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The State of Leadership
Launched at Ripple Effect in February, the State of Leadership is a multi-year initiative designed to assess and strengthen Colorado’s leadership ecosystem. The initial phase in 2025 involved listening sessions and exploring themes of relationships, resources, and leadership qualities.
Colorado faces complex economic, social, and generational challenges requiring connected, adaptive leadership. This effort helps us to see leadership gaps while sparking collaborations to build capacity statewide.
2025 Reach
partner organizations
These facilitated discussions investigated three primary themes of leadership:
Relationships
We are exploring the quality of relationships, understanding which organizations and people are working together well, and finding out which communities do not yet have established trust.
Resources
We are working to understand how access to resources differs as we hear first-hand how communities, local governments, funders, and other organizations address the challenges.
Qualities of Leadership
We are exploring the different contexts of leadership across Colorado. As we listen to those with titles (more formal) to those more quietly driving change (informal), we are finding smarter ways to share resources and make communities stronger.
Initial Findings:
- Effective engagement with leaders in elected roles is more critical and difficult than ever.
- In a number of regions, there is a definitive need to create training programs and a pipeline for rural nonprofit boards.
- Nearly all communities have emphasized the importance of engaging young people in leadership.
- More limited financial resources mean rural leaders invest in relationships and social capital, assets that often make their communities feel more resourced than they may appear to be.
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