Flowing money to the work
Putting funds directly into the hands of the people doing the actual work — through community-decided grant rounds and mutual aid.
Mission SPIRIT of the Front Range — 02 —
★ What we're doing and why
A more beautiful Front Range.
A Front Range where neighbors know each other, the land is well-tended, and the people who live here have a real say in how it's cared for — now and for the generations that come after us.
● Mission photographed for SPIRIT
02
WHY WE EXIST · §
↓ continued 02 Why we exist
We belong to more places than we have names for.
Here on the Front Range, we live in neighborhoods. We also live in a watershed, an ecosystem, a stretch of mountains-meeting-plains that has its own weather and its own particular life. We drink from an aquifer shared with every being around us. The mountain air we breathe knows nothing of county lines.
A watershed isn't something you can leave. A wildfire isn't something you can opt out of. The lines on the political map can't actually separate us from each other, or from the land that holds us.
We use the word bioregionA region defined by its land, water, and life — not by political lines. A watershed, an ecosystem, the human and natural communities that depend on each other. The Front Range is one.Full glossary → to name this — the larger living place we share. The Front Range is one. Caring for it together is where the work begins.
If you live on the Earth, you are sharing a home.
01 We are *of* this place, the way a forest, a desert, or a wetland is *of* its place.
creek above Nederland · early autumn ↑ p. 2
Why we exist — 02.0 —
02.i
Our vision
Our vision is a remembering.
We are not separate from the living world — we are part of it. The land, the water, and the communities of plants, animals, and people that make up the Front Range are something we all belong to. Once you really feel that, it changes how you organize your life.
Our vision is a Front Range where neighbors know each other. Where the land is well-tended. Where the people who live here have a real say in the decisions that shape their home. Where the wisdom of those who came before us — especially the Indigenous communities of this place — is honored and built upon. A region that flourishes because the people of it have learned, again, how to take care of what they share.
Our vision — 02.1 —
Our mission
We know the way is together.
SPIRIT exists to support and connect the people already doing the work — neighborhood organizers, ecological farmers, watershed stewards, Indigenous land-keepers, the artists and storytellers, the people building local economies. We are the connective tissue. We help these people find each other, share what works, and become more capable together.
Concretely, we do four things: we build the shared infrastructure — the agreements, the gatherings, the simple tools — that lets dispersed work add up to something; we raise money so resources can flow to the projects this place most needs; we run community-decided grant rounds that put those resources in the hands of the people closest to the work; and we gather people regularly — for meals, walks, councils — so the relationships that make all of this possible can keep deepening.
In time, the Board will not look like us. It will be Indigenous leaders, elders, and longtime community stewards who actually represent who lives here.
02.ii
Our mission — 02.2 —
Our relationship to where we live carries with it a responsibility for that place. That responsibility belongs to all of us — it isn't something anyone can own or fence off. It is, by its nature, a commons.
02.iii
How we work
Real connections, in their natural form.
Four threads, woven together. Each one names a thing we do — and a thing this place needs more of.
Helping people decide together
Building the tools, shared funds, and agreements that let neighbors and organizations make decisions and act together.
Building a sense of home
Long-table dinners, walks, listening circles — so the people of this place know each other, and so we can learn from peers in other regions doing similar work.
Sharing skills and stories
Public teach-ins, skill-shares, and gatherings that build the shared knowledge this work needs — including the long history of how communities have cared for shared land together.
How we work — 02.3 —
02.iv
★ Six promises
What guides us.
A small set of promises that came before us and will outlast our roles in this work. These are not aspirations. They are the conditions under which we have agreed to do this.
Build to be replaced
SPIRIT is a starting scaffold, not a permanent institution. The aim is to put the work in the hands of the community itself and step aside.
No one owns what we share
The knowledge, tools, agreements, and ways of caring for this place that we develop belong to the communities that use them. We share what works — freely.
Care for land and culture together
We work in service of the living systems and the cultural lineages of this place — especially the Indigenous traditions whose knowledge of how to live here goes back generations.
Leave it more alive
We measure our work by one question — did we leave the bioregion, the relationships, and the culture more alive than we found them?
See what we share first
Before what we own. The aquifer, the air, the forest, the neighbors, the friendships — these come first.
Cooperate, don't compete
There are other people doing this work. We choose to weave with them, not against them. The bioregion needs more collaboration and less rivalry.
We hold each other to these. Members of the Front Range Commons will hold us to them too.
How we work — 02.4 —
02.v
★ A few terms, plainly
Begin with the words.
A handful of words come up often on this site. Here's the short version of each. Hover any *underlined* word elsewhere on the site for an inline definition.
→ More definitions on The Commons pageBioregion
A region defined by its land, water, and life rather than by political lines — a watershed, an ecosystem, the human and natural communities that depend on each other. The Front Range is one.
The Commons
What we share and are responsible for together — the air, the water, the soil, the relationships that hold the community.
Commoning
A verb. The everyday practice of caring for what we share. A *commons* is the garden. *Commoning* is the gardening.
Built to be replaced
Our promise that SPIRIT is a starting scaffold, not a permanent institution. Success looks like handing the work off and stepping aside.
The words we use — 02.5 —
All for the Commons
We come together for something beautiful.
★ Learn about the Commons →