Last week Tim Leifield, Director of Philanthropic Services - The Community Foundation, and I stopped by to visit the folks at Symplified for a brown bag on the Entrepreneur's Foundation of Colorado. This is part of a larger effort to help thank the companies who joined EFCo in 2007, plot a celebration for mid-year 2008 and charter the future path of EFCo.

In preparation for the next three years of the EFCo, the Symplified visit was the start of a tour of member companies to get their feedback on why they joined and what they would like to see from our chapter in this decade. You can see our interview deck here. EFCo Year 2 brown bag - D2.ppt

At Symplified, we got some very specific feedback about getting people engaged. "I want to feel leveraged."

"Either - Have me work in an area where my technical skills can be applied OR help me know that I am working on some of the top five toughest problems in Boulder County. - Darren"

Please know that we hear you Darren, we have the same desire. As part of this discussion Tim brought up a couple of statistics regarding Boulder County issues:

• 12% of the people in Boulder County live below the poverty level


• 40% of Latinos in the County do not graduate from High School


• There is a steady population of 1300 homeless in the County

This is the exact kind of input we are looking for from our member companies. As we complete more of these interviews, Heidi and I will continue to post our findings and stories. Member companies should see an email from us today. We are trying to schedule brown bag lunches with six more member companies between now and April 2nd on Wednesdays.

Thank you to Eric and Joshua at Symplified for being our first interview. It was great to have such a solid turn out of highly engaged employees. Please let us know how we could improve the process.

Posted in: Initiatives