Rose Youth Foundation

Co-creating a new program with teens for teens

Designing an Innovative Program in Response to a Disturbing Trend

I proposed Rose Youth Foundation in 2000 to Rose Community Foundation trustees and suggested that teens engaged in grantmaking could be a positive force for change. I had heard about fledgling youth philanthropy groups in Michigan and California. I was intrigued with the concept of connecting teens to strategic giving at a formative time in their lives.

At the same time, our Jewish community was alarmed by a disturbing new trend: teens dropping out of Jewish life after bar and bat mitzvah. Many other teens were unengaged Jewishly and not having a bar or bat mitzvah. Rose trustees always encouraged staff to take risks and gave me the green light to explore a Jewish teen philanthropy program.

Making it Happen with Teens for Teens

Believing in the power of co-creation and engaging the end user in design, I convened a diverse group of Jewish teens to help. They embraced the idea of a meaningful new program providing significant dollars to teens who would tackle community problems together.

The teens named Rose Youth Foundation (RYF), shaped the experiential curriculum to ensure Jewish values and strategic philanthropy practices were fully integrated, and told us that the only time busy teens would have time to work together would be Sundays at 5.

Together we studied positive youth development practices and used them. One was empowering teens to be leaders so we created peer co-chairs who facilitate the meetings. Another was to work in consensus with a group selected for their diversity of perspectives. And high-quality teen programs model equity and have caring adult mentors so we made sure we had both male and female adults supporting (but not leading) the teens.

We launched RYF in 2001. Every year for eight months, 26 sophomores, juniors and seniors work together to discuss what it means to give in a Jewish way, explore community issues, determine a funding priority, meet with nonprofit leaders, and ultimately determine how to grant $60,000 to make our community a better place.

I was very fortunate to be one of the mentors who worked with the teens, coaching the teen co-chairs, and serving as a philanthropy guide. They made me a better grantmaker, opening my eyes to teens’ needs and perspectives. So many of the RYF alumni have become life-long friends and colleagues.

Rose Youth Foundation: 19 Years Later

RYF today is a signature initiative of the Foundation and a pipeline for leadership. It is one of the oldest Jewish youth philanthropy programs in the country. A nationally recognized youth-led program, RYF proves that youth are not only tomorrow’s community leaders, they are also today’s. Well respected nationally, in 2010 it was named one of North America’s 50 most innovative Jewish nonprofits by Slingshot: A Resource Guide for Jewish Innovation.

Impact: 19 years strong

256
RYF teens have granted over
$1million
to Denver-area nonprofits with
156 grants

RYF alumni volunteer and take leadership positions
4 times more
than their millennial peers.

RYF was the
inspiration for another innovative collaborative giving group
for adults ages 25 to 40 at Rose: Roots & Branches Foundation.

A longitudinal evaluation in 2010 documents the extraordinary long-term impact on alumni and the community. Through RYF, alumni learned how philanthropy skills and Jewish values can reach across the ages to guide and inform the positive difference they wish to make in the world today.

Images courtesy of Rose Community Foundation

“The legacy of Lisa’s career in the Denver Jewish community and beyond is remarkable. Her original vision—of empowering a group of diverse teenagers to ‘give Jewishly’ through philanthropic giving—has had an enormous effect on the world: in the dollars dispersed to worthy nonprofits, in the minds convinced that teens could indeed be stewards of grantmaking, in the young people who gained fluency in Jewish values, professional skills, issue knowledge, self-confidence, and a conviction the we could come together to make the world better. I am so very thankful for her inspiration and friendship.”