Colorado Dawn is described in the current corpus as an aligned organization in the Advance Colorado network that channels money into education and election fights, especially around state and local school-governance contests. The page is now also grounded in direct Colorado TRACER, Colorado SOS business, Form 990, FEC, municipal, address-census, recipient-committee, and deduplicated allocation records.
In this repository, Colorado Dawn matters because it appears as one of the clearest intermediary organizations in the dark-money reporting around Advance Colorado. The current corpus still treats it less as a standalone policy institution than as a repeat vehicle through which money and political influence are routed into Colorado education and electoral disputes, but the new TRACER capture adds direct evidence that Colorado Dawn operates through an active statewide independent expenditure committee with its own registration, filing, penalty, and complaint history.
The Who is Advance Colorado? one-hop ingest adds a linked 2024 Colorado Dawn Form 990 PDF. The current companion note now preserves filing metadata, first-page extraction, Schedule B visibility limits, selected Schedule I grant rows, and selected Schedule C / Schedule O fields, but it still has not been fully reconciled against the TRACER, business-entity, municipal, and FEC committee layers.
- Historical officer record: the retained 2023 Form 990 render lists Michael Fields as an officer with the truncated title
TREASURER/SE. It establishes a historical filing entry, not a current title, control or direction of funds. See Colorado Dawn funding source cluster, 2021-2026.
- Role or function: independent-expenditure committee / political funding vehicle
- Scope: Colorado state and local electoral and education-adjacent spending
- Known aliases: none established in the current corpus
- Relevant affiliations: Advance Colorado, Michael Fields, Ready Colorado
- Committee detail now directly preserved in repo:
COLORADO DAWN IEC (20225043758), an active statewide independent expenditure committee registered on 2022-09-27
- Registered-agent detail in current direct record:
KATIE KENNEDY
- Direct business-record basis: the Colorado SOS business-summary capture lists Colorado Dawn as a Colorado nonprofit corporation formed on
2021-01-20, with the Saint Vrain suite as principal and mailing address and Katie Kennedy as registered agent at 2318 Curtis St
- Address-census basis: official Colorado business records place Colorado Dawn and Colorado Dawn IEC in the same Saint Vrain Suite 105 address cluster as Cole Communications, Victor's Canvassing, QED Colorado, Molon Labe Action, Constitutional Conservatives of El Paso County, and Colorado Conservatives for Retaking Congress
- Federal committee basis: the official FEC overview for
COLORADO DAWN (C00826743) lists the Saint Vrain Suite 105 address, Katie Kennedy as treasurer, active Super PAC status, and 2022-10-11 registration date
- Campaign-finance sweep basis: TRACER contributor rows since
2020-12-08 total $3,997,790.42 from Colorado Dawn, OpenFEC Schedule A receipts for Colorado Dawn total $91,978.80, the City of Colorado Springs citywide current-filing supplement shows $1,805,555.50 in municipal contributor rows from Colorado Dawn, and the focused Springs Opportunity Fund capture supports $128,000.00 in accounting-view municipal contributions from Colorado Dawn
- Current finance detail now directly preserved in repo: one retained 2025 expenditure-row match showing a
$15,000 contribution to COLORADO DAWN from COLORADO SPRINGS HOUSING AND BUILDERS ASSOCIATION POLITICAL FUNDING COMMITTEE
- Additional retained document: linked
2024 Colorado Dawn Form 990 PDF from the microsite ingest, with first-page extraction showing 100 EAST SAINT VRAIN ST SUITE 105, EIN 86-1580225, gross receipts of $7,439,700, principal officer Steve Durham, formation year 2021, and Colorado domicile
- Funding-source evidence: public IRS / ProPublica material shows large contribution totals for the 501(c)(4), including
$7,439,700 in 2024 contributions and grants, but the public Schedule B contributor fields are restricted
- State IEC receipt evidence: the dedicated
2022-2026 TRACER slice shows $173,488.00 in final contributions to COLORADO DAWN IEC, including self-referential Colorado Dawn rows and smaller named rows from OUR COMMUNITY OUR FUTURE, PROTECT OUR KIDS, Diane Smethills, Charles McNeil, Joy Hoffman, and Mary Margaret Wright
- Federal receipt evidence: the dedicated OpenFEC capture for
C00826743 shows $91,978.80 in itemized Schedule A receipts, all listing COLORADO DAWN as contributor
- Downstream allocation evidence: direct TRACER, municipal, OpenFEC, and Form 990 records show Colorado Dawn supporting candidate-election infrastructure, local and school-board-linked vehicles, local marijuana ballot committees, statewide fiscal-policy ballot committees, regional conservative committees, its own IE vehicles, and campaign vendors
- Recipient-classification evidence: direct committee-detail captures classify WELD STRONG as mixed regional / state-local candidate infrastructure, Coloradans for Accountable Government as mixed state / local / school-board candidate infrastructure, Constitutional Conservatives of El Paso County as local / county Republican candidate infrastructure, and Recall Priola as a legislative recall / candidate-adjacent issue committee
- CSSNC reconciliation evidence: the 2024 Form 990 row uses the acronym
CSSNC, but the EIN/address/timing and City of Colorado Springs municipal committee records strongly corroborate Colorado Springs Safe Neighborhood Coalition; the public Form 990 does not spell out the full name
- Deduplicated allocation readout: within Colorado Dawn rows, the current bounded table counts approximately
$5.99 million in visible direct and own-vehicle activity across candidate-election, ballot, school-board-linked, mixed-lane, and local buckets; this is not a statewide total or complete donor universe
- Important context: the current page is stronger for network role, committee existence, compliance metadata, and one bounded expenditure-row match than for a full institutional or donor history
¶ Evidence and source basis
- Advance Colorado dark-money network and school-board influence: provides the repository basis for Colorado Dawn as part of the Advance Colorado network and as a conduit in school-board and state-education election spending
- a locally retained Colorado TRACER committee-detail record for Colorado Dawn's active statewide independent-expenditure committee
- a locally retained dataset from Colorado TRACER, dated 2026-04-09: bounded batch note for the newly added statewide TRACER exports, including one direct 2025 expenditure-row match naming Colorado Dawn
- Colorado Dawn TRACER committee detail: bounded direct-source synthesis of the TRACER registration, filing, balance, penalty, and complaint detail
- Colorado Dawn funding source cluster, 2021-2026: bounded funding-source synthesis for Colorado Dawn nonprofit totals, restricted Schedule B visibility, state IEC receipts, and OpenFEC receipts.
- Colorado Dawn downstream allocation source cluster, 2021-2026: bounded downstream-allocation synthesis for visible Colorado Dawn nonprofit, TRACER, municipal, and OpenFEC outflow paths.
- Colorado Dawn recipient committee detail and deduplication source cluster, 2022-2026: direct recipient-committee classification and first-pass deduplication synthesis for Colorado Dawn allocation evidence.
- a locally retained derived campaign finance table from null, captured 2026-04-20T15:25:00-06:00, titled Colorado conservative allocation dedup table, 2018-2026: derived comparison table explaining no-double-counting treatment across Form 990, TRACER, municipal, and FEC layers.
- a locally retained colorado springs campaign finance from web3.coloradosprings.gov, captured 2026-04-20T14:41:45-06:00, titled Colorado Springs campaign finance capture: City of Colorado Springs municipal capture supporting the CSSNC reconciliation and 2022 / 2024 local ballot contribution paths.
- a locally retained tracer committee detail batch from tracer.sos.colorado.gov, captured 2026-04-20T14:45:00-06:00, titled Colorado Dawn recipient committee TRACER detail capture: TRACER committee-detail capture for WELD STRONG, Coloradans for Accountable Government, Constitutional Conservatives of El Paso County, and Recall Priola.
- a locally retained pdf from media.coloradotimesrecorder.com, captured 2026-04-18T21:56:43-06:00, titled Colorado-Dawn-990-2024.pdf: companion note for the linked
2024 Colorado Dawn Form 990 PDF
- a locally retained propublica nonprofit profile from projects.propublica.org, captured 2026-04-20T13:40:00-06:00, titled Colorado Dawn ProPublica profile and filing totals, 2026-04-20: ProPublica profile and extracted filing totals for
2021, 2022, and current profile metadata.
- a locally retained tracer bulk export slice from tracer.sos.colorado.gov, captured 2026-04-20T13:27:31-06:00, titled Colorado Dawn IEC TRACER transaction slice 2022-2026: direct Colorado TRACER transaction slice for Colorado Dawn IEC contribution and expenditure rows.
- a locally retained openfec api capture from api.open.fec.gov, captured 2026-04-20T13:35:00-06:00, titled Colorado Dawn C00826743 OpenFEC capture, 2022-2026: direct OpenFEC committee, totals, and Schedule A capture for the Colorado Dawn federal Super PAC.
- a locally retained business record html from www.sos.state.co.us, captured 2026-04-19, titled Colorado Dawn Colorado SOS business summary: direct Colorado SOS business-summary capture for Colorado Dawn's nonprofit corporation record
- a locally retained official dataset address query from data.colorado.gov, captured 2026-04-19, titled Saint Vrain, Belleview, and Curtis address-census source pass: official address-census source pass placing Colorado Dawn and Colorado Dawn IEC in the exact Saint Vrain Suite 105 cluster
- a locally retained fec committee overview html from www.fec.gov, captured 2026-04-19, titled FEC committee overview captures for Saint Vrain and Belleview address overlap: official FEC committee overview capture for Colorado Dawn's federal committee address and treasurer fields
- a locally retained multi source campaign finance sweep from tracer.sos.colorado.gov, captured 2026-04-19, titled Address-census campaign-finance sweep since Advance Colorado formation: multi-source campaign-finance sweep for address-census entities since Advance Colorado's formation.
- a locally retained colorado springs campaign finance from web3.coloradosprings.gov, captured 2026-04-18T23:50:12-06:00, titled Address-census Colorado Springs citywide current-filing sweep: City of Colorado Springs citywide current-filing supplement with exact-name municipal contributor rows for Colorado Dawn.
- a locally retained colorado springs campaign finance from web3.coloradosprings.gov, captured 2026-04-18T23:32:00-06:00, titled Springs Opportunity Fund Colorado Springs municipal campaign-finance capture: City of Colorado Springs municipal campaign-finance portal capture showing Colorado Dawn contributions to Springs Opportunity Fund.
- The current corpus supports Colorado Dawn as a durable network node with a directly documented committee record, but its internal governance, major original donor base, and exact role relative to other aligned organizations remain only partly mapped.
- The retained 2024 Form 990 establishes contribution scale but not donor identities because public Schedule B fields are restricted.
- The state IEC and federal Super PAC receipts do not solve the original donor-source problem because many rows identify Colorado Dawn itself as contributor.
- The new statewide-export slice adds one direct 2025 expenditure-row match, but later passes would still need filing-image or broader report-detail captures before making stronger claims about overall money flow or specific election interventions.
- The linked
2024 Form 990 now has bounded extraction for top-line revenue, Schedule B visibility, Schedule C, and selected Schedule I grants. A first-pass deduplication table now prevents obvious double-counting against TRACER, OpenFEC, and municipal layers, but it is not a complete cycle-by-cycle reconciliation.
- The recipient-committee detail pass supports stronger lane classifications for WELD STRONG, Coloradans for Accountable Government, Constitutional Conservatives of El Paso County, and Recall Priola. It preserved document-image metadata but did not download every underlying TRACER document image.
- The Saint Vrain Suite 105 overlap is now directly supported as an address fact, but it does not by itself prove shared control, sponsorship, funding flow, or coordination with other entities at the suite.
¶ Source access and local retention
Atlas Trace retains a local research capture for provenance of the sources identified on this page. The capture and processing records remain local; they are not available through this wiki. Consult the identified sources for public access options where available. See Sources, access, and local retention.