Amy and I are proud to announce that we’ve completed the fundraising for Boulder Building New Orleans. Our goal was to raise $50,000 to fund a high quality / low cost house in New Orleans for someone displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Due to the generosity of many of our friends in Boulder (and several from outside Boulder), we’ve accomplished this goal. The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County was instrumental in helping us manage this effort. Thanks to everyone involved! Following is the press release that the Community Foundation issued last month.
Boulder Building New Orleans
Local giving builds a home for a New Orleans family
BOULDER COUNTY (November 12, 2007) – A little over a year ago Amy Batchelor and Brad Feld had a discussion about how they could directly contribute to rebuilding New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They had made financial contributions and underwritten several trips of students to the city, but Batchelor and Feld were looking for something tangible to do. A close friend and nationally known architect, Coleman Coker, told the couple of a project he was working on with his Tulane architect students building contemporary, sustainable, affordable housing in New Orleans.
“Coleman connected us with the folks at the Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans (NHS), a New Orleans based non-profit that helps first time home buyers,” said Feld. “After a little study, we determined that Coleman and his students could provide a high quality house for a family for a $100,000. As a result, we put together a program, in conjunction with The Community Foundation, that we call Boulder Building New Orleans (BBNO). Our goal was to raise half of the purchase price through donations and then have the family take out a mortgage for the other half. With the contributions of others in the Boulder area, we have raised our $50,000 goal. Amy and I are covering all administrative costs of the program so 100% of the donations are going toward the house.”
Architects are currently finishing construction drawings of the “Boulder House” and are on schedule to break ground the first of the year. NHS is providing the line of credit to finance the construction.
Coleman’s students at Tulane University and NHS are building multiple houses with the help of donors like those here in the Boulder area.
“We hope the BBNO house will inspire other cities to build a house just like ours. Just think of what New Orleans would look like if every city builds just one house,” said Feld.
Donations to the Boulder Building New Orleans Fund through The Community Foundation are 100% tax deductible.
The Community Foundation exists to improve the quality of life in Boulder County, now and forever, and to build a culture of giving. The Foundation connects the resources of local donors with non-profit organizations to facilitate philanthropy in meaningful and useful ways, for good and forever. www.commfound.org
Congrats, thanks, and welcome to my friends at Fuser for joining the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. Fuser is the 11th Colorado company to join this year.
The Colorado entrepreneurial community support for EFCo far surpassed my expectations this year – a big thanks to everyone that has embraced the idea. Now that we’ve got a solid base of great companies as part of EFCo, we will really crank it up next year.
If you are the founder or executive in a startup company in Colorado that has raised at least one round of financing (angel rounds count) and you are interested in learning more about Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, drop me an email or visit the EFCo website.
I’d like to welcome and thank my friends at Gold Systems for joining The Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado.
Terry Gold – the co-founder of Gold Systems – was one of the first entrepreneurs that I met in early 1996 shortly after Amy and I moved to Boulder. At the time Gold Systems was about 15 people. Terry, his partner Jim, and I went for plenty of long walks in 1996 and 1997 as they tried to navigate the waters of growing a young business. As I got to know Terry better, he came to epitomize the ideal of a thoughtful and generous entrepreneur and person.
Through Mobius, I invested in Gold Systems in 2000. Terry and his team grew quickly after the investment but then had to struggle with the telecommunications downturn in 2002. Due to Terry and his team’s perseverance, they survived and have gone on to build a solid member of the Boulder tech community.
I’m proud of what Terry and the team at Gold Systems have accomplished. I’m very pleased that have chosen to become a member of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. Thanks Gold Systems.
Well – now that a few days has passed it’s old news that Solidware has joined the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. I’m pleased to announce the newest member of EFCo – ClickCaster. We are now up to nine announced members with several others coming soon.
If you are the CEO or founder of a startup and want to learn more about joining the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, drop me an email. Or – grab me after my morning keynote session at the CSIA DEMOgala on Thursday with Governor Bill Ritter.
Another week, another new member for the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. My friends at Solidware have just pledged their philanthropic support for the future of Colorado. A big thank you to Sue Kunz – Solidware’s founder/CEO – and her team. Thanks gang!
A little over a year ago Amy and I had a discussion about how we could directly contribute to rebuilding New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. We have made financial contributions and underwritten several trips of students to the city, but we were looking for something tangible to do.
A close friend and nationally known architect – Coleman Coker of buildingstudio – told us of a project he was working on with his colleague Jonathan Tate to build high quality, low cost housing in New Orleans. He connected us with the folks at the Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans a New Orleans based non-profit that helps first time home buyers.
After a little study, we determined that for $50,000 we could provide a high quality house for a family based on Coleman’s design (approximately 900 sq. ft.)
As a result, we’ve put together a program in conjunction with the Community Foundation Serving Boulder Country that we call Boulder Building New Orleans.
To date, we have raised a little over $40,000. Amy and I are covering all administrative costs of the program so 100% of the donations are going toward the house. On the second anniversary of the land fall of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Amy and I thought we’d put together a final push to get the $50,000 raised for this project.
If you are inclined, please consider making a donation to Boulder Building New Orleans. You don’t need to be from Boulder to do this – you’ll be part of helping our extended community provide a new house for a family in New Orleans. Any amount helps – electronic donations can be made in amounts as little as $10. While it might not seem like a lot, it’ll be life changing for the folks that end up living in the house.
Blue Mountain Arts has been a fixture in the Boulder community for the past 35 years. It was started by the parents of my friend Jared Polis (Susan Polis Schutz and Stephen Schutz) who are all dynamite people.
For Blue Mountain Arts’ 35th anniversary, they’ve given a wonderful gift to Boulder. Rather than having a big party and spending a bunch of money, they’ve given each of their 100 employees a share of $200,000 to donate to their favorite charities.
Jared and I have been involved in a number of philanthropic efforts in the Boulder community, including activity around The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County, Social Venture Partners, and most recently the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado. I’m really proud of the Schutz’s and all the folks at Blue Mountain Arts for actively engaging in local philanthropy in such an impactful and visible way.
I’ve been chairman of the National Center for Women and Information Technology for the past two years. The mission is straightforward – it is “to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology and computing.”
NCWIT programming is organized into “alliances” – we have an academic, workforce, K-12, and entrepreneurial alliance. The academic and workforce alliance are the most mature; the entrepreneurial alliance is the youngest.
A year ago I sat down with Lucy Sanders – the NCWIT CEO – and a few other folks (including Heidi Roizen and Lee Kennedy) to discuss the most impactful thing we could do to raise the visibility of successful women entrepreneurs in the IT / computer science field. While there are some very notable successful women, we wanted to shine a bright light on some of the younger ones and those who could be additional role models for young women interested in entrepreneurship in the IT arena.
We came up with the NCWIT Heroes program – a series of short podcast interviews. These 15-minute interviews interviews are going to be released weekly with approximately 20 women IT entrepreneurs chosen from among more than 100 nominations. I’ve found the project fascinating – both identifying the women and helping set up the interviews.
The first three interviews are with:
Listen along or subscribe to the podcast for your weekly fix of NCWIT’s Heroes. Thanks also to Larry Nelson of w3w3.com, Ben Casnocha, and Jay Habegger for helping out.
We had an NCWIT (National Center for Women & Information Technology) board meeting yesterday in advance of two days of NCWIT alliance meetings. I’m delighted with the progress this organization has made in the past three years. We held the meeting for the first time at the new CU Boulder ATLAS building. Bobby Schnabel – a co-founder of NCWIT, the Director of ATLAS (“Alliance for Technology Learning and Society) and Vice Provost for Academic and Campus Technology – has a good podcast up describing ATLAS titled ATLAS – Is It Technology, Art or a Coffee Shop. If you haven’t been there, it’s a cool, cool building.
Tonight’s reception is from 6pm to 8pm at the Folsom Stadium North Club Level. We’ve got over 300 people attending – if you are part of the front range tech community and want to learn more about NCWIT – come join us.