The face of 9News has raised $18 million through 304 uninterrupted weekly giving campaigns for Colorado nonprofits and causes since 2020, including rebuilding the just-torched City Park bandshell

“See a need, meet a need.”

That’s Kyle Clark’s mantra when it comes to community service.

Kyle Clark sounds a lot like my dad.

There was a time not so long ago when being a journalist came with the assumed responsibility of being a fully participating member of your community – of using whatever influence came with your media platform “to do good works and have a great day,” as Ralph Moore said on the daily. He saw service as the moral center of the privilege of being a journalist.

Growing up as the eighth child of two journalists, I saw that value in public practice every day. My late parents were seen as stakeholders in our church, school and civic lives. They felt responsible for informing the citizenry, giving of their time and working for the betterment of the community’s everyday life. It came with the job.

For my dad, that meant coaching at St. Anne’s in Arvada, serving on the North Jeffco parks board, and using his place as a Denver Post sports reporter to organize and run an annual all-comers Denver Post youth tournament at City Park Golf Course that exposed hundreds of inner-city kids to the thrill of match-play competition. For my mom, co-founder of the Arvada Citizen newspaper, it meant running for public office as Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder, and penning a page-turner of a book (not!) on the history of Arvada’s Grange society.

A few years before I joined the Denver Post, a reporter and cycling enthusiast named Claire Martin started the wildly popular Ride the Rockies statewide bicycling tour. I channeled my dad’s echoing mantra – “Do good works and have a great day” – when I co-founded a music festival called the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase, and, later, the all-volunteer Denver Actors Fund, which has to date made $1.8 million available to help Colorado theater artists pay down their medical bills.

But, over time, the appropriateness of journalists’ participation in a community’s civic life has evolved more toward detachment — because active civic engagement might be seen by some as a forfeiture of journalistic objectivity. To my dad, that’s abdication of duty.

A few years before the Rocky Mountain News folded, the staff was strongly encouraged to re-register to vote without a specific party affiliation. Why? Because voter information is public, and that data could potentially be used against the paper. As if renouncing your individual political affiliation erases your core beliefs or values.

The Post responded in more moderate kind. We were told that we could have no political bumper stickers on our cars, or signs in our yards. We were told not to participate in our neighborhood caucuses because we might be recognized by our neighbors and identified as one ideological thing or another. When I told my dad about that particular day in the office, it got his dander up. To him, there was nothing more un-American than not fully participating in the electoral process. In our house, our loyalties were to 1. God, 2. Family, 3. Country — in that (neck-and-neck) order.

Sitting out was not an option.

I was thinking about all that this week when I noticed that Kyle Clark, the face of 9News, was launching his 304th straight weekly microgiving campaign. In just three days, Clark had used the power of his now well-established Word of Thanks program to raise $60,000 for the reconstruction of the City Park bandshell that was destroyed last month by a**h*les — oops, I meant to type “arsonists.”

Clark is a lot like my dad. He makes no apologies for jumping in and helping Coloradans at their most vulnerable times.

“See a need, meet a need.”

By launching “Word of Thanks,” Clark has done much more than raise $18 million for 304 nonprofits across Colorado in less than six years (mostly in $5 increments). He created an opportunity for thousands of us Coloradans to show our better selves.

This unleashed, organized generosity “has created a force for good in Colorado,” Clark said, “and I’m determined to keep these weekly campaigns going for as long as I am able.”

The numbers are kind of astonishing.

When the tiny Branson School District’s rock-strewn football field was deemed “The Worst Field in America” (by the very same six-man team that played there), Clark’s viewers kicked in $82,000 toward the $500,000 cost to build “Branson’s Field of Dreams.” Consider that Branson is the state’s southernmost town, located 250 miles from Denver right at the New Mexico border. It’s got just 58 people since a recent baby boom inched the population up (by one) from 2020. And, get this, 9News doesn’t even reach Branson. No matter. Viewers responded.

Clark’s very first campaign raised $90K for the Civic Center Conservancy to repair historic structures in Civic Center Park that were damaged in the George Floyd protests. He raised $75K for Girls Inc., and $50K for AgWell, which offers mental-health and suicide prevention services for rural farmers and ranchers.

“The amount of money that we’re able to raise as a community for these nonprofits is really, really meaningful,” Clark said. “And it’s money that they don’t have to spend dollars chasing. They don’t have to put on a gala or a golf tournament or whatever else. It allows them to connect with people in the community who want to support their work in a very grassroots, organic way.”

The most successful campaign to date came last April, when viewers donated $101K to fund three years of naturalization prep classes at Community College of Aurora. Clark is quick to point out that these classes are developed by the Department of Homeland Security. 

“These are classes for folks who are legally present in the country and about to become citizens — and these classes help them to prepare for the test to ensure that they do become citizens,” Clark said.

“This is not controversial stuff. We’re not getting into advocacy or political causes. We’re looking for nonprofits that I think 80 to 90% of the population would agree our community is better off with than without.”

His only criterion: That a chosen nonprofit is making a positive impact in Colorado.

That’s it.

“I do really try to look for things that I think represent a broad consensus in the community,” he said. 

The real magic behind the mission is an army of unseen angels who give monthly, no matter what nonprofits are being singled out in that month. Clark now has about 7,500 recurring donors who give $200,000 a month through the same folks who run Colorado Gives Day.

That idea — “Make it easier for us to give” — was a suggestion that came from viewers.

“And my initial thought was, no, people aren’t going to sign up for that because I haven’t even told them who it’s going to yet,” said Clark, who was happy to be proven wrong.

“Now look. Here we are,” said Clark, who walks the wallet.

He not only covers his monthly donors’ administrative fees, he seeds every micro campaign with $250 of his own – which now comes to a cool $76K.

“I’m not going to ask people to give if I don’t give myself — that’s a very, very basic thing,” Clark said. “I think sometimes you’ll see charity campaigns on TV where somebody in a very nice set of clothes is sitting there telling somebody else to give their money. I don’t want to do that. I ask people to give $5, and I will match the first 50.”

As for what he has kicked in, Clark adds: “That comes to less than one-half of 1% of what others have given. It’s the best money I’ve ever spent to be able to incentivize this kind of good in the community. But without the community, the effort’s nothing.”

And because of that effort, and a journalist nimbly responding to the day’s news, a nonprofit in immediate crisis can get some instant relief. Take, for example, the current campaign to restore the 97-year-old City Park bandshell. The fire came just two months before City Park Jazz opens its 40th summer of free Sunday evening music to up to 12,000 comers.

The water-based structure, which served as the stage for hundreds of bands, is a total loss, according to the City of Denver. That stage has been the backdrop for countless engagement, wedding, graduation and quinceañera photo shoots — including, recently, one I did for my own nephew.

“The city is determined to rebuild the bandstand, but the budget is tight, which could cause delays,” said Clark, who is working with the non-profit Denver Park Trust to fund the rebuilding.

The city estimates that rebuilding costs, after insurance, will be at least $250,000. Also in an immediate bind is City Park Jazz itself, which faces steep new costs of its own.

“At City Park Jazz, our focus right now is covering our budget shortfall for the cost of renting a mobile stage and powering it,” said spokesman Dave Flomberg, who said the nonprofit now needs to raise $35,000 that was not budgeted for the season. (You can donate to that separate effort at cityparkjazz.org/united4jazz).

I admitted to Clark that, in these divisive times, when just about anyone can find a reason not to support any given nonprofit’s mission, I found it kind of astonishing — and hopeful — that there are thousands of people who have signed up to support whatever charity he chooses.

“I am very responsive to people’s feedback,” Clark said. “If someone has told me, ‘I don’t like this cause, and therefore I will never give again’ – I can tell you the number of times that’s happened on one hand.”

Then there is the elephant in the room, and it’s sporting perfectly coiffed hair and a sporty, often checkered jacket. As the lead anchor for 9News and “Next,” Kyle Clark is generally considered both the most admired and most reviled figure in all of local media. Some viewers consider him a trusted, hard-hitting journalist, while others perceive him as biased or overly antagonistic.

Clark owns all of it, and he is not deterred. He engages with his detractors for sport.

“I don’t worry about it, because the loudest, angriest people are so far outnumbered by everybody else, it’s not even close,” he said. “The reason they have to be so loud and angry is because they are so vastly outnumbered.”

Clark says he has received little negative pushback from the community. If anything, he added, it’s come from fellow journalists. What do they tell him?

“That it’s not your role,” said Clark, who tells his contrarians: “I respect if you don’t want to make it your role — but you’re not going to define what my role is.”

I can hear my dad’s words interjecting (he did that a lot): “It’s not only your role, it’s your obligation.”

“Listen, I’m unapologetically pro-Colorado,” Clark said. “I love this community. I want it to succeed in every facet, and I don’t simply want to be an observer. If I was out covering a wildfire and I was in position to pick up a garden hose and spray down somebody’s house while firefighters work next door, I would do it. I would not just stand there and be like, ‘Well, let’s watch and see what happens to this house.’

“There are some basic things that you just kind of do as a human being and as a neighbor. Being a journalist is one thing that I am, but I’m also a community member – and I want the best for the community, and I want the best for the state. So, I don’t see any tension between those roles.”

There’s another elephant to address, and it’s the one with its leg currently poised over the collective head of 9News, which is caught up in the $6.2 billion acquisition of 9News owner TEGNA by Nexstar Media Group, which has been temporarily paused by a federal judge but could end up being the death of 9News and costing up to 200 – including Clark – their jobs.

Clark is keeping on, keeping on.

“I focus on what’s within my control,” he said. “Whether or not I put together a microgiving campaign for next week is within my control — so I’ll focus on that.”

Come what may, I have a feeling Clark’s parental example will have the same long-lasting impact on his daughters, now 5 and 8, that our parents had on our own regiment of little Moores.

“It’s funny you mention that because my kids have no idea what I do at work,” said Clark. “But they do know about my microgiving campaigns because they see me working on those projects so frequently around the house. I would say my girls have a very good understanding that every week, Daddy tries to help somebody in the community. They know about a lot of the causes, and they ask questions about them.

“They know the simple idea that if you’re in a position to help somebody, you help them. That’s how I was raised. That’s how they’re being raised. Everybody is in a position to help somebody in some way. I just so happen to have the ability to connect with a lot of people at once — that’s how I can help. And I expect that, as they get older, they’re going to help however they can, too.”

Merger gods willing, Clark might still be at it by then.

“If people weren’t interested in giving, this whole idea would have dried up six years ago,” Clark said. “But they are as interested in giving today on Week 304 as they were on Week 1. They’re actually more interested today.

“And I think that says something really powerful about this community. Because when you turn on the news, which is my day job, you typically hear a lot of negativity. You hear a lot about how people don’t like each other, how they don’t trust each other, how they don’t want to work together.

“And I have 304 weekly examples that that’s not true — or at least that’s not the whole story.”

John Moore is the Denver Gazette’s Senior Arts Journalist. Email him at [email protected]. 9News is the Denver Gazette’s media partner.

Word of Thanks: Donation information

• To donate to this week’s City Park bandshell rebuild project through Denver Park Trust
• To sign up as a Word of Thanks monthly donor
• To donate directly to City Park Jazz to recoup fire-related expenses

READ MORE: Growing up with Nuggets in your blood