Raise a glass to the Coors Foundation

Freedom Unaffiliated

Raise a glass to the Coors Foundation

By Jon Caldara

When I was a kid, I’d collect old tin cans and the newfangled aluminum beer cans. My father would drive me down to the Coors distribution warehouse in Littleton. They’d weigh them and they gave me cash, real cash in my hand for recycling.

This was my first interaction with “Coors.”

Coors invented the completely recyclable aluminum beverage container. Now the marketplace standard, it saved more waste and pollution than an army of greenies banning shopping bags, and without any governmental mandates.

Later in life, my interactions with Coors included sneaking into my parents’ garage to sneak cans of Coors Light.

Family friends would come to visit from the East Coast, and they’d always drive away with a few cases of Coors in their trunk. This regional Western beer had such mystique that smuggling Coors out of state was the plot device for the hit movie “Smokey and the Bandit” (though the beer still holds up today, the movie doesn’t). When collecting cans and sneaking brew, I never could have imaged I’d grow up and get to know many of the Coors family including the team of elder statesmen brothers, Pete, Jeff and John.

Coors is Colorado. Colorado — where people would come to write their own biographies, free to work hard and take risk without waiting for permission. Coors and the Colorado character were linked. They shared the same brand: individualism. In 1975, the family created the Adolph Coors Foundation not just to “give back” but to build on that Colorado character. As their board pronounced, “People in need have the opportunity to restore and rehabilitate themselves in order to realize their full potential and lead prosperous lives. Democracy prevails, while government is limited to the protection of constitutional rights and national defense.”

Companies create grant-giving foundations all the time. The bigger the company, the more the foundation is used as a public relations or advertising arm for the product, not principles. Rich families also create grant-giving foundations all the time. The farther the generation that created the wealth recedes into the past and younger generations give away money they didn’t earn, the more the foundation drifts away from the founders’ intent and to the left (just ask the ghost of Henry Ford). The Adolph Coors Foundation has managed to avoid both those traps, making it a true Colorado treasure.

When Independence Institute, the organization I run, was founded in 1985, the Coors Foundation helped us, one of the first state-based think tanks in the country, get off the ground. And without Independence Institute working over the decades, seemingly crazy ideas wouldn’t have been turned into reality — charter schools, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the flat income tax, lowering that income tax to 4.4%, shall-issue concealed carry laws, privatization of governmental services like the Regional Transportation District, term limits, open-meeting and open-records laws, and much more.

When state-based think tanks popped up in other states, there was no real communication or sharing of best practices, even though they were all facing similar challenges. Jeff Coors took the lead in building what is now a powerful network of independent, locally run state think tanks called the State Policy Network.

The Coors family helped the homeless recovery organization Step 13, now called Step Denver, which takes no government money and therefore is able to place expectations on the clients they help. That means sobriety and a job. Those of us who remember the late great Bob Cote who created Step 13, a recovering “bum” himself (his words), I can’t help but wonder what he’d be saying about the current homelessness madness going on in our state.

Pete Coors still champions the values and institutions of the West. He leads the effort to rebuild the National Western Complex, keeping the stock show a part of the state.

All the Coors’ charitable work has a common thread of personal responsibility, hard work and self-improvement with the goal of human thriving.

At the risk of mimicking the tired “give a man a fish” line, the success of the Coors Foundation is the compounding effect of their investments. They take the long view. Their grantees–from the School of Mines to the Leadership Program of the Rockies–all build on themselves and pay real-world dividends, promoting the Colorado character.

Oh, and there’s also the beer. So let’s lift one to honor this 50-year-old Colorado institution.