Giving circle funding supporting Colorado women entrepreneurs
The Women's Foundation of Colorado has a mission to support women through research, direct services, grant making, public policy and advocacy.
"Ultimately, the Women's Foundation wants women to be economically stable and thriving. We want them to be able to take care of their families and meet their basic needs and beyond," said Renee Ferrufino, President & CEO of the Women's Foundation of Colorado.
One of the many programs that WFC sponsors to help women become economically stable is the Women's Impact Investing Giving Circle.
"A giving circle is a way for women to come together, pool their money over a shared vision or value, leverage those funds and invest in our community," Ferrufino explained.
WFC brings together 20 to 30 women to learn about impact investing, then they apply what they learn when they listen to pitches from women entrepreneurs and decide where they're going to invest their money. The Women's Impact Investing Giving Circle provides low-interest, long-term loans that would not be able to be obtained on the commercial market.
"We invest in women entrepreneurs because women own 42-percent of small businesses, yet they only receive 2-percent of venture capital. That is a missed opportunity given their economic impact," Ferrufino said.
The Village Institute in Aurora got one of those loans and getting that injection of funding as the organization got off the ground was key.
"It allowed us to focus more on building a really great, high quality program for young children ad their families instead of spending all of our creative energy on how are we going to get the funds to do this," said Ellie Adelman, Founder of The Village Institute.
Adelman founded The Village Institute five years ago to be a holistic family support center and leadership incubator in the East Colfax Neighborhood.
"We as a community were really observing a lot of challenges especially for single mom led families and other female led families. Just in that systems were not designed to truly meet their needs," Adelman explained.
The Village Institute started with every single mom's most basic need: childcare. It started it's Little Village Pre-School as a safe place, learning space for children while their moms work. It's also become a training ground for moms who may want to pursue a career in childcare.
"All of our programs are designed to be workforce training programs for our community members," Adelman added. "We saw that as this opportunity to really like pour into families that had the highest barriers, so if we designed something for those families, it can and does work for a lot of families."
Claudine Migsha first heard about The Village Institute in 2022 when she was getting her masters degree at the University of Denver. Now she's worked her way up to being Village Futures Program Coordinator. Her son goes to the pre-school while she works upstairs.
"I am passionate about women empowerment," Migsha told CBS News Colorado. "I believe that once women have financial stability then their children are safe and we can be able to have peaceful homes and peaceful communities."
The 2025 Women's Impact Investing Giving Circle is underway and is focused on Women's Health Innovation.