LCFC said yes to Yessica Holguin’s whole vision. Today she gives every month to sustain what we’ve built together, and to help build what comes next.
Before the yes, there were a lot of no's.
Yessica Holguin, co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Community Wealth (CCW), went from funder to funder with a vision she believed in completely: "transforming economic systems to build an economy that works for all."
"For us it goes beyond providing programs, it's about ultimately changing the systems," she says.
Most funders didn't see it.
"One particular funder said, 'You're barking up the wrong tree. This is not going to go anywhere. You should consider giving food baskets instead because that's a very direct way to show impact,'" Yessica remembers. "I was so angry. I was like, no, this is not about charity and it never will be."
When she brought up worker cooperatives, the same funder told her they don't work. Then he said they work for certain communities. Yessica understood what he meant: wealthy white communities, not the rest of us. She took it as a challenge.
"We will never be able to build community power if we continue to rely on bandaid solutions."
A mission that started at home
"I recognized that my mission in life was to help others end the cycle of poverty. Including my own."
She once believed education was the way out. After college, she saw that education alone wasn't fixing a broken economic system. She and her partner quit their jobs and joined the Peace Corps, and six years in Nicaragua introduced her to an economic model that centers community.
"When I explained my work in Nicaragua, my friends would say this is so needed here."
In 2017, she accepted a fellowship and moved back to Denver to "look at how we build economic opportunities in our very own communities." That question grew into CCW.
When funding fell short, Yessica kept going anyway. "I believed so much in what we were doing that I worked for free because I knew there's something here."
She knew why some funders hesitated. "In all fairness to funders, it was risky. I don't look like the traditional executive director that they had been used to."
What was built
Some funders said yes to pieces, like research or one program. No one said yes to the whole vision. Then Yessica found LCFC's Adelante Colorado, a cohort focused on capacity building.
In her conversation with Carlos Martinez, LCFC's President and CEO, she didn't code switch. She was honest about wanting to build without repeating philanthropy's habit of placing funders above community. Carlos was all in.
"To be able to have this type of conversation and not get pushed out was very powerful," she says. "Being able to show up as my whole self."
LCFC wasn't her first yes. It was her first yes to all of it.
"Adelante said, 'I want to build you so you can continue to do the work,'" Yessica recalls. "It felt like a breath of fresh air that oh my gosh someone actually gets it."
"LCFC's yes meant that I could actually [build] an organization that was responding to community need," she says. "So as a result of LCFC, I was able to hire staff members and build the infrastructure needed to shift power."
Adelante also connected her with other Latino-serving organizations. "Being able to rely on some of the partners I met during Adelante has been so critical, especially right now."
"The value that was created for us as an organization was significant but the value created for our community, I don't know that I can ever quantify it."
Today CCW has supported more than 600 businesses and is dreaming bigger: a $2.6 million capital campaign for the Collective Economics Innovation Hub, a space for entrepreneurs, cooperatives, and community-owned businesses in Denver's historic Five Points neighborhood.
What keeps it going
Yessica is a monthly donor to LCFC.
"I truly believe in supporting our own efforts," she says. "It's not a big amount, it's what I can give on a monthly basis. But to me it's a representation of my belief that collectively we can make change happen."
Our communities have always given. To family across borders. To the neighbor who needs a hand. We just haven't been the picture of philanthropy.
"We know communities of color donate but yet we're not the picture of philanthropy," Yessica says. "We might not be able to give a lot but if I and hundreds of my friends can come and donate on a monthly basis, we can make change happen."
To her, monthly giving "is creating the opportunity for every single one of us to be seen as the philanthropic partners that we are."
"We can't continue to wait for anyone else to come and change things for us."
What comes next
A yes helped Yessica build. Her yes helps make the next one possible. Now we're inviting you to say yes, too.
Yes to the leaders and organizations already building stronger communities across Colorado.
Yes to the power that has always lived in our comunidad.
And yes to a future where, as Yessica puts it, "we don't have to be afraid of whatever happens on the national level."
"Because at the end of the day we are here," she says. "[If] we don't help each other, who will have our backs?"
Join Built Together · LCFC Monthly Giving Partners, starting at $20 a month.
Porque cada sí, juntos, se convierte en un sí se puede.
