It's time.

Welcome back to this monthly meeting of the parts.

Arts and culture committee of Denver City Council.

Join us in the Parts, Arts and Culture Committee starting now.

Council Member Lewis.

We can start in person then.

Would you like to start, Council Puritan?

Sure.

Good morning.

And hi.

This is exciting.

Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Good morning, Chris.

Denver is perfect.

Sarah Parity, one of your council members at large.

Awesome.

Well, I'm so excited to welcome Tariana from Denver Arts and Venues.

Will you introduce yourself and your colleague here?

So excited to hear about the SCFD dollars and what they're doing for our residents.

I'm excited that we're the first with good news.

So Diana Navas Nieves, deputy executive director for Denver Arts and Venues, and I work closely with our partners, the Denver County Cultural Council and SCF.

Good morning.

Jessica Cato, Deputy Director at SCFD.

Wonderful, thank you.

Will you be doing the presentation today?

I will.

Great.

Well, go ahead and get started.

Okay.

Here we go.

So I'll start by quickly sharing the role that Art Arts and Venues plays with regards to SEFD.

We partner with the Office of SCFD and the Denver County Cultural Council with regards to the funding distributed to Denver qualifying organizations in the tier three in Denver County.

And we work very closely with uh the Cultural Council.

And for those that I'm sure you're familiar with this, but for a quick refresher, SCFD is over seven counties, and one cent of every $10 collected of sales and use tax is distributed amongst organizations across the seven counties.

And there are tier uh three tiers, tier one is 64%, which are the five main organizations.

How about Metro Denver Impact that you're very familiar with?

The Art Museum, DCPA, not to be confused with the Arts Complex, but the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Botanic Gardens, the Museum of Nature and Science, and the Zoo.

And then 22% is distributed to tier two organizations, like the Children's Museum, the Colorado Symphony.

And then those two are the funding is uh set by formula.

In tier two, they have to meet certain guidelines with regards to attendance as well as um uh annual income.

But for tier three organizations across the seven counties, each county has a body, like the cultural council that makes those recommendations to the SCFD board.

Who then uh makes the final decision for funding?

So for tier three organizations, 14% is distributed to those.

And in Denver, um, we have close to 90 organizations that receive um generally in the past few years, it's been a little more than three million dollars.

So uh, just to give you a sense of the growth since its inception in 1988, originally um uh a hundred and thirty-four organizations were funded with about 14 million.

Today we have close to 300 organizations, and about 75 million dollars is collected.

So that is a tremendous impact on our arts and cultural sector.

And not surprising, um, cities and counties across the nation call us all the time to ask us how did you how did you do this?

How did you make this happen?

Because it obviously translates for a very healthy arts and cultural organization.

So the Denver County Cultural Council is, I always say that is probably the hardest working board I've ever worked with.

Um, they meet uh generally uh on a monthly basis, but between April and mid-June, they meet almost every week and read and review about again close to 90 applications and then determine funding.

There are 11 members on the council.

Three of those are appointed by one is Denver Arts and Venues, visit Denver and Denver Public Schools.

And then the rest of the council are community members, and they are meant to reflect the diversity of our city.

And I'm very, very proud to say that nine members of our council identify as people of color, and we have representation gender diversity as well as representation from people with disabilities as well as from LGTBQIA to S communities.

So we truly we take that very seriously.

So just from some curious information because often council members are curious.

How many organizations are in my council in my district?

I have to make a point that just because you have, let's say, five organizations in your district, it doesn't mean that those are the only ones impacting, of course, your council district.

Organizations work throughout the city, they perform in many theaters, they work in Denver public schools.

But what is also important to note is when you see organizations outside of Denver, it means that their address is outside of Denver, but the majority of the activities for organizations to qualify for tier three in Denver County, the majority of the activities must happen in Denver and benefit Denver residents.

So something that is both something that we are always happy to see, but is also a challenge, I would say.

We're happy to see that we have again a very robust arts and cultural sector, and we have a community that is organizing and thinking about bringing more arts and culture into our communities.

It also means, right, that we have more organizations requesting dollars.

We've seen a decrease, which is not surprising because, as we know, is connected to sales and new stacks.

So we're hoping with all of this vibrant Denver dollars and DDA dollars that people will continue to buy and go shopping.

So I always say every time you go shopping and spend dollars, know that you are contributing to the health of our arts and cultural sector.

So we have a number of new organizations in Denver, tier three organizations, and one of them, for example, is the biennial of the Americas, Words to Power, so a very, very diverse spectrum of organizations.

Now, the dollars in the different countings are distributed uniquely in every county.

In Denver, they are generally distributed in two categories.

And I say generally, and I'll tell you why in a moment.

So the majority of the funding, generally 95% of those dollars collected, is supporting general operating support.

And this is really really important to note because more and more organizations nationally, what they say that they need is that general operating support.

They're programmed out, right?

Programs are important, but they need to be able to keep the doors open to pay fairly their employees.

So the majority of those dollars go towards supporting their general operating, general operating support, and then generally 5% of those of the dollars collected is um set aside for discretionary grants.

The discretionary grants are what it sounds like.

So the council year to year decides to set aside at times to support whether it's collaborations or equity work.

And as Jose will share in a moment.

At times, especially this year, again, we saw a decrease in funding.

We have more organizations, which means more dollars to distribute.

The council decided to take that 5% and added to the total collected so that more organizations could be funded more equitably.

And that happens at times.

Often when, again, we're on an upside, then they have the opportunity to say we're gonna set aside some dollars.

But this year, I think it was very wise to uh to add those dollars so that more organizations could be uh funded more equitably.

And now to get us into more of the details of this year's, which I know that we are all dying to uh to hear, we're gonna go into the uh review for this year and the allocations and the recommendations.

Hi everyone, my name is José Rosales, and I am the chair of Denver County Cultural Council.

This is my final year as the chair.

Um, and I've been on the council now for four years, and so this is this will be my fifth year.

Um, and in my day-to-day job, I am the uh founder and um CEO of Artistico, which is eligible next year for SCFD.

So, first local moment, full circle moment for me.

Um, because I actually started in a nonprofit when I was younger.

I was uh part of Fiesta Colorado as a young boy, um, got trained through Fiesta Colorado, learned about SCFD, learned about the nonprofit sector here in Denver, was uh trained by by Jeanette and now full circle.

Now we're having our own organization in SAFT.

So I'm excited.

So I am going to talk about the evaluation rubric.

This rubric um was put into place.

This is our second year now.

Um last year we saw how obviously the adjustment between um the learning curve of how to use the rubric, council members uh sticking to one rubric because before it was very um subjective and and kind of like based on our own expertise, and we decided to come together from all counties and create a rubric where we could um evaluate from the same um vision because they get calls.

Um DAV gets calls, SCFD gets calls about scores and how locations are made.

And so as you can see, the uh focuses are organization mission and objectives, uh, operations and strategy, equity diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility, financial responsibility responsibility and impact on county residents.

This year, the total of 2025 funding allocation for Denver is uh 3.5 million dollars.

Um 5% of the amount like we talked about typically goes to discretionary fund.

As a council, we decided uh that that would be distributed just because we didn't want organizations to have to apply for another grant during this time.

A lot of people are getting um cuts from all over, and so we decided to make it easy and just put that into the pot so that everybody else can everybody can get a little bit more funding.

Um, and the top scores for this year were uh the 95 percentile, which were 16 tier three organizations that we will talk about here in a little bit.

Um, in 2025, 87 Denver tier three organizations will be funded through SCFD, which um as Tariana mentioned earlier, the number just keeps growing, and the money stayed the same.

Uh but we'll figure it out.

We we're we got this.

Uh the largest grant uh will be 90,000, and the smallest is 2,579.

The total funded amount this year, 3.5 million, which is compared uh to a decrease from 2024 of 7.3 percent.

And then when talking about uh that decrease, like we said, it does have to do with economy and um so uh I I believe this year we are going to see, we didn't see such a a massive decrease compared to 2025, so 2026 is kind of leveling out.

Um the top-scoring organizations, which um, as as a council, we're so proud to name is Su Teatro, Warm Cookies of the Revolution, Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, Gleoparker Robinson Dance, Access Gallery, Museo Las Americas, Family Theater Company, Mexican Cultural Center, Latino Cultural Arts Center, and City Park Jazz.

And finally, a high level overview of funding from 2020 to 2025.

We can see that there was a decline in the amount of funding available for allocation due to COVID, the pandemic during 20 from 2020 to 2021.

We can also see that Denver made a strong recovery.

And during this time in COVID, I think we mentioned this last year.

Uh, the council decided to distribute those funds evenly once again because there was such a need for uh funding during that time, and so that's why it's important to have that discretionary fund.

Um, because I think we're the only one of the only counties that has that discretionary fund for council members to decide where the need is.

Um and then in GOS distribution uh grew from 2.2 million dollars in 2020 to 3.8 million dollars in 2023, however, this amount dipped to 20 to 3.6 in 2024 and continues to dip more to 3.5 million in 2025.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Um so happy to have you here.

I do want to welcome councilwoman Lewis to the meeting who's online.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Um, and we'll start off with Council Pro Tem Romero Campbell.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, I had a thank you for the presentation.

Um, I think there are so many exciting organizations that are funded through SCFD.

Um, the I had a question specifically about the grants, uh, the highest being 90 uh thousand, the lowest being somewhere around 2500.

Uh do you do you have a guideline for organizations applying like their maximum minimum, or do you do partial funding for organizations?

That's uh an excellent question.

So the request uh that they make is cannot be for more than 25% of their uh income and or prior year expenses, and then the cap is 90,000.

Um, so in terms of of uh that's where then the I would say the magic happens because then you have to then distribute the dollars within that caps, and that those uh that cap is just realistically because there's just not enough right dollars to support uh many organizations, just to give you a sense of um I think of the expansion, um, when I started with the city in 2012, the cap was 40,000 and now it's 90,000.

So I think it's also taking into consideration that organizations have grown but also have larger needs.

Thank you.

Um I think about like uh for grant making, and especially um when you had when you've been talking about the sustainability of organizations, do these dollars go to organizations for program specific costs, or are there restrictions for the funding, or is this distributed as general operating funds?

Yep.

So uh 95% generally is for general operating support, and then 5% is what's left for discretionary, but this year I was moved to general operating support and um other counties do do program support, but Denver is really focused on general upgrading.

Yeah, we're trying to kind of stay off of being so in in the weeds with everybody because it's so difficult to create new programs.

You know, we always tell them what you're doing is enough, especially for the smaller organizations because they have to do the same amount of work when applying for the grant as a large organization.

So we kind of um give them the opportunity to do what they need to do with the project.

We trust them to trust those decisions.

Um I have to say I'm thrilled that we give it as general operating funds.

I think as um funders and investment within organizations, um, often it becomes burdensome, especially if you're giving a 25 hundred dollar grant for it, does become very burdensome if uh and organizations know where they need to spend it.

So I just really applaud SEFD for making a choice to do general operating funds for organizations.

That's a game changer.

That's a game changer.

So I'm really excited about that.

And then I just have one other question.

If I understand it correctly, in there's the 5%, it's on slide 11, but there's the 5% discretionary funds from SCFD in 25.

It's not reported.

Did you just roll that into the general operating support?

Okay.

Yeah.

I think uh especially this year that we're seeing so many cuts at a federal level, organizations are especially, you know, hurting.

So this seemed to, and when you have more organizations, this seemed to be the and something that's really interesting that we do as a council is we uh we evaluate the organizations based on their budget.

So the way that we divide all of our we how many sessions did we have six six or seven three hour sessions, um, where we go through all of the applications with the council.

We divide them based on budgets so that we don't have any um, so we can't compare a budget of 1.7 million to a budget of 30,000, right?

They're different uh expectations, uh, they have different needs and wants.

And so I think that that really we saw uh a trend this year where everybody was asking for more money.

There was a lot more um deficits, and a lot of people were saying, you know, they were they were afraid of the funding that they weren't gonna get from the federal level.

Um I think to your point of the evaluation and within your rubric, I hope at some point you're you're able to capture that with a few questions or within the focus groups to be able to kind of track this point in time and then see the progression moving forward.

Because I think right now, with to your point of um federal funds and the uncertainty for those dollars coming to organizations, it's oftentimes you know, you go further down the road, you know, a couple of years down the road, and you forget how far um you've been able to progress.

But this is a really good thing, I think, to make sure that you're tracking as you move forward.

And we saw that too with the pandemic, yeah.

The clip, right?

Like we were said, we were we saw this increase of funding, but we knew there was gonna be an end, right?

So we were already kind of preparing for two years down the line, and as predicted, right?

Organizations all of a sudden had uh much greater need.

So and some organizations are all volunteer, so yeah, okay.

I do one last one.

I know that for district four, I'm sorry, you all um for district four.

Uh there is one uh tier three that's um funded, and they are located in the district.

Um do you can you tell me the name of the organization?

We will actually send you after this meeting uh the list of organizations by council district, so that you all know which organizations are in your great district.

Thank you.

Thank you, madam chair.

That's helpful.

Thank you.

Um I'm really excited to see this.

Sorry, we had a late night till 1 a.m.

last night in our council.

So voice is a little raspy, but um, I think also with that list, I see, like, for example, um, by any of the Americas listed in district 10, but I know they do activations all around the city and things of that nature, and we have Swallow Hill in district seven, but I know they do things at Botanic Gardens and other places, and so I think that's the beautiful thing about the arts, and I think that's why this is so important and so valuable to activate public spaces.

And um, one question I did want to ask for you, Jose, is you said next year you will be eligible.

How why did it take you until now to be eligible?

Can you talk about that process and those barriers?

So, what's really uh I think a pro for SCFD is um there is guidelines of you have to have a minimum of five years of uh tier three existence as a nonprofit, not tier three, 501c3 as a nonprofit.

Um, and so I think what that does is that gives the organization time to get their uh books in order, programming, kind of get everything that they're doing as an organization in place before they apply for this funding.

Um, because once you apply for the funding, it's I always say once you get through that door, SCFD is really there to help you grow, you know, because you're able to apply in different districts.

Um, but yeah, the cutoff is the beginning is five years.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I do worry like when someone's starting up, I know it can be really challenging, but um, you said that we uplift people, for example, maybe into tier two.

How often does that happen and what kind of things do we do to support organizations to be uplifted?

That's a that's a really good question.

And I would say, um, every few years we may get one organization, you know, average.

Uh and remember, you can go up and you can also go down, right?

So, in a way that it's a little bit flexible.

Um, just because you go to tier two doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna get more dollars, also.

Um, generally, yes, but not necessarily, so there that's that's there's flexibility there.

Okay, and then I saw the jazz festival is on there, so something that has come up in my district is uh music festivals going away, so music festivals are eligible for some of this funding as well.

So organized generally for SCFD, you have to be SCFD eligible.

So I would say is any organization that is a nonprofit then goes through the eligibility uh process with SCFD, and the SCFD has a great team that then also they support them to say, well, you need to do this or you need to do this, uh, and then they have to be again five years in order to um to be eligible.

So any organization that is a nonprofit and that supports um Denver residents uh can most definitely uh go through eligibility.

And for example, Dragon Boat, uh, as an example of a festival, City Park Jazz.

So those are SCFD eligible.

So uh it's it's I would say is really open uh for organizations in the counties.

Great, and then I saw some of the top organizations, they look very diverse.

Um are you tracking that?

And one, on the other hand, I would just want to say thank you, because at a time where DEI is being banned and we're not caring about diversity.

I appreciate that Denver is standing by those values with all of your leadership.

Well, I I have to say that I am particularly proud, and I think I can uh say that I think Denver County has always within SCFD has been leading in that space, even before EDI was you know popular.

Uh and I think it's because very much uh we love the organizations, but ultimately the cultural council is meant to support uh these are tax paying um residents, right?

So we are the council is here to support tax paying residents and is about community, right?

So that's definitely being always uh-valued within the council.

Yeah, and you know what's great too is with the evaluation um rubric now standardized, these organizations came to the top with its 11 or 10 10 council members doing their evaluations alone separately, the the uh numbers come together, and these are the ones that were at the top.

And so this year we did go through a process of like do we do we give everybody the same amount of money, or do we, you know, do we still put EDI on the forefront?

And as a county, we decided to keep EDI as a forefront because we for so long these organizations haven't been funded what they deserve, and finally, they're at a point where they're they're the pillars of of arts in Colorado and in Denver.

And so we decided to keep keep uh rewarding these organizations for what they're doing.

Awesome, and then one last question.

I was looking at the list, and it says 17 outside of Denver.

So those other 17 are allocated by their own counties.

It can be a combination, okay.

So for Denver County, uh, in order for organizations to be funded, the majority of their activities must be in Denver.

That's not the case necessarily in other counties.

So an organization in Denver County can actually apply in Denver, but could also apply in Adams County.

In Adams County if they do programs there.

Just cannot be the majority.

Okay, and then how is it decided how much tier three funding is given to each county?

Each county has a council.

So each council then makes those decisions independently.

Of course, do know right organizations.

Yeah so they each county has their guidelines so they can say uh we're gonna apply for um like in Adams County they do programs there the program is based on the budget and so the county and their guidelines will say we will only give you up to 25% of the overall ask for your budget and that's decided based on the amount of money that is uh allocated to each county collected collected yeah so it's allocated to each county by per capita compared to total revenue or sales and use tax it that was generated in that county.

So basically the generated revenue stays in that county for the tier threes correct yes okay correct wonderful well I'm so excited again and so grateful sorry to see you leave as chair but excited to see you uplift as a tier one organization congratulations on that and thank you both for all the work that you're doing to keep this program true and keep true to our values.

With that there's no action items so we can adjourn.

Thank you thank you all so much.

Congratulations on chairing your first committee