MILE HIGH FIVE FOUNDATION

Denver

News: Over the course of 11 years, the Mile High Five Foundation, through its annual Mile High MMAyhem, has raised $1.1 million, money that has enabled a host of Denver-area nonprofits to make appreciable impacts on the wellbeing of children.

The 2021 edition of this black-tie event, held Oct. 29 at the Hyatt Regency at the Denver Convention Center, not only netted over $200,000, it came with the news that the Boston-based GreenLight Fund is preparing to make Denver the 13th in its network of cities where the GreenLight Fund establishes its proven process of identifying critical needs and fulfilling them.

The GreenLight Fund currently operates in Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Cincinatti, Detroit, Charlotte, Kansas City, Atlanta, the Twin Cities and Baltimore. According to its website, the GreenLight Fund identifies critical needs, then imports innovative, entrepreneurial programs that can have a significant, measurable impact and galvanizes local support to help the programs reach and sustain impact.

“Every year in every city (with a GreenLight presence) we run a community-driven process to address one gap that isn’t moving,” said GreenLight co-founder and board chair John Simon, a Harvard grad and former Rhodes Scholar. “It could be homelessness, education, affordable housing. Tell us what do you need and don’t have and we’ll move the metric. We change things for the better.”

Simon said that a decision to add Denver was made after he spent much of the summer and early fall meeting with civic leaders here. “Denver is vibrant, yet people are being left behind and the gulf is widening,” Simon noted, adding that once the official announcement is made regarding Denver’s selection, an executive director will be hired and he or she will be the decision maker for GreenLight Denver’s course of action.

Eric Holt, president and co-founder of the Mile High Five Foundation (MH5) and managing director of BOK Financial Private Wealth, said that auctioneer Taylor Kirkpatrick introduced him to John Simon. “I was blown away by the success the GreenLight Fund is having in its other cities,” Holt said, adding that its values mesh well with those of the MH5. “Our criteria for distributing funds is two-fold: The money has to go to a nonprofit located in or around Denver and it has to focus on children.”

Lockton Companies once again was the presenting sponsor of Mile High MMAyhem, and executive vice president and partner Ted Brown praised the MH5 for partnering with the GreenLight Fund. “The MH5 does an exceptional job of vetting and choosing the charities it supports, and we are thrilled to support GreenLight both nationally and through this event.”

About the organization: The Mile High Five Foundation was founded in 2013 when Eric Holt and a group of his friends met for breakfast at Snooze. “We said let’s raise a bunch of money for kids and have fun doing it.” The rest is history.

Website: milehigh5foundation.org

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