November 2025

It was a beautiful night as nearly 100 of our members, grantees and friends came to celebrate ten years of impactful giving at Christ Church Denver on November 12, 2025. Barnes Hall was packed and had the lively sounds of friends re-connecting and creating new connections.

We began with instructions to walk over to a timeline spanning our 10 years, with each year listing our grantees that year. We had the opportunity to write our name on the year we joined and other memories we had of a given year. 2018 had “128 members”. Who wrote that and remembered it – must have been a Membership Chair! 2019 had “Book Group begins.” For 2023, “Accelerator Grant Launched”.

After some 50 minutes of connecting, Board President Deb Brackney took the microphone to welcome us. She began with her personal history and her first college roommate. That roommate, Sarah Harrison, a Founding Member, was present. Deb took the opportunity to recognize Sarah and Christiano Sosa of the Denver Foundation who played major roles in getting our new organization up and running. And the success of our infant organization was evident when Deb asked the question, “just how much have we granted over our ten years?” And the slide appeared with the number “$1,917,388”. Wow – that’s a big number, representing grants of $3500 to $100,000 to some 32 Denver area not-for-profits.

Deb shared a video from the 2018 National Philanthropy Day when our Impact100 Metro Denver received a National Philanthropy award for Outstanding Service Organization. That was a remarkable achievement for such a young organization!

Fitting that our only “speaker” was our first $100,000 grantee, Kayla Birdsong, the CEO of Fresh Food Connect. She told us that we were their first grant and that our grant to Fresh Food Connect was Impact100’s first $100,000 grant. We learned how Fresh Food Connect came to be. Three organizations arrived at the same realization in 2015: that there is more produce in neighborhood gardens than a family can consume. And that neighborhood food pantries don’t have adequate supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. The problem to solve was: how to get that excess produce to
nearby food pantries?

The three organizations, Denver Urban Gardens, Denver Food Rescue and Groundwork Denver, moved forward with a pilot program to solve the challenge that existed in 2015 as it does today: roughly 1 in 10 people in the US experiences food insecurity, yet 40% of our food is wasted and going to landfills. At the same time, 1 in 3 US households grows food at home or in community gardens. Enter the free Fresh Food Connect mobile app which helps thousands of home gardeners track and manage homegrown produce donations to support local hunger relief.

Over these ten years since receiving our $100,000 grant, Kayla told us that:

• their mobile app is being used in “tiny pockets in 17 states” in addition to Denver, San Diego and Seattle.
• 5000 gardeners have moved 400,000 pounds of food which has fed 200,000 people around the country. That food has saved the recipients $2M in grocery costs.
• The environmental effect of 400,000 pounds of food that didn’t go to landfills? That equates to 400 metric tons of carbon that was prevented.

Talk about an impactful grant, Impact100 Metro Denver members! If you want to delve further into food insecurity and how communities are tapping the resources of neighborhood gardens, visit the Fresh Food Connect website.

Following that inspirational talk, Founding Member Michelle Myers created a special time for members to gather in small groups to share answers to any of several topics:

• What is your most memorable experience?
• What grantee inspires you most?
• What’s one special memory you hold about your Impact100 experience?
• What inspired you to come tonight?
• Who inspired you to join?

Ten minutes of sharing flew by and then we regrouped into another cluster of members. A member in my circle told us she learned recently that, for good mental health, women should have at least one meaningful time with a friend each week. Hey members, let’s do that!

Before our champagne toast, we remembered the eight Impact100 Metro Denver members who are no longer with us, representing Founding Members, members who worked tirelessly on committees, our mother, our wife, our sister, our aunt, and members we wish we had known. After a moment of silence to recall the sweet memories of these very special women, we toasted our first ten years and looked to the challenges we will face in our next ten.

Our evening was not complete until we all gathered for a group photo. Talk about herding cats: getting 100 women and 2 men into one picture frame! Member Linda Hanselman stood on a ladder and told us: “if you can’t see me, you’re not in the picture.” So, let’s make this Kodak moment a little more challenging: Bridget Epp, Dina Bleeker, Ceci Favetto, and Sara Wilhelm quickly passed 100 beautiful flutes of champagne with no broken or spilled glasses.

A personal note of gratitude from Margaret Prentice, Membership Chair: As with any memorable event there are many “thank yous” necessary: I’m grateful for the kudos I received for the idea of this event, which started back in January. Thank you, Dina Bleeker and Jess Welser, for providing inspiration, technical support, and funds from the Events Committee budget. Thank you to Bridget Epp for providing stemware from her private cache and to Linda Hanselman
for her photography expertise. Thanks to the entire Events and Membership Committees for all their support. And thank you to Deb Brackney for her words. I loved working with our President as we made this a reality. My best idea was asking Michelle Myers (Founding Member) to join Deb and me in creating the evening. Of course, I wanted to fulfill our mission of being “informed and
intentional philanthropists” with some meaningful content. Michelle challenged us to think of the evening as a celebration – and that’s what we created. Thank you, Michelle. You are the genius and the idea person extraordinaire.