Did you ever dream of winning the Powerball lottery and plot out, in excruciating detail, how you would actually spend the money?
In a sense, that is exactly what happened to the Jewish community of Denver in 1995 when Rose Medical Center was sold. Suddenly, some $170 million dropped into our communitys hands and we had to figure out a way to spend it.
Well, figure it out, we did. Over the past 15 years, Rose Community Foundation has spent tens of millions of dollars assisting non-profit organizations in five broad areas: aging, child and family development, education, Jewish life and of course health.
Those who operate the foundation will be the first to say that the distribution of such huge sums has been a learning experience. Just as in business not every investment yields the desired return, so it is in philanthropy. But the overwhelming sense of both givers and recipients is that the foundation has been an inestimable blessing. The comparatively small donations made by individuals are immensely gratifying; all the more so with the cumulatively large impact made by RCF.
For its procedures, for its investment strategies, for its avoidance of conflicts of interest by its professional and lay leaders, for its receptiveness to new missions (such as accepting donor advised funds), for its proactive outreach to the Jewish community in the area of endowments and for additional reasons RCF was named large nonprofit of the year by the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce.
RCF has played a major role in sustaining the viability of the Allied Jewish Federation with, roughly, a one-half million dollar gift annually. RCF has helped the Jewish community build capacity and focus on endowments. RCF has structured its endowment effort to benefit both large and small Jewish organizations.
In an extraordinarily beautiful gesture, RCF stepped up, without being asked, during recent times of economic downturn to surprise many Jewish institutions with unexpected gifts, to tide them over the difficult times.
RCF has done all this and more with taste, class, commitment and expertise. The founders of General Rose Memorial Hospital never foresaw this and surely would have been astounded and, we dare say, most pleased, not only by the tremendous philanthropic power of RCF but by the fact that the raison detre of the hospital providing a place to practice for Jewish doctors is no longer a concern.
We hear a lot about tikkun olam these days; unquestionably, the activities of RCF fulfill this imperative more expansively than any other effort within, or emerging from, the Denver Jewish community.
We also dare say that RCF has yet to reach its full potential. No doubt, it has finely honed its sense of which non-profits, or which criteria for evaluating non-profits, ought to trigger funding in four of its five program areas, and in many programs in the fifth area, Jewish life. However, the reservoir of the highest Jewish value literacy is not yet fully understood by RCF. That reservoir is the Hebrew day school. As RCF continues to grow and spread its good works throughout the community, we trust that the transmutational impact of Hebrew day schools, and the disproportion of available funds they need to succeed, will be grasped by RCF, and that it will fund them accordingly.
Meanwhile, fill in the blanks:
Denver Childrens Advocacy Center . . . Howard Dental Center . . . Denver Center for Crime Victims . . . Alternatives for Youth . . . Storahtelling . . . agency after agency, organization after organization . . . ripened and blossomed by Rose Community Foundation.
Not to mention RCFs donor-directed grants to . . . Jewish Family Service . . . Mayo Clinic . . . American Friends of Aish HaTorah Western Region . . . American Friends of Hatzolah Darom . . . Food Bank of the Rockies . . . a veritable cornucopia of good intentions, expert operations, blessings from
Above, all tied to RCF.
Happy 15th Birthday, Rose Community Foundation!
