Educate, Engage, Empower

Veronica Crespin-Palmer is the Co-Founder & CEO of RISE Colorado, which works to Educate, Engage, and Empower low-income families of color and immigrant and refugee families to RISE as change agents for educational equity in our public school system. RISE has been awarded the TFA Social Innovation Award, Colorado’s MLK, Jr. Humanitarian Award, Education Leaders of Color Boulder Fund, the 2019 National Civic Collaboration “Civvys” Award, and Veronica was chosen as an Inaugural Obama Foundation Fellow. She has over fifteen years of experience as an organizer, teacher, teacher coach, and social entrepreneur. A Latina born and educated in Denver, she is a 7th generation Colorado native, a proud wife, and mother of two.

Educational inequity is deeply rooted in our country, and systemic racism in schools creates a significant barrier to success for students of color. Marginalized communities, especially Black, Latinx, immigrant, and refugee families, continue to navigate inequitable systems that consistently omit their voices. They are the most impacted by educational inequity and therefore must be at the forefront leading the movement for change. Just like Dr. King led the Civil Rights Movement, and Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez led the Farm Workers Movement, we believe that those most impacted by educational inequity must organize and lead the movement. In both Aurora and America, those most impacted are low-income families of color, immigrant, and refugee families. Families are powerful change agents and, with RISE Colorado providing the skills and tools for families to elevate their voices and organize, they are leading the movement for educational equity and transforming our public education system.

Systemic racism and educational inequities create incredible challenges for low-income families of color. There are assumptions that low-income families of color do not value education; harmful stereotypes such as these contribute to deficit mindsets and an education ecosystem that does not value or believe in every student. RISE works in Aurora, CO, where race and socioeconomic status create divides in student achievement, but neither Aurora nor Colorado are exceptions; rather, educational inequity and systemic racism is deeply embedded in the structures of global education systems. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there continue to be statistically significant gaps in academic achievement of students of color when compared to their White peers. In the 2018 Colorado Measures of Academic Success Reading Proficiency tests, 44.2% of White Aurora Public Schools (APS) students met/exceeded expectations, as opposed to 24.1% of Black students and 19.7% of Latinx students in APS. According to Girls Opportunity Alliance, more than 98 million adolescent girls globally are not in school, which limits their ability to lift themselves out of generational poverty. Education has a lasting impact on health and life outcomes, and we as a nation and world must end educational inequity.

We Educate families about the realities of the opportunity gap and their role in ending it. As families gather knowledge and tools from the RISE workshop series, they go on to significantly impact their children’s education. The workshop series provides information on the opportunity gap, academic strategies, and pathways to and through college.

We Engage families in coalitions where they gain the tools of grassroots community organizing. Families develop and lead community-based organizing coalitions where they turn the knowledge they receive in workshops into action. Coalition members identify and select issues impacting student achievement in their schools and community and work towards culturally responsive solutions. It is important to note that RISE does not have a preconceived agenda–families identify the issues most impacting them and define the path for change. 

We then Empower families to take on leadership roles at decision-making tables ensuring that education leaders are reflective of and responsive to the community. Through leadership development workshops, families step into leadership roles that they have always been capable of holding. With leaders that believe family engagement is crucial to student and school success, the changes in policy will result in improved student achievement, graduation rates, and ultimately educational equity.

RISE works in both Aurora and Cherry Creek, including the Adams and Arapahoe counties. Aurora is Colorado's 3rd largest city with a diverse population of more than 375,000, including a foreign-born resident population of nearly 20%. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Aurora has the 16th-highest foreign-born population among cities of similar populations. As an official refugee resettlement city, Aurora offers a home to immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers from around the world.

RISE engages the Black, Tigrayan, Latinx, Burmese, Karen, Karenni, Bhutanese, and Nepali communities, and the three RISE coalitions span seven languages. They include the Black Alliance for Educational Equity (BAEE), the Latinx Coalition, and the Southeast Asian Diverse (SEAD) Coalition.

It is crucial that RISE stays community-led and informed in our work. Within organizing coalitions, Families Leaders identify the challenges that are impacting their children’s academic achievement, make an issue cut, and create their organizing campaign for change. Along the way, we systematically collect quantitative and qualitative data around Family Leaders’ needs, goals, and experiences; this data informs and guides our approach to democracy building. True grassroots community organizing is dependent upon deep listening to those most impacted by the inequity that exists.

RISE Colorado is one of the only multiracial and multilingual nonprofit organizations in the United States leveraging the power of authentic community organizing to address educational inequity. The RISE model ensures that those most impacted by educational inequity - low-income families of color, including immigrant and refugee families - have elevated opportunities to not only guide but lead change in education. RISE is poised on the edge of a thought revolution; we are thinking about the future of education and community organizing both locally, nationally, and internationally with families centered in the decision-making process.

Alongside two other Latinas, I co-founded RISE in 2012. We all grew up and were educated in Colorado. As teachers and organizers, we saw the importance of holistic family engagement where families were no longer tokenized but truly put at the forefront of the movement for educational equity. RISE Colorado is founded on the belief that families are crucial to student and school success. Our team is majority people of color, and comes from and is representative of our communities, including African, Latinx, Burmese/Karen, and Bhutanese/Nepali Community Organizers. They collaborate directly with communities within RISE coalitions, where they surface the challenges that their communities face in education, and then create organizing campaigns to make their solutions to the challenges a reality. Family Leaders are trained on the foundations of grassroots organizing and Public Narrative, as well as provided a safe space to develop their organizing campaigns to create systemic change. Black, Latinx, immigrant, and refugee women in particular comprise an integral part of our initiatives; their strong involvement and dedication to educational equity are a proof point that the RISE mission is not just an effective model, but a strong solution for combating systemic inequities.

Education has been integral to shaping my family’s past, present, and future. My grandmother Alberta, a proud Chicana, lived in the projects in Downtown Denver and was in a gang. She dropped out of school, got pregnant with my dad, and went on welfare. She realized the only way to end this cycle of poverty and violence was through education. So, as a single mom of three, while my grandfather was incarcerated in prison, she crossed the street from the projects to the Metro State University campus, got her GED, Bachelors, and Masters, and became a social worker for Denver Public Schools for 25 years. She went to college, my dad went to college, I went to college, and now my two Afro-Latino children, Trey and Avianna, will go to college. My grandmother single-handedly transformed my family's trajectory for generations to come by pursuing an education. Following in my grandmother’s footsteps, I too entered the education field, but as a teacher; while in the classroom, I recognized that educational equity would not be possible without centering the voices of low-income families of color. To address the inequities that I saw all around me, I co-founded RISE Colorado.

Before I address my professional qualifications, I am first and foremost equipped to solve this issue as a Latina and mother. My two Afro-Latino children are in the midst of their educational journeys, and despite having been a teacher, having four degrees between my husband and me, the education system is still difficult to navigate. This is a system deliberately designed to exclude Black children, and I have witnessed this first-hand as a parent. My line of work is not a coincidence; I am here because I have skin in the game. As a woman of color and mother, I have gained invaluable lived experiences that inform and guide the decisions I make as a CEO.

Furthermore, I possess the professional abilities to lead this change. My first job was as a third grade teacher in a low-income community in Los Angeles. I saw the stark inequities between students of color and their affluent White peers; I also witnessed the tremendous impact that family engagement has on student achievement. Since then, I’ve garnered over 15 years of experience as a teacher, teacher coach, and organizer, and have led RISE Colorado for 8 years. As both a leader of color and mother, I know that we cannot wait for the system to recognize its own inequities. Instead, we must listen to the voices of low-income families of color, who experience inequity and injustice every day, and who can offer innovative solutions to support all children as they learn and grow.

Transitioning from Los Angeles back to Colorado was not the homecoming it should have been. Alongside my two Latina Co-Founders, I experienced a level of scrutiny and doubt that, while no different than the opportunity gaps I encountered in my own education, was painful and debilitating to our work. Even as White male outsiders were granted seed funding for new schools and organizations, we were told that we first had to prove ourselves. Without the grant opportunities that so many other nonprofits use to get off the ground, we turned to our own funds, making countless other personal sacrifices along the way. Despite this adversity, I knew that I could not give up on RISE; if not us, then who would provide the platform for marginalized families to be heard? Eventually, dogged perseverance paid off. RISE has now been in operation for eight years, and once the philanthropic community recognized that this movement was not going away, but growing exponentially, they signed on as well. We are proud of a diverse portfolio of foundation funding that goes directly to supporting the families most impacted by educational inequity as they lead the movement for transformative change in our education system.

Following the 2016 presidential election, fear of discriminatory violence raged through the nation and Aurora community. Families of color - especially Latinx families - were scared to take their children to school. RISE knew we had to take a stand, and heard the Latinx Coalition’s concerns around  safety and taking a public stand, which could expose their identities. We engaged RISE Family Leaders from the Black and Southeast Asian communities to support Latinx Family Leaders. Recognizing that this issue affected all Aurora families, the Coalitions came together to write and lead the Resolution to Support Students Regardless of Documentation Status, then campaigned to make it a reality. When Latinx families feared retaliatory action for sharing their stories, RISE equipped Black and Southeast Asian Family Leaders with the tools and platform to step up to share those stories with the Aurora Public Schools Board of Education. After six months of campaigning and relationship-building, the Resolution unanimously passed within the district, supported by three Democrats, three Republicans, and one Independent. When we empower families to lead change, incredible things happen. Two years later, the district reposted the Resolution on their website as a re-commitment towards creating safe school environments for all students.

RISE’s model is an innovation in the field, and we are one of the only organizations in the nation working at the intersection of educational equity, community organizing, and systems change. Our work is true grassroots democracy building; it’s about co-creation between current generations and future generations and how we organize, collaborate, and build democracy together. When families learn how to organize within education, they can apply those organizing skills to other systemic inequities like housing, immigration, criminal justice reform, and beyond. This flips the historical power dynamic, disrupting systems of oppression and replacing them with opportunities for growth and development. 

At RISE, we’re proud that families who are often ignored and left out of the democratic process are able to show their people power, creating change by developing strong relationships with district officials and policy makers. Too often families are brought to the decision-making table at the last minute and asked to sign off on policies they didn’t write or create. We are turning that process on its head by trusting families to create solutions to our most pressing challenges in education, with RISE providing the training, skills, tools, and platform for their powerful voices. We believe families are architects of policy - not just objects - and that they are powerful visionaries for a better world. Families are the sleeping giant, and once awakened the inequity that exists, there is nothing they won’t do to ensure their children receive the excellent education they deserve.

RISE Colorado places families at the forefront of the movement for educational equity. RISE’s Theory of Change stems from the most successful community organizing movements the world has seen. Just like Dr. King and African Americans led the Civil Rights Movement, and Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez led the Farm Workers Movement, we believe that those most impacted by educational inequity must lead the movement. In both Aurora and the U.S., those most impacted are low-income families of color and  immigrant and refugee families. RISE provides a platform for traditionally silenced voices to speak out around the challenges and lived experiences of navigating the public school system, as well as the solutions to the issues they face. Family engagement is a proven positive contributor to student success. According to Dr. Karen Mapp and Anne T. Henderson, authors of A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family, and Community Connections on Student Achievement, “The evidence is consistent, positive, and convincing: families have a major influence on their children’s achievement in school and through life.”  By taking the time to listen and co-create, we can foster a community of trust to achieve equitable systemic change within education.

Successful implementation of our programs will yield a system where all students can receive an excellent education, where teachers and school leaders are aware of and dismantling implicit biases, systemic racism, and the opportunity gap, and where Family Leaders are the architects of their child’s education instead of bystanders. We will know if we are successful first and foremost through communication with our Family Leaders; they have a deep understanding of the issues they face, and whether their solutions have been effective. Our work is not done until Family Leaders feel that their voices have been heard and valued, and that they have an equal role in creating a just and equitable education system for their children. We must be responsive to the community, and that requires a unique level of flexibility to ensure families and students are leading the change that they want and need.

RISE measures our impact through two key indicators: individuals and total engagements. Total engagements reflect those individuals who attend multiple RISE events within a set time frame - given that our work includes a workshop series and coalition meetings, we often have Family Leaders who attend more than 10 events a year. We’re proud that we retain families and go deep with them for many years. In 2019, RISE engaged 937 individuals, with 2083 total engagements. In 2020, we are proud to share that as of July, we have already surpassed those numbers by impacting 1,012 individuals with 2,125 total engagements.

Based on our projections, we anticipate reaching over 1,100 individuals with over 2,800 engagements in one year, 2021. In five years, we expect those numbers to rise to 1,400 individuals with over 4,000 engagements. It is important to note that these are our direct numbers - individuals who attend RISE programming. However, our indirect footprint is much larger. Family Leaders go home to households with 3-4 additional individuals, and share back what they have learned with their family members and students. Teachers who attend RISE training take their learnings back to their classrooms, where they can impact up to 30 students. Therefore, this work has a ripple effect by spreading not only information around educational inequity and the opportunity gap, but the dynamic solution that we offer: families are ready and equipped to lead changes in education that support all students.

A key goal within the next year, and continuing through the next five years, is to authentically spread our model and work around the globe through a fellowship program called RISE Inspired Leaders and Communities. RISE Inspired Leaders reflect empowered families, students, community members, and educators who boldly take on leadership roles at decision-making tables to ensure education systems, leaders, and policies are reflective of and responsive to the community. RISE Inspired Communities are empowered communities who are co-created with RISE Inspired Leaders to lead a groundswell of grassroots organizing in order to address inequities within education. 

We are currently in the midst of our first partnership with Nedgine Paul Deroly and Anseye Pou Ayiti (Teach for Haiti), and are exploring future opportunities with state and district leaders around the nation and globe. The RISE Model was created as a universal foundational framework to engage leaders and communities regardless of culture, geographic location, or ideology. District officials and educators are banging their heads against a wall, trying to determine a path towards academic achievement. Meanwhile, organizing has brought about incredible systemic change in past social justice movements, and therefore must apply it to education. Where there are communities committed to excellent education, there exists the next generation of leaders who are poised to raise their voices for equal opportunities for all. We look forward to collaborating around how best to amplify the voices, ideas, and community organizing efforts of leaders of color for the Family-Led movement for Educational Equity globally.

Systemic racism is not only a barrier for low-income families of color who are navigating the education system, but for RISE Colorado as an organization. Led by a Latina CEO, and comprised of a predominantly people of color staff, RISE is subject to constant discrimination in how we operate and fundraise. In their 2019 report, Talented, Passionate & Underrepresented: Investing in Latino Edupreneurs, NewSchools Venture Fund reported that despite making up 18% of the US population, Latinos comprise 24% of all new entrepreneurs. However, national banks provide less loan funding to Latinos than any other group, less than 25% of Latino entrepreneurs have access to philanthropic funding opportunities, and over half of the surveyed entrepreneurs reported that they would have to turn to personal funds if additional organizational funding was needed. This unveils an uncomfortable truth; the philanthropic community is not committing adequate funds towards Latinx-run nonprofits.

Within the next five years, we will continue to work diligently towards building relationships with funding partners. RISE is continuing to grow, in our constituent base, our staff, and our geographic reach. While some funders have stepped up to provide opportunities that grow alongside our organizational budget, others have maintained or even reduced funding streams. While we are committed to continue to build out our fee-for-service model, RISE relies on the support of grants and generous donors. Since RISE’s inception, fundraising has been a chief concern and barrier to organizational growth, and we do not see that changing in the coming years.

We at RISE recognize that fundraising is among the top barriers for most nonprofits, and we have taken steps to ensure a sustainable financial future. Within the past year, we brought on a grant writer  as well as a development consultant, who recently transitioned to a full-time development and operations role. However, we see the future of the organization as resting in the hands of the next generation of dynamic leaders of color, leaders who will continue the important work of elevating the voices of low-income families of color.

In summer of 2020, we launched our Next Generation Virtual Summer Youth Program, which focuses on leadership development, academics, and social connection for elementary, middle school, and high school students. This work includes bringing on two young women of color in college as summer interns, along with our continued partnership with Aurora Public Schools to support young men of color. By combining a strong development team with the young leaders of today and tomorrow, we hope to not only maintain our programs for years to come, but contribute to a philanthropic culture that values diversity, equity, and inclusion in where dollars are spent. We believe in raising up the next generation leaders of color who are the future organizers, educators, elected officials, policymakers, and change agents who will dismantle unjust systems to ensure there is equitable systemic change.

RISE Colorado maintains relationships with key local and national leaders. First and foremost, we work with Aurora Public Schools District officials and departments. Within the district, we engage in regular critical conversations with Superintendent Rico Munn, district officials, and APS Board of Education members. We believe that deep and authentic relationships are one of the keys to success, and we are dedicated to supporting families as they work alongside public officials for the advancement of low-income students of color.

In 2018, I was selected as an Inaugural Obama Fellow, which connects and guides a group of rising leaders from around the globe. In addition to meeting President and Mrs. Obama in Chicago, we were paired with coaches and experts who helped us develop and execute key strategic plans for our organizations. This partnership has not only had a tremendous impact on RISE’s organizational growth and vision for the future, but has elevated RISE Family Leaders’ advocacy and organizing triumphs to a national level. 

2020 marked the launch of RISE Inspired Leaders and Communities and our work with Anseye Pou Ayiti (Teach for Haiti) . This collaborative partnership bridges our work with that of Nedgine Paul Deroly, to equip Haitian Family Leaders with organizing tools as they build their first-ever public education system.

Finally, RISE regularly participates alongside national education organizations to speak on the importance of family engagement, including the Aspen Institute, Teach For All, and the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research.

Our business model is centered on elevating the voices of those most impacted within the education system and sharing the cost benefit analysis of doing such within schools, districts, and communities. Our niche and what makes us unique is our model of Educate, Engage, and Empower which works inside and outside of the education system to disrupt systemic racism and inequities that are deeply embedded to improve academic achievement. We have been working to codify our work and secret sauce that makes our work so successful in transforming the education system through family engagement and community organizing with those most impacted by inequity. 

We are continuing to build out our business model, impact, and revenue. Right now, our business model is heavily centered on fundraising through grant writing for foundation funding, participating in competitions, and grassroots fundraising through crowdfunding. We are ready and excited to take our business model to the next level by packaging our model in a way that it can be shared and generate revenue to sustainably grow the Family-Led movement for educational equity globally led by those most marginalized and disenfranchised. We have garnered interest from state leaders, district officials, and national education leaders who are values-, mission-, and vision-aligned and are ready to pay for our work as consultants and framework development partners as a way to improve academic achievement in their communities. We still have a lot to learn around this and are open to ideas and feedback from scaling experts.

RISE has a diverse funding model that includes foundation grants, awards program funds, individual donors, and a growing fee-for-service component. Current investments come from a blend of local and national funders and foundations. 

The long-range funding plan is to increase the fee-for-service element of our model. Our current focus is on piloting and codifying our intellectual property. Additionally, with the recent contract with a communications consulting firm, we intend to employ a targeted marketing campaign to build brand awareness while advertising the programmatic work that is available to interested stakeholders. It is important to us that we work with those who are values-, mission-, and vision-aligned because it’s not just what we do, but how we do it and with whom we do it that matters. Alongside the fee-for-service strategy, we will continue to cultivate relationships with current and potential funders including foundations, individual donors, and award programs for the organization to ensure our financial sustainability.

Aurora Public Schools - Young Men of Color Grant: $100,000

Bloomberg Philanthropies Grant: $133,333

Carnegie Corporation of New York Grant: $100,000

Colorado Health Foundation Grant: $175,000

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Grant: $150,000

Gates Family Foundation Grant: $50,000

Gateway Fund II Grant: $50,000

Littlefield Foundation Grant: $50,000

Margulf Foundation Grant: $300,000

Nord Family Foundation Grant: $30,000

W.K. Kellogg Grant: $215,000

Wend Ventures Grant: $200,000

RISE works diligently to fundraise a diverse portfolio, including a variety of grant opportunities, to hit a $2 million annual budget goal. We operate on a July - June fiscal year and strive to have fundraised the next year’s annual budget by the end of our fiscal year.

$1,500,000

We are applying for The Elevate Prize because we want to amplify the importance of those most impacted by inequity leading the change globally and the need for authentic community organizing and democracy building as a way of creating a better world for all. As we shared earlier in the application, our chief barrier is finding consistent funding as the result of systemic inequities. Of course, the Elevate Prize can contribute to reducing this barrier by funding our project. However, Elevate can go even further by identifying and supporting leaders of color who are authentically building community power through their programs. Now more than ever, leaders of color need the philanthropic community to support Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous leaders whose dynamic solutions are contributing to an equitable society.

As we continue to think about spreading the RISE work and model of authentic family engagement and community organizing, we hope to maintain our current partnership with Anseye Pou Ayiti (Teach for Haiti). Since beginning our collaborative project earlier this year, RISE has been on a series of calls to learn more about the Haitian education ecosystem while sharing our foundational tools and knowledge on organizing. Our end goal is to contribute to the creation of a Haitian public education system. We are excited to continue this pilot, as well as connect with new communities who are poised to organize and support community-driven solutions around the globe. Because the RISE Model is a truly universal concept, it can be adapted to any context where families, students, district officials, and systems players are ready to step into leadership roles and center the voices of those most impacted by inequity. In order for us to create truly equitable education systems around the world, families, students, and educators must work together. With your generous support, educational equity isn’t just possible — it’s coming! Thank you for your consideration.