Organization History
the space and building its IT and back-end infrastructure to serve the cohort of nonprofits that now call the BNDC home. Tapping into his more than 30 years of experience and trajectory in the corporate and nonprofit sectors, as well as his successes – and failures – as a Latinx entrepreneur, Dr. Londoño is also seeding the Foundation and the BNDC with elements of entrepreneurship, providing one-on-one mentoring to the member organizations, and leveraging his depth and breadth of nonprofit executive leadership experience, to build a collaborative and high performing environment for the nonprofit organizations and social entrepreneurs at the BNDC, where they are encouraged and inspired to dream big, for themselves, their organizations, and the communities they serve, and where they will receive the resources, supports, programming, and mentorship to make their individual and collective big dreams come true. Dr. Londoño’s winding trajectory to Executive Director of the RTL Foundation is the culmination of a personal and professional journey that brought him to the United States as an undocumented immigrant long ago. The first in his family to attend college, he, his mother and two brothers left their native Colombia when he was just 10 years old and onto a journey that took them to the Mexican border, where they would cross illegally on foot into Nogales, Arizona. After being captured by border patrol and sent back to Mexico several times, they ultimately crossed safely on their 5th attempt. Rejoining his father and 2 older sisters in inner New York City, he and his family embarked on
The RTL Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit organization established to serve historically and systemically underserved BIPOC - Black, Indigenous, People Of Color - communities in Denver and Colorado through support in the areas of entrepreneurship, technology, education and history. As we launch the foundation, we are anchored in our mission and vision to support the operation and growth of minority-led and serving nonprofits, and to provide a BIPOC Nonprofit Development Center (BNDC) that functions as a collaborative space to support minority-led and servicing organizations. To learn more please visit rtl-foundation.org The Foundation is located at 2900 Welton Street, in the Five Points Media Center at the corner of 29th and Welton Streets, in Denver’s historic and culturally rich Five Points neighborhood – “The Harlem of the West”. This is an ideal location as it facilitates an active and stable presence close to the communities served by BIPOC serving nonprofit organizations. To fulfill our mission and vision, we have launched the BIPOC Nonprofit Development Center (BNDC), the country’s first Incubator exclusively for BIPOC-led and serving nonprofit organizations and Social Entrepreneurs. The BNDC provides year-round programming to help these nonprofit businesses to grow and scale over a two-year residency at the BNDC. The BNDC opened its doors and welcomed its first cohort of 24 member organizations into the BNDC in Five Points in January of 2024. The Foundation is led by Dr. Jhon F. Londoño, who took the leadership reins as its inaugural Executive Director in 2023. Charged with operationalizing the Foundation as it prepared to move into its home in Five Points in late 2023, Dr. Londoño has led efforts recruiting the nonprofits in its first cohort, building partnerships and collaborations to develop and implement capacity building programming, connecting and building relationships with community based organizations in Five Points and throughout Denver, and with key government, foundation and corporate stakeholders, as well as activating
Dr. Jhon Londoño Image: The RTL Foundation
22 The Acumen
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