Colorado’s rural entrepreneurs should be feeling relieved this week with the news that Startup Colorado will not be leaving us anytime soon.

Last week, the organization announced that it had relaunched as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, according to reporting by The Daily Sentinel’s Nathan Deal. The program was originally going to sunset in July 2022 after five years of funding, but the results of a study of the program’s impact inspired the organization’s leaders to apply for nonprofit status.

“After a study in which we asked a lot of our partners throughout the state and a bunch of entrepreneurs that we work with and business support organizations, trying to determine the impact if Startup Colorado didn’t exist anymore, we learned that there was still a lot of work we could do in supporting rural entrepreneurs, so it was decided that we would continue to exist,” said Startup Colorado Communications Director Margaret Hedderman.

“Part of that study showed that we could better support rural entrepreneurs if we were an independent nonprofit instead of being tied to the university because our team’s purely rural and not based in Boulder, so that was kind of the impetus whenever we decided to continue as an organization.”

We think this is a great direction to take this important organization and it fits with its history of growing and changing over time. It was originally founded in 2011 at the University of Colorado Law School’s Silicon Flatirons Center. Six years later, it became a full-time organization that supports rural entrepreneurs across 53 counties in Colorado through a variety of services.

Further evolving into a nonprofit will allow Startup Colorado to have even more flexibility in the programs and services it can provide. That’s crucial because as our economy and rural communities change, the needs of our entrepreneurs will change as well.

“Some of the ways that them being their own nonprofit will help is that it sets them up to go raise grant funding, it gives them sustainability so they can be around for a long time, and they can also help pass along funds as a nonprofit,” said Brian Watson, one of the co-founders of Alt Space Coworking in Grand Junction.

Just having Startup Colorado around to continue supporting entrepreneurs is valuable in keeping that self-starting business culture alive and thriving in our rural communities. This is important because entrepreneurs help drive our economy.

These are the people in our community looking to fill some niche or need not already covered by existing businesses or working to make an existing service better. They provide jobs and create competition, which is essential for a healthy economy. They aren’t always successful, but they are trying to create something new and we should value that.

Startup Colorado has been a success in supporting these innovators in our communities in the past. We are happy to see they will be there offering support for our startup community well into the future.

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel Editorial Board

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