WOMEN’S FOUNDATION OF COLORADO 

COLORADO HEALTH FOUNDATION 

Denver 

News:  A $10 million gift from the Colorado Health Foundation will enhance “Until Every Woman Thrives,” a comprehensive campaign launched by the Women’s Foundation of Colorado in 2024 to transform lives, deepen relationships and amplify the impact of various WFCO initiatives. 

The money, to be awarded over the course of five years, will help grow WFCO’s Women & Girls of Color Fund, its endowment, a rapid-response grantmaking program and WFCO’s impact investing. It will also add to the annual fund that expands WFCO’s reach. 

How the gift came to be dates back to 2015 when Colorado Health Foundation CEO Karen McNeil-Miller and Women’s Foundation of Colorado CEO Lauren Casteel bonded over their decades-long commitment to racial justice, health equity and the belief that communities closest to inequity should help shape the solutions. 

Casteel retired from WFCO in 2025; McNeil Miller announced she will retire in December. 

During her tenure at WFCO, Casteel diversified the foundation’s communities of giving and investments and introduced values-based and innovative grantmaking programs, including the Women & Girls of Color Fund, a community-designed fund that invests in the leadership of women and gender-expansive leaders of color. 

In a similar vein, McNeil-Miller’s leadership at the CHF has shaped its strategy, culture and investments, including its Centering Race Framework, support for BIPOC-led organizations and community-informed approaches to policy, advocacy and grantmaking, including a focus on rural communities. 

“Health is shaped by the conditions people live in every day, and racial injustice is one of the most persistent barriers standing in the way of health and well-being for communities of color, especially those with less power, privilege and income,” McNeil-Miller stated. “Gender bias deepens those barriers in ways we see across Black maternal health outcomes, domestic violence and sexual assault, reproductive freedom, economic opportunity and more.” 

“Karen and Lauren’s partnership is a model of what’s possible when philanthropic leaders build trust across institutions and share visions of what’s possible,” added WFCO President/CEO Renee Ferrufino. “We honor their legacies by ensuring this investment is deployed through a gender, racial and economic equity lens, exactly as they envisioned.” 

Already, the grant money has enabled WFCO to increase its Women & Girls of Color Fund grantmaking dollars by 40% and to award some $500,000 in rapid-response grantmaking to 70-plus organizations serving women, families and communities impacted by federal budget cuts and rollbacks. 

About the organizations: Founded in 1987, the Women’s Foundation of Colorado is the state’s only community-funded foundation that protects women’s progress while advancing gender, racial and economic equity. Toward that end, the foundation has awarded more than $40 million in grants and helped pass hundreds of policies benefiting Colorado women and families, including the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act and Colorado’s Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FAMLI) program. 

The Colorado Health Foundation is a statewide philanthropic organization that champions the overall health and well-being of e