’s local program. CFGV can help you identify an area of focus. Going forward, our team leverages CFGV’s deep knowledge and research to identify high-impact opportunities, helping to ensure your generosity makes the greatest difference within your area of interest.