Announcing Give Thanks 15×15 winners!
Vanguard Skin Specialists and clara by Vanguard are pleased to honor the following charities for making a difference in our community!
This post was updated 11/15 with our final list of 2024 winners. Applications for 2025 will open early spring of that year.
Third Round Winners: (Announced November 2025)
Since 1993, the Children’s Literacy Center (CLC) has been providing free one-to-one tutoring to underperforming students in Colorado. CLC utilizes its Peak Reader curriculum to tutoring for children reading below grade level. The Peak Reader, a proven tool designed by CLC in collaboration with local and national education experts, incorporates a mountain theme as children climb to the peak of their reading abilities.
Learn more at childrensliteracycenter.org
The Community Cupboard of Woodland Park has a mission to improve the health and well-being of our neighbors by providing access to nutritious food in a welcoming environment through the generosity of volunteers, individuals, and community partnerships.
Learn more at wpcommunitycupboard.com.
By supporting families with children who are facing a housing crisis, Family Promise’s Interfaith Hospitality Network and homeless prevention program helps ensure the safety and health of children in Colorado Springs. These programs connect the underserved population of situational unhoused families and those facing an imminent housing loss to services that support the whole person within caring and compassionate contexts. IHN’s Family Shelter program creatively seeks to equip and empower families for long-term success.
Learn more at www.familypromisecos.org
Safe Families for Children is committed to supporting and strengthening families, preventing child abuse and neglect, and reducing the number of children unnecessarily entering the child welfare system. We do this by hosting vulnerable children and creating extended family-like supports for families experiencing unimaginable circumstances.
Learn more at coloradosprings.safe-families.org
Sleep in Heavenly Peace is a group of volunteers dedicated to building, assembling and delivering bunk beds to children 3-17 years old in need. We fully believe that a bed is a basic need for the proper physical, emotional, and mental support that a child needs. We give hope to kids. This gives them self-pride in owning their own bed, their own space. Many of these kids have never had a bed or their own bed.
Learn more at shpbeds.org
Second Round Winners: (Announced September 2025)
Dream Centers helps people trapped in cycles of poverty find hope, embrace health, and build sustainable lives—for themselves and their children. Its two pillar programs support healing, empower new mindsets and sustainable goals, and yield new lives of hope and health. The Women’s Clinic is a free healthcare facility providing medical and mental care services with expertise and compassion. Mary’s Home is a residential program offering high-challenge, supportive trauma-informed services to female-led families exiting homelessness.
Learn more at www.dreamcenters.com.
For survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, the path to healing can be challenging and overwhelming. At Family Crisis Services, we offer a wide range of resources and provide support to help clients during their journey. We believe everyone deserves to be treated with respect and understanding, regardless of their circumstances. Our programs are designed to empower our clients to make informed decisions and build a better future for themselves.
Learn more at www.familycrisisonline.org.
Friends of the Children – Colorado Springs creates generational change by empowering the most vulnerable children in our community. This is accomplished through long-term, one-to-one mentoring by dedicated professional mentors that begins when a child is age 4 to 6 and continues for 12+ years, no matter what. This improves their physical and mental wellbeing, supports their academic success, and develops their social-emotional and life skills to help them break through intergenerational cycles of poverty.
Learn more at www.friendscoloradosprings.org.
Project Angel Heart’s vision is for all Coloradans living with severe illness to have access to nutritious food that supports their health and well-being. To that end, our mission is to compassionately deliver comfort and support through high-quality nutrition services, including medically tailored meals while also advocating forthe principles of “Food is Medicine.” Since our founding in 1991, we have delivered more than 10 million meals to severely ill neighbors across Colorado.
Learn more at www.projectangelheart.org.
Royal Family KIDS Colorado Springs is a weeklong summer Camp (June 9-13, 2025) and 9-month Mentoring Club for El Paso County foster children – Little Campers – (6-12) who have been abused, neglected, and abandoned. Amazing local volunteer adults provide normalizing childhood experiences in the Cathedral of the Outdoors. Treat people royally. Make moments matter. Keep moving forward. RFK Mentoring Club provides one-to-one mentoring for Little Campers and a monthly mini-Camp experience the school year following Camp.
Learn more at www.rfkcoloradosprings.com.
First Round Winners: (Announced June 2025)
Children’s HopeChest is a Colorado Springs faith-based international non-profit engaged in empowering orphaned and impoverished children and their communities through relationships that foster holistic transformation and sustainability. The mission of Children’s HopeChest aims to release the potential within these communities, starting with the children, by addressing material, spiritual, emotional, social, economic, and educational needs. This approach is designed to cultivate self-sufficiency and long-term independence, ultimately aiming to eliminate poverty in all its forms.
Learn more at www.hopechest.org.
Eastern Plains Community Pantry encourages, supports, and enhances the quality of life of community members by assisting with food distribution, living necessities, and other resources for everyone with respect and dignity and without judgment or prejudice.
Learn more at www.easternplainscommunitypantry.org.
Hope House Cañon City offers a stable home for teen moms and their children where they are engaged and challenged through self-sufficiency programming to help them finish high school, prep for college/career, gain access to childcare, and receive the essential resources they need to provide for their children and eventually afford market-based housing. At Hope House, we empower teen moms to break the cycle of generational poverty.
Learn more at www.hopehousecanoncity.org.
Reclaiming Hope journeys with survivors of sex trafficking to discover hope. Reclaiming Hope cares for survivors at the point of recovery, during restoration and reintegration, by addressing their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
Learn more at www.reclaiming-hope.org.
Springs Rescue Mission is a local, faith-based nonprofit committed to helping men and women in need throughout Colorado Springs — 24/7, 365 days a year. The Mission helps neighbors in need overcome homelessness, poverty, and addiction. As Southern Colorado’s largest local provider of homeless services, SRM meets people just as they are in order to create a safe and welcoming environment that encourages hope, healing, and transformation.
Learn more at www.springsrescuemission.org.
Give Thanks 15×15 applications closed on October 1, 2024. Winners were announced on November 15, 2024.