Reaching out to rural Colorado

Even for the tiny southwestern town of Naturita, the public library was too small to hold more than anything but the basics. There was no space to have “story time” for local children, no place to host any kind of community gathering at all.

So it was fortuitous when a large group of Front Range foundations traveled to that part of the state a few years ago for a “Rural Philanthropy Days” event. The regional library district had been weighing the likelihood of raising enough money for a new facility in the remote town of 655 residents. The timing was perfect.

At the three-day event, library district officials connected with foundations that eventually agreed to cover more than one-third of the cost of the $1.2 million construction project. Rural Philanthropy Days also helped open doors to $465,000 in public funding.

Naturita now has a new 4,400-square-foot library building that’s almost nine times bigger than the old one. It uses a heating and cooling process that saves big on energy. Recycled blue jeans insulate the unusual structure, the state’s only library made from straw bales. And those involved with the project have high expectations for what it can offer Naturita’s youngest citizens. “I hope it opens their eyes to the broad world and to the possibilities there,” Library director Paul Paladino told Colorado Public Radio. “I like the idea that a first-grader – who may not have even thought about going to college in the past – might go to college, maybe even go on to medical school and come back and be a doctor.”

The intensive Rural Philanthropy Days networking sessions have strengthened the foundation community’s ties with nonprofits in the far reaches of the state. The concept laid the groundwork that made the library a reality. And it has led to closer collaboration among nonprofits, foundations and others in the more remote regions of Colorado.

With leadership from the Anschutz Family Foundation and the Denver-based Community Resource Center, the program has grown to an almost year-round effort to help nonprofits become more viable organizations over the long haul. Two major events take place in different parts of Colorado each year – in places such as Mancos, La Junta and Steamboat Springs.

Many of Colorado’s large foundations not only contribute to the actual events, they’ve also made a much bigger commitment to nonprofits outside of metro areas. Grants to rural nonprofits have jumped to 18 percent of overall foundation giving from just 2 percent when the concept was launched.