Hope House Colorado
Empowering teen moms
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Hope House programs empower parenting teen moms to break the cycle of generational poverty for teen moms living in the Denver-metro area; other issues addressed include abuse, neglect, and a lack of education. A surprising 67% of teen moms live below the poverty line; only half will graduate from high school; less than 2% will earn a college degree. Furthermore, teen moms striving to break the cycle of poverty usually have a limited vocabulary and lack the ability to communicate with standard word choice. These deficiencies are passed on to their children -- which means both generations lack the language abilities necessary to succeed in school. In fact, children of teen parents are 50% more likely to repeat a grade and are less likely to graduate from high school. This is a significant problem because education is key in breaking out of poverty.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Hope House Residential Program
Hope House Colorado’s Residential Program offers a safe, stable home for teen moms and their children who are participating in our programs and who have become homeless or are living in an unsafe environment. Our 12-bedroom home provides our moms up to a week of respite care, up to nine months of transitional housing or up to two years of comprehensive programming. While at the house, our moms are engaged and challenged through an individual growth plan, learning to incorporate healthy routines into daily life while living with their children and their peers in a safe, supportive environment.
Hope House College & Career Support Program
Our College & Career Program is designed to help our teen moms succeed in college and in their chosen career path, providing practical tools and support including advising, tutoring for ANY kind of class, computer/printer access, educational workshops and more. It is our goal to help our teen moms find jobs that pay a wage that will allow them to be self-sufficient and independent of government assistance.
Hope House GED Program
Our High School & GED Program allows teen moms to choose the program that works best for them: GED prep, HiSET prep, Penn Foster, or high school diploma, which is available through our partnership with Jefferson Academy & Summit Academy. This unique program features one-on-one instruction and tutoring versus a traditional classroom model and is structured to allow participants to move at their own pace, which is crucial due to the fact that each teen mom has a unique educational background. Our College & Career Coordinator also provides guidance and assistance regarding further education or career training. In addition, Hope House also covers the cost of the GED and HiSET testing, and transportation is provided as able.
Early Learning Program
Our Early Learning Program supports the growth and development of children across all learning domains using the evidence based Little InvestiGators curriculum. This integrative, child-focused approach encourages children to explore the world around them to enhance cognitive, language, social and physical learning. The Early Learning Team also supports the spiritual growth of our children using Orange Curriculum. We share the simple truth that God made them, God loves them, and Jesus wants to be their friend forever by engaging children in interactive Bible lessons, play and exploration, music and movement activities, and crafts. Under the supervision of our Early Learning Manager, trained volunteers and teachers provide early learning lessons to the children of our teen moms while they are busy working in our High School & GED or College & Career Support Lab or taking parenting classes at Hope House. The goal is to help the children of our teen moms develop the skills they need to succeed in school and show our teen moms what quality childcare looks like succeed in school.
Healthy Relationships Program
This program teaches the dynamics of healthy and unhealthy relationships; provides a safe place for teen moms to learn general knowledge of reproductive health and general female self-care; and provides counseling and healthy relationships classes as well as referrals to other mental health centers. Most of the moms at Hope House have experienced at least one type of abuse – emotional, physical, verbal, sexual or neglect -- either within their own family or with a trusted adult not related to them. Our relationship courses and groups are designed to help moms recognize and navigate healthy and unhealthy relationships and to build and cultivate healthy relationships in their life.
Parenting Program
Designed to help strengthen parenting skills through various classes and encourage the teen moms at Hope House to be the best parent possible, this program includes parenting discussions that are built to encourage community-building; age-specific classes that focus on the need for more supportive and responsive parenting; family-focused classes, which discuss blended families, single parenting, parenting as a couple and parenting more than one child; and psychology of parenting classes, highlighting discipline strategies, different personalities in parenting and more.
Where we work
Awards
Everyday Hero 2015
7 news everyday hero award
Governor's Service Award 2015
Colorado Governor Bill Ritter
Nonprofit Organization of the Year 2018
Arvada Chamber of Commerce
Affiliations & memberships
Association of Fundraising Professionals - Member
Chamber of Commerce 2016
Chamber of Commerce 2017
Chamber of Commerce 2018
Chamber of Commerce 2019
External reviews

Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of youth who demonstrate motivation to learn
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Women and girls, Adolescents, Economically disadvantaged people
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Our teen moms demonstrate motivation to learn because they attend voluntarily and are not court-ordered to attend. All of our programs include educational classes, from GED to College/Career and more.
Number of clients participating in educational programs
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Women and girls, Adolescents, Economically disadvantaged people
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Educational programs include GED, College & Career, Healthy Relationships, Parenting, Financial Literacy and Job Readiness workshops.
Number of personal development plans in place
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Women and girls, Adolescents, Economically disadvantaged people
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
In order to best support our teen moms as they work toward economic self-sufficiency, our program team works with them to create individual Economic and Personal Self-Sufficiency continuums.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Clearly there is a significant need for programs that help struggling teen moms become self-sufficient and build healthy community. For this reason, the overall goal of Hope House is to provide free self-sufficiency programming that equip teen moms for long-term economic and personal self-sufficiency through the development of skills and knowledge, via the following goals:
• Continue to offer services to 250 teen moms (ages 16 - 20) who participate in Hope House Programming.
• Complete construction of a new Early Learning Center (2024) adjacent to the Hope House Resource Center (which was completely finished in 2019 following a successful $5 million Capital Campaign) in order to increase the number of teen moms and children served at Hope House each year.
• Expand upon current measuring tools to improve reporting and to develop new measurement tools that can be housed in an easy-to-use application to best communicate growth of teen moms in the Personal and Economic Self-sufficiency Continuum.
• Expand local partnerships with organizations that provide direct services for teen moms that are not currently provided by Hope House.
• Contribute to a healthier local community; every time one of our teen moms reaches self-sufficiency, Colorado tax payers save approximately $30,000 annually -- and the cycle of welfare dependency is much more likely to be broken once the mother reaches self-sufficiency because two generations have been transformed.
• Create a safe place for teen moms to develop healthy community with staff, volunteers and other teen moms.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Hope House is metro-Denver's only resource providing free self-sufficiency programs to teen moms; programs are offered to support teen moms in nine personal domains and six economic domains:
We offer a variety of components designed to help teen moms become self-sufficient members of their community who are also nurturing, loving parents. We offer a menu-style approach to services that allows our teen moms to define their own goals and then select the components that will help them reach those goals.
Components include:
• Parenting Classes
• Relationships Classes & Certified Counseling
• Personal Growth
• Health & Wellness
• Activities & Events
• High School & GED Program
• College & Career Program
• Family Advocacy
• Legal Advocacy
• Residential Program
• Early Learning Program (for children of active teen moms)
To accomplish its mission, Hope House relies on numerous volunteers and local business partnerships. In 2019, prior to the COVID-pandemic which impacted the number of volunteers who could safely serve at Hope House, 507 volunteers donated 9,633 hours of free service, which is equivalent to four additional full-time employees.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
After more than 17 years of offering self-sufficiency programs to teen moms, Hope House Colorado has become a recognized expert in our field. This is evidenced in many ways, including the fact that in 2015 Hope House received the Governor's Service Award for Outstanding Nonprofit Organization in Colorado and was named the 2018 Nonprofit of the Year by the Arvada Chamber of Commerce. Additionally, our staff is highly qualified in terms of both experience and education. For example, Melinda Smith, our Parent Educator, is one of 30 certified facilitators in the state of Colorado for Nurturing Healthy Sexual Development.
It should also be noted that Lisa Steven, our Executive Director, is also the Founder of Hope House, which adds to the depth of the organization. Lisa has over 25 years of experience working with teen moms. She is a co-founder of the Colorado Teen Parent Collaborative and is active with the Denver Women's Leadership Forum. Lisa serves on the Board of Directors for the Arvada Chamber of Commerce and has received several awards, including the Arvada Woman of the Year and Outstanding Women of Jefferson County. Her connections, experience and leadership skills all contribute to the organization's capabilities.
Deep partnerships, which Hope House staff members have worked hard to create, also serve to strengthen our organizational capabilities. In 2015, through the GED Task Force, we partnered with other nonprofit organizations to successfully advocate for educational legislation that removed a significant barrier to self-sufficiency for teen moms and other individuals working to break the cycle of poverty. We also partner with various agencies that help our teen moms obtain housing, medical care, legal assistance regarding parenting orders and more. We are highly intentional in terms of the services we provide, and careful to not duplicate services provided by other organizations.
Hope House also has the financial capabilities to meet our goals. With a budget of over $2.4 million, Hope House has joined the top 10 percent of nonprofit organizations in the United States. Our financial stability is largely due to the fact that we enjoy a large, grassroots support base. In fact, individual donors have historically proven to be the largest source of income for Hope House, which means the organization is not dependent on a specific individual or organization for financial support. We continually work to increase our donor base, and every year, as our income has grown, so has our donor base in terms of number of donors and total donations.
The fact that we have a large volunteer base also adds to our capabilities. Since Hope House opened its doors in 2003, the number of volunteers and the volunteer hours donated has grown every year. In 2019, 507 volunteers donated 9,633 hours of service to Hope House, which is valued at $269,917, according to the Independent Sector.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
In order to help at-risk teen moms receive the education and support necessary to land employment at a wage that provides enough income to meet basic needs without public assistance, Hope House opened its Residential Program in 2003. To date, this program has served 100 formerly homeless or at-risk teen moms and their children with a high rate of success: 90 percent of graduates have achieved basic levels of self-sufficiency.
Demand for services for teen moms increased every year, with staff receiving approximately 150 crisis calls annually from teen moms and service providers. In response, we launched additional Hope House Programs in 2007, which included a GED Program in 2009, and supportive services such as Parenting and Healthy Relationships Programs, certified counseling and life skills classes.
In 2012, we opened our Resource Center, moving all Hope House Programs, including our GED Program, to this new location. The house now hosts the Residential Program only; this 12-bedroom home provides our moms up to a week of respite care, up to nine months of transitional housing or up to two years of comprehensive programming. In 2013 we launched a College & Career Program, and in 2014 we piloted our new Early Learning Program for the kids of Hope House teen moms. To date, Hope House has served nearly 1,000 disadvantaged teen moms and 1,500 children.
In 2015 Hope House successfully helped create the Teen Parent Collaborative, a local, unified community of organizations driven by the strength of teen parents to raise public awareness, share resources and advocate for public policy that benefits teen parents and their children.
Because the demand for services for teen moms is so high, Hope House launched a capital campaign to build a new Resource Center that was completed in 2019. This expansion allows the organization to double the number of teen moms and children served annually.
Hope House is also still in the process of building national as well as international partnerships and forming a national affiliation of organizations that serve teen moms. Senior staff is also investigating the options for creating an income stream for Hope House through social enterprise.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization collecting feedback from the people you serve?
Electronic surveys (by email, tablet, etc.), Paper surveys, Focus groups or interviews (by phone or in person), Case management notes,
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals,
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With whom is the organization sharing feedback?
The people we serve, Our staff, Our board, Our community partners,
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Hope House Colorado
Board of directorsas of 02/22/2022
Mr. Brian Bess
Enduring Resources
Term: 2017 - 2021
John Steven
J & D Machine Technology, Cofounder of Hope House of Colorado
Brian Bess
Enduring Resources
Stephen Prokopiak
Stephen A. Prokopiak, LLC
Jennifer Zertuche
FirstBank
Lindsay Bernum
Smith Capital Investors
Steve Reynolds
Retired
Lee Fawcett
Second Cornerstone Corp
Jenny Gonzales
Colorado Dept of Education
Paul Snyder
American West
Chris Johnson
Gorilla Logic
Brian Sump
Avalon Motors, Urban Auto
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
No data
No data
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data