Our members work hard every day to make the Denver metro area a great place to do business. We want to keep you in the know about the important work of our members, whether they are opening new business locations, hiring more people or creating new partnerships.
Read about our members in the news:
This week, the U.S. Chamber announced finalists for the 2021 Dream Big Awards. Sky Blue Builders was named one of three finalists for the 2021 Small Business of the Year Award. Congratulations to Chamber Board Member Mowa Haile and the entire team at Sky Blue Builders for this recognition! This year’s winners will be announced at the Dream Big Awards program on Oct. 21st at 3 p.m. MT. Read more.
Moye White announced the opening of a new office in Atlanta, Georgia, the first expansion outside Colorado in the firm’s 45-year history. The firm also welcomed four new attorneys and team members to its Business Section as it merged with Trusted Counsel (Ashley) LLC, a corporate and intellectual property boutique law firm. Get to know the new team members.
Nominate an ethical leader in our community. The University of Colorado Denver Business School is looking for inspirational leaders who are committed to ethics and integrity in our community. Submit a nomination for the 2021 Bill Daniels Ethical Leader of the Year award by Sept. 8.
HealthONE’s Rose Medical Center is hosting a hiring fair Thursday, Sept. 9 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for patient care technicians (CNAs), patient safety attendants, nurse externs and sterile processing technicians. COVID-19 vaccinations are required for all new hires. The job fair will be at 4567 E. 9th Ave. in Denver.
The Metro Denver Partnership for Health is interested in partnering with willing businesses on COVID prevention and mitigation strategies, including vaccination requirements, to ensure a thriving metro region economy. Learn more.
Kate Baker has been promoted to chief marketing and business development officer for Brinkman Construction. Baker previously served as the company’s director of marketing for more than a decade, directing and developing innovative marketing strategies. Learn more about Baker.
On Tuesday, Sept. 7 at 4:30 p.m. at Coffee at the Points, the Black Economic Opportunities Council will celebrate Colorado Black Women Business Leaders and Colorado Business Leaders who have demonstrated a commitment to social equity, diversity and inclusion in the Colorado and Denver business landscape. The event will recognize Chamber President and CEO Kelly Brough, Makisha Boothe, founder of Sistahbiz Global Network and Jice Johnson, founder and chief visionary officer for Black Business Initiative, among others. Contact John Bailey for more information.
On Thursday, Sept. 9, join Mile High Behavioral Healthcare for the Fourth Annual Miracles Fashion Show. Proceeds of the show will support the Miracles program, which provides women struggling with substance abuse and their mental health with an integrated treatment approach toward a path to recovery. Get your tickets.
Join Snell & Wilmer on Wednesday, Sept. 15 from 10 to 11 a.m. for the Denver Emerging Business Seminar Series on how to structure joint ventures. Partner Eric Kintner will discuss the structuring and formation of joint ventures. Register.
Take the Civic 50 Colorado survey by Sept. 17 to see if your company is one of the 50 most community-minded companies in Colorado. The complimentary survey, an initiative of Points of Light in partnership with CSR Solutions of Colorado, gives companies a scorecard to benchmark their programs, recognition as a leader in corporate social responsibility and opportunities to share best practices over the next year. Find out if you’re in the Civic 50.
Join Prosper CO and Bank of America on Sept. 22 for Invertir, where we’ll hear from three successful Latinx entrepreneurs who are seeking to invert the status quo for their businesses and our community, so we can build an economy that provides access to opportunities for everybody. Register.
Únase a Prosper CO y Bank of America el 22 de septiembre para Invertir, donde escucharemos a tres emprendedores latinos quien quieren invertir el status quo para sus empresas y nuestra comunidad para que podamos construir una economía en que el acceso a las oportunidades esté disponible para todos. Regístrese.
B:CIVIC connected with GroundFloor Media’s Founder and Chief Cultural Officer Laura Love earlier this year to discuss embedding corporate social responsibility and employee engagement into the DNA of your company from the beginning.
This was originally posted on B:CIVIC’s website. Click here to view the article.
Company Overview:
GroundFloor Media (GFM) and its sister agency CenterTable navigate the blurred lines between marketing, public relations and digital advertising – online and off. The GFM team creates and manages messages from inception through an intermediary to the end consumer, while the CenterTable team creates messages that engage directly with the end consumer. Both agencies work with a wide range of clients – from food and beverage to health and wellness to technology and telecom – who consistently offer innovative and creative opportunities to reach new audiences. GFM has been recognized seven times by Outside magazine as one of the top 10 Best Places to Work in America and is the longest-running company nationwide to be listed in the top 10. In addition, GFM was named a Certified B Corporation in 2016 by the global nonprofit B Lab. The certification recognizes companies meeting the highest global standards for corporate transparency, accountability and social and environmental performance. In 2019, GFM and CenterTable were honored with The Civic 50 Colorado award, recognizing 50 Colorado-based companies that set the standard for superior corporate citizenship in our state.
B:CIVIC: GroundFloor Media has said, “We believe that companies, as well as individuals, must be good tenants of the world.” Tell us a little bit about that decision in making social responsibility and philanthropy a part of GroundFloor Media’s strategic plan.
Laura Love: I started this company in the middle of the dotcom bust in 2001, right before 9/11, and when I first moved to Colorado, I actually didn't know very many people here at all. What I found is that Colorado, as a community, is very giving, supportive and welcoming, especially for those of us transplants. I started the agency in the basement of my home in Boulder.
And, without a lot of contacts in the area, one of the ways that I decided to meet my community is to go to nonprofits and offer my services for any of their nonprofit needs. The people in the community really embraced, welcomed and helped me start the business. It just felt like the natural way for us to give back – we made community part of our strategic DNA.
B:CIVIC: A lot of people start a business and then they figure out how to give back. When it's ingrained in your culture like that, from the beginning, you can tell why you've had so much success.
LL: When you're starting a business, one of the best ways to feel more confident is to realize that you have value that you can provide to others who may not be in that same position. By offering services to organizations that weren't necessarily in a position to afford PR or marketing, it was actually selfish — it made me feel better.
B:CIVIC: Can you share with us GroundFloor Media's community involvement efforts?
LL: Over the past 20 years, we've certainly refined our efforts, but we've historically always given back at least 15% of our profits, either through nonprofit rates, through pro bono work or through our giving-back program. As we continue to grow and have more resources, we're able to do more. When we look at our overall community impact, it's in three specific areas.
The first area is one that we've had since the early days, which is our “Get Giving” Program. Our Get Giving Program includes opportunities for our team members to have “Get Giving” days of service. Those are scattered throughout the year and they are really about what our team members are most interested in from a personal standpoint. For example, we have decorated the cottages of the Denver Children's Advocacy Center. We have built houses with Habitat for Humanity. We have helped decorate bags and deliver meals for Project Angel Heart. We have provided stockings that the Children at Tennyson Center can open on Christmas morning.
It's an opportunity to do two things: one, it's for us to do some team building as an organization and the second is to do that in a way that's meaningful for our community.
We have 42 team members, primarily located in Colorado, although we do have team members who are in other states. That actually leads me to our second big bucket: the Get Grounded Volunteer Program. Our Get Grounded Volunteer Program is for team members who volunteer their time. It can be at any organization of their choosing and we give them four hours off each month to go volunteer at nonprofits, schools or any other 501(c)3 organization. At the end of the year, our organization matches all volunteer hours by donating $10 per hour, up to $400 per team member, per calendar year. Since the inception of that program, we've given over $36,000 and about 2,800 volunteer hours — and that's through any nonprofit that our team members will support.
Our third program, which is a third pillar of our community impact, is the one that I am probably the most passionate about and that is our Get Grounded Foundation. In 2015, we decided to formalize what we've been doing for years, but to do it in a way that is an established, private 501(c)3. We provide community grants to new, innovative, entrepreneurial programs. We provide the seed money and that seed money goes to an existing nonprofit in the Denver area in either child abuse or neglect, childhood hunger relief or youth behavioral health.
We've given out over $158,000 to nonprofits since 2015 to support some of those programs to help them get something off the ground floor.
B:CIVIC: Why did you choose to support nonprofits that are supporting at-risk youth?
LL: I started this business when I was pregnant with my first child. Just realizing how fortunate and how privileged she was going to be to come up in a life where we could support her and put food on the table and give her an education and resources — and there are so many incredible children out there that, of no fault of their own, don't have that same opportunity. A lot of my teammates are working parents, and it just felt very aligned with all of our personal values to be able to give back that way.
B:CIVIC: Most of your team is local to Colorado, but you do have some remote employees as well. What's the approach that you use to get your employees involved in your community efforts?
LL: When we hire, we have a very interesting hiring process and some might call it very non-traditional, but we look at how a potential team member might align with our core values. As we look at these potential team members to join our team, we want them to be there for a very long time. We have an attrition rate that hovers at about 3% annually. It does become a question that we ask during the hiring process. It's not that difficult. Once somebody is on board, they embrace this philosophy from the beginning.
We are fortunate to be able to choose our team members really carefully and likewise, we want them to choose into our environment as well. We call it “talent-tude,” which are those mad skills complemented by a great outlook on both your work and your life. We love to have fun and we're here to do exceptional work for our clients, so if we can find people that have that same feeling and they're not afraid to leave their ego at the door, they tend to stick around for a long time.
B:CIVIC: Can you share with our community a little bit about Get Golden?
LL: Get Golden is a handbook that we provide to all of our team members and it really talks about our values, our beliefs, our attitudes, our behaviors and how we treat one another. That is truly the secret sauce that makes us who we are. And equally as important as how we treat one another is how we're showing up for our clients.
We talk about the Golden Rule. It's really, really simple and yet it's so profound.
We work with a leadership coach to do Emergenetics for all of our team members. It’s rooted in the fact that who we are today is the emergence of our behavior, our genetic makeup and our life experiences. It's how you think and how you behave, and so there isn't a right or wrong way for any of it, but it does allow us to look at each one of our team members and say, are they analytical or structural? Do they live more in a conceptual world or are they social?
We acknowledge everyone thinks and behaves differently. We respect how we behave and think and how each of us can approach one another and eliminate conflict by using our profiles. We incorporate this into our culture.
B:CIVIC: When it comes to corporate social responsibility (CSR) and employee engagement, what do you think has been GroundFloor Media's most successful initiative to date?
LL: I have to say, I don't think it's just one thing. It is the holistic view of CSR that really has set us apart as an agency, but more important, has allowed us as a very small business to incorporate giving and CSR into our values, into our DNA and into the values that we have internally, as well as externally.
So that's the first thing: How do we have an offering that teaches people how to do this? Then, it’s how do we live this feeling of giving back within the agency walls. Without all of those components, I'm not sure that we would have the strength around the type of systems that we do.
B:CIVIC: You have recently launched a new podcast to support companies and individuals in making a positive impact, Good & Grounded. Tell us a little about the goals of the podcast and the kinds of stories you have and plan to feature.
LL: As an extension of our recent Doing My Part Colorado effort that we rolled out to support Colorado nonprofits during this pandemic, we are interviewing dynamic, passionate and grounded local leaders who are impacting our community during this time of uncertainty. Each episode of Good & Grounded is focused on one critical issue that deserves our attention in our ever-changing world. These interviews are short, conversational and very human. We have interviewed a dozen CEOs on topics ranging from the rise of domestic violence and child abuse to the impact this pandemic is having on the restaurant industry to the state of corporate social responsibility during COVID-19. We have talked to Erin Pulling, CEO of Food Bank of the Rockies, about food insecurity, Deirdre Johnson, the CEO of the Center for African American Health, on how Black Americans are dying from this pandemic at three times the rate of their white peers, Kelly Brough, president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber, on the road to economic recovery, and Pat Meyers who led Colorado’s efforts to procure PPE and all of the complex challenges of the global supply chain. We always end by asking our guests, “What one good thing can we do right now?” We continue to look for powerful leaders to help us bring critical issues to life, so if your readers know of strong CEOs, please send me a note.
B:CIVIC: Before we close, we want to thank you for your leadership in developing and advocating for the Colorado Companies Uniting Against Racism initiative. The primary pillars of the commitment are to listen, learn and lead to combat systemic racism. Why is this pledge important to you and your company? Is there a unique role small businesses can play in leading this change?
LL: As communication professionals and small business owners, we have a responsibility to listen, learn and lead while working toward a greater understanding of the existing societal structures and unconscious biases that inform what we do. By working toward that understanding, we are less likely to produce work that creates damage through our communications. Ultimately, gaining a greater understanding of these things will help us be more compassionate individuals, as well as effective and aware communicators and business leaders. The bottom line is that we are human and know that we have a lot to learn. We will make mistakes along the way. When we make mistakes, we pledge to own them and continue to learn and improve. As a small business, we can make smaller steps and encourage other small business to join the Colorado Companies Uniting Against Racism initiative as well as the Inclusive Economy Movement. As Barbara Mikulski said, “Each one of us can make a difference but together we can make change.”
With Colorado's unemployment rate at an all-time low, the competition as an employer to attract top talent is stronger than ever. More and more, organizations are using corporate social responsibility, or CSR, as a tool to attract and retain workers, boost morale and productivity, reinforce brand reputation and build trust in the community.
In September, Colorado became the first state to honor a local Civic 50 – an honor that recognizes the most philanthropic companies. Among the Colorado honorees were 36 Chamber investors. In November, members of the Chamber’s Public Affairs Council met honorees from businesses large and small to learn about their experiences and the benefits of making CSR part of doing business.
The case for CSR is clear, said Alexis Owen, principal at Kennedy West. Today, 87% of Americans are willing to purchase a product from a company that advocated for an issue they care about.
“The companies that dive in are the ones who benefit,” said Owen, who chairs the advisory board of B:CIVIC, a partner of the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation that elevates business for good by providing organizations of all sizes with the resources and connections they need to create or grow a successful social responsibility program.
AT&T is one of those companies. The worst time to begin understanding a community is after disaster strikes, said Andy Bailey, senior program manager of AT&T’s humanitarian disaster response team. AT&T puts local communities first by empowering regional employees to build relationships with the communities they’re in. Bailey has found that, “the more options you can give to your employees to engage with the community, the stronger you are and the more our employees thrive.”
Not every company can dedicate a full team to CSR programming, especially when it comes to small businesses. At GroundFloor Media, team members receive dedicated time off to volunteer and can provide pro bono services to community organizations they support. The PR firm has also created a foundation that has granted more than $120,000. Amy Moynihan, GroundFloor’s senior director of communications, suggested some simple steps that can engage employees to bring more purpose into the workplace: consider how the organizations you may support align with your business and your employees and look for opportunities that allow your team to grow and cultivate skills and leadership.
“Look at the employee motivation piece to hear what matters to them,” Moynihan said. “That really helps get folks around the table.”
3 Colorado Businesses Recognized for Leadership
Among companies recognized as the Civic 50 Colorado, three stood out as leaders. Get to know these investors and what they’re doing to support the community where they live and work.
Denver Community Credit Union: Small Company Leader
The Denver Community Credit Union’s Clear Money Program provides free onsite and community-based financial education classes and coaching that are open to the public as a service to the community, as well as train-the-trainer workshops for nonprofits, schools, municipal agencies and local businesses. It also trains employees to become certified financial coaching experts to educate people about how to reach their financial goals.
Furthermore, the Denver Community Credit Union offers employees many other opportunities to make a difference in the community including an annual all-staff volunteer day, team-building community service projects across all departments and mandated board or committee service for managers.
Clearly, employees take advantage of these opportunities: 100% participate and for significantly more hours than the average Civic 50 Colorado company — 17 hours per year versus 10.
AAA Colorado: Midsize Company Leader
A not-for-profit organization since it first came together in 1923, AAA Colorado was founded on the principle of getting travelers to where they need to go safely, and with ease. In addition to its world-famous emergency roadside assistance program, AAA Colorado is unique among companies its size for its dedicated public affairs division that advances traffic safety initiatives.
In 1923, its first accomplishments included numbering Colorado’s highways, donating more than 2,000 highway signs to the state and getting Colorado’s roads paved. Today, AAA Colorado regularly airs PSAs, testifies before policymakers, appears in the media and funds conversation-shaping research on automotive technology and traffic safety.
KeyBank: Large Company Leader
KeyBank considers one of its most valuable assets to be its ability to create hope, opportunity and dignity for the communities and clients it serves. KeyBank actively supports organizations and programs that prepare individuals for thriving futures, with a focus on neighbors, education and workforce.
Over the last two years, KeyBank has invested more than $405 million in Colorado through its national community benefits plan, including community development projects, small business loans, mortgage lending and philanthropic investments in low-to-moderate income communities. KeyBank employees also roll up their sleeves to contribute to the community through volunteerism every day.
Katie Doyen is the public affairs coordinator for the Denver Metro Chamber.
Last week we celebrated one year with B:CIVIC. It’s been a fantastic year and we’re thrilled that we can harness not only the power of individuals through the Leadership Foundation but also businesses through B:CIVIC to do more good in the community.
Here’s what we’ve been up to:
We challenged over 250 leaders – from 148 companies and 28 industries – to be bold at the 2019 B:CIVIC Summit. The Summit brought together the best and brightest minds in the region to share best practices, national trends and local thought leadership. We discovered how purpose impacts the entire organization and how we can commit to all stakeholders from Carol Cone of Carol Cone On Purpose. And, Nathaniel Smith of Partnership for Southern Equity showcased why equity is important for business and how we can work together to create economic inclusion.
We launched the inaugural Civic 50 Colorado in partnership with CSR Solutions of Colorado honoring 50 businesses following the B:CIVIC Summit. These companies represent the most community-minded small, medium and large companies in the state, and they invested $37 million and donated 400,000 employee volunteer hours locally last year.
We focused on purpose with Sum and Substance. Five leaders shared their stories: Dave Hoerman of DaVita; Ramonna Robinson of GroundFloor Media | CenterTable; Banks Benitez of Uncharted; Dr. Nita Mosby Tyler of The Equity Project, LLC; and Matt Lindsey of Charlotte’s Web. And, they challenged the audience to look at how they’ll bring purpose into their day-to-day leadership journeys.
With over 30 B:CIVIC programs and new research planned for 2020, we’re excited to continue to support our alumni and organizations in which they lead to elevate business for good in our community.
Kirsten Vermulen is the executive director of B:CIVIC and Dan Lewis is the executive director of the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation.
