Citizens Project is a bold, fearless advocate, and engaging voice that challenges the Pikes Peak region to embrace equity, inclusion, and justice.
Organized in 1992, our founders were concerned about the increasing encroachment of overt religious influence into the public sphere and organized to ensure religious neutrality in public schools. At the same time, Colorado voters passed Amendment 2, which legalized the discrimination of LGBTIQ people in the state. These events were the catalysts of our founding.
For the past 30 years, Citizens Project has worked to build a vibrant democracy in the Pikes Peak region, ensuring that everyone in our community has the tools to have their voice heard and that equity, inclusion, and justice are championed in our community.
Citizens Project works to educate and empower people in the Pikes Peak region to embrace all members of our community, regardless of race, economic status, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, or physical or mental ability. Through our outreach, we seek to promote equity in our public spaces and challenge community members to uphold this value.
Citizens Project promotes active civic engagement. A vibrant democracy requires that voters be informed, have access to elected leaders, and participate in shaping public policy. Citizens Project ensures protection of our local democracy through protecting the right to vote, hosting educational forums, publishing voter guides, and working collaboratively with the community to promote equitable and just public policy.
We envision a Pikes Peak community that is a vibrant democracy in which individual rights are protected, differences are respected, and people fully participate in civic and community life.
Citizens Project has a budget of $190,000 (more than half from individual donations) and is in a strong financial position with over $100,000 in financial reserves. In 2020, the organization was awarded the Building Bridges and Power capacity building grant from the Colorado Trust and receives $75K per year over a 4.5 year period, enabling significant growth opportunities.
The organization is budgeted for 2.5 FTE, including a full-time executive director, a full-time operations and program manager, and a .5 FTE communications manager.
Citizens Project is governed by an engaged 10-member board of directors that meets monthly. Three board committees—fund development, governance, and policy and advocacy—also meet regularly and recommend policy to the board.