It is with tremendous sadness that Colorado Publishing House has completely severed its ties with the IndyGive! campaign, the capacity-building, community-building nonprofit that Independent founder John Weiss launched in 2009 to support the small nonprofits that do so much for the Pikes Peak region.
After two years of planning and community outreach, Weiss launched IndyGive! under the auspices of the Pikes Peak Community Foundation.
IndyGive! thrived, achieving its multiple missions of increasing the capacity of small innovative local nonprofits by providing a fun, effective and inexpensive end-of-year fundraising platform, as well as hands-on training from the community’s nonprofit executives.
IndyGive! flourished because it connected our 125,000+ regular readers and others with little-known local nonprofits that touched people’s hearts and lives.
In addition, the campaign provided nonprofits with needed recognition, applause and volunteers, as each participating nonprofit’s hard work was featured in our papers, as well as by more than two dozen media partners around the Pikes Peak region.
We also obtained support from nearly a hundred local businesses, who aided our philanthropic effort by donating more than 60,000 “rewards” to community members who gave so generously through IndyGive!
In 2015, because IndyGive! was getting too large and complex for Pikes Peak Community Foundation to administer, we turned over the campaign to a community board, with the understanding they would continue to fulfill IndyGive!’s mission.
Initially, the community-run board did a great job. Over time, the original community board members left, and unfortunately their replacements no longer adhere to IndyGive!’s original tenets and missions.
Moreover, IndyGive! has become increasingly disorganized and dysfunctional. The last two executive directors left abruptly mid-campaign.
We repeatedly communicated our serious concerns to IndyGive!’s board, but to no avail. More than a year ago, we informed the IndyGive! board that “we needed to put significant distance between our organizations” and “that they should NOT count on ANY support from Colorado Publishing House for their 2022 campaign until a signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was in place.”
Despite our unaddressed concerns, and no signed MOU, the IndyGive! board has publicly launched their 2022 campaign. They continue to use our newspapers’ names and logos when soliciting nonprofit participants, media trainers, nonprofit trainers, reward partners, and matching grants donations from local corporations and foundations.
On advice of legal counsel, we are unable to air all our concerns at the present time, but suffice it to say we no longer can vouch for the integrity or honesty of IndyGive!’s current board members.
This was a heart-wrenching decision, but the IndyGive! board’s unacceptable and unprofessional behavior leaves us no other choice but to make a public announcement, especially since so many IndyGive! allies understandably believe we still support the campaign we founded.
Effective immediately, Colorado Publishing House’s print and digital publications do not endorse and will not participate in the 2022 IndyGive! campaign.
CPH’s family of papers and digital platforms consist of:
• Colorado Springs Business Journal
• Colorado Springs Independent
• The Fort Carson Mountaineer
• Pikes Peak Bulletin
• The Southeast Express
• The Transcript
• The Space Orbital (Peterson and Schriever Space Force Bases)