A new fund seeks to provide funding to Northern Colorado organizations serving the region’s Latino community.
Evans resident Chris Garcia officially launched Latinos Investing in the Future Together last fall with assistance from donors and the Weld Community Foundation.
The fund, LIFT for short, will provide small sums of grant money to organizations serving the Latino community, whether or not the organizations are Latino-led. LIFT is expected to begin awarding mini grants later this year, Garcia said. A mini grant is between $2,000 and $3,000.
The nonprofit Weld Community Foundation is the keeper or steward of the LIFT money, said foundation president and CEO Tim Coons. The LIFT fund is what’s known as a field of interest fund, and it’s one of 189 for which the Weld Community Foundation acts as a steward. In this role, the foundation serves as “a charitable bank,” said Coons, quoting a predecessor.
As a field of interest fund, LIFT has a committee of six people who decide how the money will be disseminated and what organizations it will support.
“We haven’t seen a large-scale fund to help Latinos,” Coons said. “We’ve seen wonderful grassroots efforts. He (Chris) had a plan on how to put it together.”
Garcia, a graduate of Greeley West High School, the University of Northern Colorado and Colorado State, previously worked at UNC, later serving as a trustee at Aims Community College. He is currently the community programs manager at the Bohemian Foundation in Fort Collins. The Bohemian Foundation is a private family foundation supporting local, national and global efforts to build strong communities, according to its website.
Garcia is working on LIFT independent from his full-time employment with the Bohemian Foundation. He said he’s been working on LIFT since April 2024. Garcia said he began to reach out to families and individuals to explain his idea for LIFT, and many of them said they would help with donations.
“We want to grow this fund and 20 years from now, five years from now, maybe, we’ll be making grants and we’ll know we helped to start this and we’ll be doing something useful for Northern Colorado,” Garcia said.
LIFT’s reach won’t be limited to Weld County. Garcia said the committee behind the fund will consider grant proposals from organizations in other parts of Northern Colorado.
“We are a regional community,” Garcia said. “People, companies, money and services are racing across county lines.”
According to U.S. Census data from 2024, 32% of the Weld County population of nearly 370,000 identifies as Hispanic or Latino. In Larimer County, including Fort Collins and Loveland, 13.4% of the total population of almost 375,000 is Hispanic or Latino.
Morgan County borders Weld and has a population of a little more than 30,000 with 40.7% claiming Hispanic or Latino origin.
“We’re changing the narrative on Latino investment in Weld County,” Garcia said. “They’re a presence in the connections we bring in and the investment in dollars.”
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