For the third time in less than a year, the Colorado Healing Fund activated Tuesday to collect donations to help the victims, and their families, of the Denver and Lakewood mass shooting that left five dead Monday.

The Fund was formed in 2018, with the help of a $1 million grant from the Attorney General’s office. Its roots lie with a group of victim assistance advocates who had been involved with many mass casualty events like the Aurora theater shooting and Columbine High School.

The prior two times in 2021 were for the Boulder supermarket shooting in March that left 10 dead. The suspect has been ruled mentally incompetent to stand trail. The other was for a mass shooting where a Colorado Springs gunman killed six members of an extended family May 9, 2021, at a birthday party at the Canterbury Mobile Home Park in Colorado Springs before turning the gun on himself.

CHF doesn’t give money directly to victims or their families. Instead, it gives money to first-responding organizations like the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance (COVA).

“The City of Lakewood and the City and County of Denver victim assistants have requested the help and support of CHF at this time,” according to a release.

“Although it is heartbreaking to see our communities go through this again, the organization exists for this specific reason,” said Executive Director Jordan Finegan, in a statment. “We remain steadfast in our support of these communities as they process yesterday’s tragedy and will continue to work closely with the local agencies to respond to the immediate and long-term financial needs of those impacted.”

Since that deadly day in Boulder, the fund had collected more than $3.7 million in individual donations, corporate donations, pledges and grants from foundations, Finegan said.

The CHF board, comprised of a who’s who of trauma victim advocates and state leaders, activated the fund within hours of both the Boulder supermarket shooting and the Arvada shooting.

“We’d been concerned for some time that Colorado seemed to be the epicenter for these type of events,” Chairwoman Cynthia Coffman, and former Colorado Attorney General, said previously. “We thought ‘If that’s to be the case, we need to be better prepared to help the victims’.

Donations can be directed to the ColoradoHealingFund.org website.

Checks and in-person donations can be deposited at Colorado-based FirstBank (1stBank) locations. Donors should make checks out to “Colorado Healing Fund” and write “Denver-Lakewood” in the memo. When depositing the check with bank tellers, please designate donations for the Colorado Healing Fund’s “victim account.”

Finally, if donors host a fundraiser with the proceeds intended to go to the healing fund for victims of the Denver-Lakewood mass shooting, please send an email to [email protected].