BRIDGING
BUILDING
VOICES
CHANGE
Our Work
As we step into a new chapter, DMCI’s vital mission continues with a clear focus: amplifying community voices across Denver and centering the most impacted residents to drive solutions against displacement, ensure equitable neighborhoods, and build lasting stability. We will continue to strengthen our systems for gathering resident-led data, establishing shared leadership, and taking collective action. Across our work, we will make sure equity remains the non-negotiable foundation of all our decision-making.
Mission
We collect community data and conversations to inform solutions that reduce displacement and ensure neighborhood projects are guided by the voices and priorities of residents, families, and children in the Denver Metro area.
Vision
Equitable Denver neighborhoods where families stay, thrive, and build resilient communities.
We elevate community voice and lived experience to shape local solutions that prevent displacement, deepen belonging, and build long-term neighborhood stability. Grounded in the Social Determinants of Health, particularly Neighborhood and Built Environment and Social and Community Context, our work focuses on the conditions that influence where people live, the strength of their community ties, and their ability to stay rooted. By centering authentic relationships, shared leadership, and resident-led data, we reimagine what is possible when those most impacted by systemic inequities lead the way in building stronger, healthier communities.
The Community Impact Model
Everything we do at DMCI starts with the community’s voice. The voices of the people ground us, guide us, and set our direction. We know that real, lasting change begins by listening.
Community Voice is the first step in our Community Impact Framework. In this step, DMCI works with residents, business partners, local organizers, and civic leaders to facilitate small community-led conversations where people can speak freely about their community’s strengths, challenges, needs, and wants.
Then we pair those stories with qualitative data so we can understand the full picture of what is being experienced and where change could be possible. From this, we create a comprehensive Community Voice Report. This report is both a reflection of what we heard, and a roadmap for where the community might go.
Community Voice
We are directed by the community's voice through its established leaders and organizers.
Community Action
We facilitate collective action to shape social change.
Community Leadership
We lead as a backbone organization utilizing the Collective Impact Framework.
Our History
Denver Metro Community Impact was born in 2015 from an initiative organized by then Colorado State Senator Mike Johnston that sought to address inequity in Northeast Denver. From a founding steering committee, DMCI’s team cohered in 2017 to offer collaborative solutions for nonprofit partners, educators, local government, and—most importantly—community members looking to bring about systemic change in their neighborhoods.
DMCI studied how the Collective Impact Framework was being utilized across the country, taking note of how it could apply in Denver’s local context, and brought their operations to scale thanks to generous start-up funding and fiscal sponsorship from Bloomberg Philanthropies and The Civic Canopy. DMCI’s first major initiative was to form the Park Hill Collective Impact, a 501c3 that works to unite and sustain Denver’s Northeast Park Hill community.
Today, DMCI works to center and grow community power and agency through facilitated conversations, qualitative data analysis, shared leadership models, and collective action. For over a decade, our work has positively impacted communities across Denver, helping historically oppressed neighborhoods and groups gain social, political, environmental, and economic equity.
