For more than 40 years, The Piton Foundation, which is part of Gary Community Investments, has been committed to improving the lives of Colorado's low-income children and their families by increasing access to quality early childhood and youth development opportunities and fostering healthy family and community environments.
Get Ahead Colorado is the largest and longest operating Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) public information campaign in the nation. For more than 30 years, The Piton Foundation has conducted the Tax Credits for Working Families Public Information Campaign, now known as Get Ahead Colorado, to increase the number of eligible families receiving the EITC, the Child Tax Credit and other valuable resources that help families get ahead. Tax credits like the EITC are good for families, communities and businesses. It has been proven to lift working families out of poverty—that’s why we strategically partner with organizations and businesses around the state to reach families where they are.
We educate and empower social change organizations by providing reliable, objective data and analysis to inform their decision-making process. This shift in perspective helps our partners have a more profound and lasting impact on the communities they serve. We are focused on expanding our reach and impact so we can further our mission of pioneering a data-driven culture within Colorado's social sector.
As a program of The Piton Foundation for more than two decades, we are a trusted community partner with access to 20 years of longitudinal datasets. This provides us with a unique ability to track and analyze how the Denver metro region has changed over time.
Tax Help Colorado free tax sites, known as Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Sites, are located across the state and offer free tax preparation assistance to families who earn less than about $56,000 a year, helping to ease the burden of commercial tax preparation costs on low-wage earners. The program was launched in 2007 to help link even more Colorado families to valuable tax credits such as the EITC and Child Tax Credit. Since that time, we’ve helped 82,800 families file their taxes and claim over $152 million in refunds.
