Wana Brands Foundation Donates $600,000 to Community College of Denver

A foundation established by a Colorado cannabis company executive is giving $600,000 to the Community College of Denver for scholarships and equity initiatives.

CCD recently announced the donation from Wana Brands Foundation, a charitable organization funded by Wana Brands CEO Nancy Whiteman, which will offer a handful of scholarships and help pay for a school-wide initiative that assists in financial aid, enrollment and registration processes to eliminate equity gaps.

The donation will cover $150,000 in semester scholarships of up to $3,000 over the next three to five years for CCD students participating in the school's cannabis business and science programs, with seven students selected for the first round this semester. The scholarship ensures that the students won't have to pay anything out of pocket for tuition, according to Karla Rodriguez, Wana's vice president of human resources and corporate social responsibility.

Rodriguez says Wana believes that offering free community college classes provides students with "a foundation to make the choice" of continuing their education or joining the job market.

When CCD and Wana began to study the possible scholarship routes, she adds, it was important to both parties that off-campus issues were addressed. As her mother went from night classes at the Auraria campus to Red Rocks Community College to a dental hygiene program at the University of Colorado Denver, Rodriguez says she saw firsthand how hard it is to continue an education while maintaining a job, raising kids or handling other challenges.

"We graduated from college in the same year," she says of her mother. "I know this program is going to change lives and just completely rewrite the narrative for these folks for opportunities to create generational wealth and living their lives to the fullest."

Another $450,000 will be donated to CCD's Moon Shot for Equity initiative, an EAB-led program that brings together two- and four-year universities to address traditional entry barriers to higher education. According to CCD president Marielena DeSanctis, the funds will cover employee training, research, smoother credit transfer processes to four-year universities and retention grants, which provide around $500 to CCD students who need help with anything from studying materials to new car tires.

"When you get a flat tire or a pipe in the house breaks, yeah, it's annoying, but we can navigate around it. But that can force some students to drop out of college," DeSanctis explains. "We've always thought of students as that eighteen-year-old coming out of high school, but when you think about the demographics of a community college, there are a lot of working adults and people with other things going on in their lives. How do we message them? How do we offer support services in modalities that work for them? How do we create activities that aren't only for eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds?"

The annual CCD operating budget was estimated at just over $56 million in 2022, so a $600,000 donation from a single entity is no drop in the bucket for DeSanctis and her CCD staff over the next few years.

Now one of the largest cannabis gummy makers in North America, Wana Brands started in Boulder in 2010 as a medical marijuana gummy maker before expanding both its offerings and its markets. The company's THC products are sold in sixteen American states and territories, as well as a handful of Canadian provinces.

According to DeSanctis, the school's relationship with Wana started after she read a newspaper article about Whiteman. DeSanctis reached out to the Wana CEO through a mutual connection, and the two began talking regularly about education and CCD's cannabis course curriculum. The Wana Brands Foundation was established in 2021; in 2022, Whiteman was CCD's graduation ceremony speaker.

"The conversation kept going, and now we're getting $600,000 over three years," DeSanctis says.

Higher education is important at Wana, Rodriguez notes; the company offers up to $5,000 a year in education stipends to its employees. Although continuing on to a four-year university is a "personal choice" among CCD students, she adds that the right degree is "incredibly important" in advancing a career.

Wana and CCD have awarded scholarships to seven students so far this semester, all of whom have aspirations to work in the cannabis industry one day. According to Rodriguez, one of the scholarship winners is in talks with Wana about an internship down the road. Applications for spring and fall 2024 semester scholarships are currently open, but awardees can pause the scholarship money for a semester, if needed.

The cannabis industry is still trying to hire more accounting, human resources, marketing and other technical service employees, Rodriguez notes, and she hopes that more colleges and universities offer courses that spur students to join the professional pot world.

"I think so many people forget that we're just another industry, and we need those same professionals," she says. "Sometimes we really push this narrative that cannabis is just an entrepreneurial experience, though, and we really miss the boat in telling people there are all these other opportunities out there."