The $16.7 million giving engine most Northern Colorado owners have never heard of

Walkers at a Susan G. Komen 3-Day fundraising event. Event walks remain one of the few channels where small businesses and individual donors give side by side. Photo: Susan G. Komen 3-Day / Unsplash

The largest grantmaker in Northern Colorado is not a company and not a government. It is a foundation most business owners could not name. In its 2025 financial year, NoCo Foundation — the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado until it rebranded in January 2025 at the age of fifty — distributed $16.7 million through 1,757 grants. That was its biggest year ever, up from $12.2 million the year before.

Its assets tell the trajectory more plainly: roughly $100 million in 2017, $245.9 million at the close of FY2025, and over $270 million today across more than 650 charitable funds. The stated goal is half a billion under management by 2032.

Two counties, two very different markets

The Weld Community Foundation holds $67.8 million and distributed $4.6 million in 2025, including $570,000 in scholarships across 343 recipients. That is roughly a quarter of its Larimer-centred counterpart.

The asymmetry runs deeper than the foundations. A statewide economic analysis found nonprofits account for 8.4 percent of Larimer County's GDP but only 1.8 percent of Weld's, despite similar headcounts — 6,970 nonprofit employees in Larimer, 5,870 in Weld. Statewide the sector employs 182,400 people directly, 6.8 percent of Colorado jobs.

For a Greeley business, the practical read is that a gift is comparatively scarcer there, and more visible.

The credits almost nobody stacks

Colorado offers three contribution tax credits, each capped at $100,000 per taxpayer per year, and they are considerably more generous than most owners realise:

• Child Care Contribution Credit — 50 percent of a qualifying gift to a licensed child care facility.
• Enterprise Zone Contribution Credit — 25 percent for cash, 12.5 percent in-kind, to certified enterprise zone projects, with a five-year carryforward.
• Homeless Contribution Credit — 25 percent, rising to 30 percent in underserved rural counties.

Larimer County contains five enterprise zone areas: Fort Collins, Loveland, Berthoud, Wellington and Estes Park. The catch is that the credit only applies to *certified* projects, so the question to ask a nonprofit before writing the cheque is whether they are an approved enterprise zone contribution project.

A state audit found the enterprise zone credit cost $10.5 million in its last fully evaluated year, claimed by about 11,500 taxpayers — 99 percent of them individuals, with a median claim of $250 and 93 percent under $5,000. Businesses are barely in this data. Surveyed contributors said 43 percent would have given moderately less without the incentive.

A median claim of $250, and 93 percent of them under $5,000. On a credit capped at $100,000. The field is not crowded.

Colorado Gives Day is bigger and thinner than it looks

The 2025 edition raised a record $56.7 million from 102,835 donors across 267,587 donations. But that was split among 4,618 participating nonprofits — an average well under $13,000 each, and 7.6 percent received nothing at all. The most common single gift was $100.

The line most relevant to this audience: 99 businesses raised $496,988 between them. Ninety-nine, in a state with hundreds of thousands of businesses. A company that sponsors or matches for one local nonprofit on that day has outsized leverage precisely because the per-organisation take is so modest.

Where the local money already goes

United Way of Weld County reported $5.9 million in revenue and community investment for 2024-25, with 83 percent of spending going to programmes — the largest being Weld's Way Home at $3.2 million and Reading Great by 8 at $1.6 million. It also placed $1.5 million into early childhood support across 74 providers, and counted 1,596 volunteers whose time it valued at $189,654.

On the corporate side, Fort Collins-based Otter Products gives every employee 24 hours of paid volunteer time a year plus a grant to a nonprofit of their choice for those who use all of it: 739 employees logged 14,705 hours in 2024, and cumulative service since 2011 exceeds 148,000 hours. FNBO awarded $305,000 across 19 nonprofits in Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado in September 2025, in grants of $10,000 to $25,000.

What to do with this

If you give more than a few thousand dollars a year, a donor-advised fund at NoCo or Weld Community Foundation is the low-overhead alternative to a private foundation, and it is where the money is visibly moving. Before any gift, ask whether the recipient is a certified enterprise zone project or a licensed child care facility — those two questions are worth 25 to 50 cents on the dollar. And if you employ more than a handful of people, paid volunteer time is the cheapest programme on this page: Otter's model is replicable at any scale, and United Way's own numbers show how quickly the hours add up to a real figure.