 "Photo: Alicia Schuster / UCD Advocate")
You can hardly step around a street corner in Denver without running into one of the Denver VOICE newspaper vendors. They’re everywhere—holding stacks of brightly colored issues, satchels strung around their torsos, calling out for donations.
The paper is operated like other street-vendor papers, or like high school paper routes.
The vendor purchases the papers for 25 cents each. Then the vendor hits the streets, giving away the paper for a “suggested donation.” The vendor keeps the money and the quarter goes directly to production.
The 25 cents, according to Gretchen Crowe, vendor program director, only covers about 10 percent of overhead and production costs: “We rely on private donations, as well as grants.”
Rick Barnes, the publisher of the VOICE, used to donate to the paper as a customer when it was called The Denver Homeless Voice. One day, his vendor wasn’t there.
Turned out the paper had lost funding and could no longer operate. So Barnes took over the paper, re-launched it with his own money, gave it a new face, found investors, and brought the paper back to the street.
"In August 2007 (the first issue), our vendors sold 1,000 copies,” Barnes said.
“Today, our vendors average a $2 donation for each paper; many will tell you they average $5 per paper. For the month of January 2010, our vendors sold 16,500 copies,” he said. “Therefore, the Denver VOICE has placed somewhere over $35,000 directly into the pockets of this city’s poorest citizens [that amounts to approximately $420,000 annually], and that’s in one month.”
2009 was one of their best years.
“It’s a noticeable change,” Crowe said. “In October of 2009, we were able to open a vendor office. It’s warm, there’s a restroom, and it’s helped not only our retention, but also our expansion.”
Crowe experiences the benefits of the paper every day.
“We give people tools to help themselves, reclaim self-esteem, and reclaim dignity,” she said. “That’s what helps me pull so tightly to the mission we are doing.”
Editor Tim Covi agrees.
“The paper has two missions, really,” he said. “One is to provide jobs for the homeless and/or poor through a works program, whereby people who have lost jobs, are transitioning between jobs, or who have been street homeless in many cases can begin to work their way out of poverty and begin to take control of their lives.
“The other mission is to create a great news magazine that provides the Denver metro area with in-depth feature reporting, expansive art features, profiles and news on generally underreported topics.”
For Covi, the paper is more than just a good cause.
“We have won several awards over the past couple of years including the Excellence in Urban Journalism Award from the Freedom Foundation/Community Enterprise and the MasterMind Award for Literary Arts from Westword,” said Covi.
Barnes said that he gives to keep the paper afloat: “My personal contributions have ranged from $150,000 to $200,000 annually. I don’t have a problem telling people the dollar amounts that I donate because I hope it shames the most fortunate of our community who elect to give nothing.”
The paper is published monthly, is available for a donation daily, and provides the everyday philanthropist a chance to give a little in a big way.
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