2021-2025 Strategic Framework

How We Got Here

The Women’s Foundation of Colorado (WFCO) listened to nearly 1,300 diverse Coloradans in 2016, including many women with incomes inadequate to support their families. They urged WFCO to advance and accelerate economic opportunities and improve access to the resources they needed to secure the financial future for themselves and their children.

A document of hope

Our resulting 2017-2021 strategic framework, along with the insights we gained through our statewide grantmaking and investments, kept us adaptive, responsive, and relevant in a rapidly evolving and unforeseen environment. The course we set then allowed for flexibility to meet women’s most urgent and emerging needs including food, diapers, safety, and child care. As your only community foundation in the state focused on economic advancement for women and their families, it must continue to be our path ahead. Our 2021-2025 strategic framework is a statement of intent, but we also view it as a document of hope for women of every background and identity in Colorado to have what they need to truly thrive.

2020 exposed our country's longstanding fault lines

2020 tested us all by exposing our country’s longstanding fault lines: An international pandemic, a national reckoning on race, increased violence toward Asian American Pacific Islander women, and an economic “Shecession.” Many women, especially women who experience historic and systemic inequities – Black and Indigenous women and Latinas — disproportionately fell through the cracks quickly through no fault of their own. To acknowledge these facts is not to deny that that the pandemic significantly affected everyone. But some Coloradans are more likely to lose their livelihoods or their lives simply because of who they are.

We believe all women have promise and deserve opportunity to fulfill it. Our framework outlines the investments we will make in systems change as well as in the inherent leadership and talents of women through flexible and holistic resources, so they can transform their lives, their families, their businesses, and their communities.

Guided by a clear commitment to gender, racial, and economic equity

Throughout this time, we listened and learned with community, deepening our understanding of the impact of these events, and what it will take to measurably improve lives. Motivated by our clear commitment to gender, racial, and economic equity and the stories of women across Colorado, we refreshed our strategic framework to ensure we continue to address the acute challenges of today while cultivating women’s and girls’ unlimited potential for tomorrow.

With this strategic framework, WFCO boldly stands on our vision, mission, and values with a sharpened focus to our work and challenges facing us all. It is also a pledge to ensuring our long-term sustainability through ongoing best practices.

We are ready to lead with our community and philanthropy to seize opportunities and drive progress. Together we can fulfill the dreams of women and their families across Colorado.

Women thriving. Colorado rising.

Faye Tate, Chair of the Board
Lauren Y. Casteel, President & CEO