Over the last 4 years, The Blue Bench has struggled to regain financial stability post-pandemic. Inflation has directly and negatively impacted our organization, as everything costs more to operate a business, too. Increased requests for funding from private, public, and family foundations have meant more declination letters than we ever expected. Not even individual donors can keep up with the requests from us and other human services organizations.
Everyone has done everything we can to try to create a more sustainable funding model during the most financially challenging period in our organization’s history. Simply put, the rate of inflation has outweighed our capacity to sustain how we’ve been operating.
Funding is the largest factor leading us to a decision to reduce programming and staff across the board effective January 2025.
Our largest funder, VOCA, has slashed funding by 40% and Colorado has no immediate action plan to support crime victims. Our priority is to keep our doors open and maintain critical services. We know that many survivors will lack the support they need because of financial shortfalls we and other service organizations find ourselves in. But in the end, we must maintain our programs in a limited capacity as we do our best to work with funders, the state, and the community to rebuild a sustainable organization.
This is hard information to process and understand. We are deeply sorry that there isn’t a way to maintain our current staff and level of programming. We also know that this is a season of transition for the organization, and by coming to the decisions we have, we will set TBB up to be a more sustainable organization that prioritizes survivor needs and staff wellness.
Advocacy:
Effective January 1st, 2025, Post-Conviction Victim Advocacy will no longer exist as a stand-alone program within The Blue Bench but will instead be integrated into our Case Management services. This means that the services currently offered will be reduced and changes will be made in how The Blue Bench has historically approached this work. Throughout the last quarter of 2024, we will be slowly transitioning our services and may need to pause or stop altogether our current referral process. Our aim is to work collaboratively with all community partners to ensure the impact on survivor support is as minimal as possible and will communicate changes as they occur. We ask for patience and compassion as we take these next steps to create a new Case Management program that will continue to provide trauma-informed care and services to survivors throughout all stages of the criminal legal system and after.
Community Education:
The Community Education team remains committed to delivering prevention programming where it's most needed and will continue offering both youth and adult programs, though on a more limited scale. For the 2024-2025 school year, we are exploring ways to focus our youth programming outside of school. We would greatly appreciate your help in distributing our community needs survey(s) to ensure we can target our programming most effectively in the coming months. These surveys will remain open until Thanksgiving 2024
Help us understand community needs as we continue to advance our prevention efforts:
Community Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6ZD6R3H
Parent Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2SCQTVW
Educator Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DTTZBKY
Student Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2SM63H6
Therapy:
Due to the grant cuts and financial hardships we’ve been facing, The Blue Bench needs to decrease our therapy staff and services. This is not a decision we take lightly or want to make, and we acknowledge this is a deep loss for the survivors who have relied on our services to support them throughout the years. Thinking about what services to prioritize that are harder to find elsewhere in the community, we’ve decided to limit our services in 2025 to clients who are uninsured.
We will still be providing time-limited individual trauma therapy in English and Spanish. We will also still provide some of our group therapy services, though with less frequency. As we prepare for this transition, we are not taking any new clients for the remainder of this year, but our resource team will continue supporting survivors in finding other providers in the community who may be able to meet their therapy needs.
Resource Line:
Due to grant cuts and financial hardships, The Blue Bench is making reductions in staff and programming. In 2025, The Blue Bench will be prioritizing group therapy and individual therapy for clients who are uninsured. Therapy will be available in English and in Spanish. Additionally, PCVA services will become a part of case management services. The Blue Bench will be operating with a smaller team and therefore may have longer wait times for services. The Resource Line will be available to help clients connect to other valuable services in the community.
As The Blue Bench navigates these organizational and programmatic changes, we acknowledge the profound impact they will have on the lives of survivors, advocates, and our broader community. We remain dedicated to showing up for survivors with unwavering compassion, and together, we will face the challenges ahead with courage and solidarity. Through every shift, we carry forward our hope, our passion, and our belief in a future where healing and justice are possible.
Sincerely,
The Blue Bench Team
