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Morning Brief: The OUR Center Receives 5th Consecutive 4-star Rating from Charity Navigator

(Mark Ivins/Longmont Observer) Longmont's OUR Center recently received their fifth consecutive 4-star rating from Charity Navigator.
Longmont Observer

This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

(Mark Ivins/Longmont Observer)

Longmont's OUR Center recently received their fifth consecutive 4-star rating from Charity Navigator.

"Only 9% of the charities we evaluate have received at least 5 consecutive 4-star evaluations, indicating that OUR Center outperforms most other charities in America. This exceptional designation from Charity Navigator sets OUR Center apart from its peers and demonstrates to the public its trustworthiness," states Michael Thatcher, Charity Navigator President & CEO, in a letter to the OUR Center.

According to the Charity Navigator website, "Founded in 2001, Charity Navigator has become the nation's largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities. In our quest to help donors, our team of professional analysts has examined tens of thousands of non-profit financial documents. We've used this knowledge to develop an unbiased, objective, numbers-based rating system to assess over 9,000 of America's best-known and some lesser known, but worthy, charities."

"We are thrilled to be recognized in this elite group of organizations consistently receiving the highest, 4-star rating," says Development Director of the OUR Center, Elaine Klotz.

In order for the OUR Center to receive a ranking from Charity Navigator, they had to first submit an application meeting such criteria as: "solid financial ground, corporate documents in order, good fiscal management, transparency and a good ratio of revenue to direct service expense," according to Klotz.
The OUR Center would like to continue to have a successful rating in the future and hope to do so by setting goals that include, "continued sound fiscal responsibility, board and executive leadership, low administrative & fundraising ratio to direct service provision, continue to develop Family Resource Center programs and services, recognized leader in Human Services field," say Klotz.
"Since 1986, OUR Center has provided basic needs to people in the St. Vrain Valley to fulfill our mission “We help move toward self-sufficiency by unifying community resources”.  Our Basic Needs and Child Care staff and over 1,000 volunteers, along with over 20 community partners, are currently serving over 10,000 households per year to help them reach or maintain self-reliance."
Visit the OUR Center website to learn more about the programs and services they offer.

Election Day Unofficial Preliminary Results – Wednesday Update

This is a press release from Boulder County Elections and is published by the Longmont Observer as a public service. 

Next unofficial results update will be after 8-day cure and military ballots due date

The Boulder County Elections Division has finished tallying results for 80,995 ballots for the 2018 Primary Election and has posted preliminary unofficial results online - www.BoulderCountyVotes.org.

 As a normal part of the election process, there are remaining categories of ballots left to be counted at the end of the 8th day after the election. There is a group of ballots that will get counted and a secondary group of ballots, of which only some will get counted. These categories are outlined below.

These are the additional categories of ballots that will count. These ballots have been signature verified and the voter has been given vote credit, but their ballot has not yet been counted nor have the votes been added to the election results. This will happen at the end of the 8-day period. They are:

  • 1410 Reserve Ballots – These ballots are held to protect voter anonymity for the below categories of ballots. We reserve 3 ballots per precinct per district style. These ballots are evenly divided between the parties.
  • 646 Manual Process Ballots – These are ballots that typically came in during the last 24-hours that likely had one of the following issues: replacement ballot envelope (can’t go through our sorting machine); dirty/food stained or badly folded ballot (needs duplication to run through the scanners); or poorly marked ballots that need election judges to review voter intent.
  • 450 Unaffiliated Voter Ballots – These are ballots from unaffiliated voters whose signature has been approved, but whose votes have not yet been counted.
  • 31 Already Cured Ballots or Military/Overseas ballots arrived and verified – These are either ballots that had a missing signature, signature discrepancy issue, etc. that was resolved, but too late for us to process these ballots on election night (typically cured on Election Day) or military/overseas ballots that came through EveryoneCounts (military/overseas transmission system) or email affidavit, have been signature verified, but have not yet been counted.

The total for these categories is 2,537 ballots.

Then, there are the following categories of ballots that have the potential to be counted at the end of the 8th day. They are:

  • 635 Mail ballots that have the potential to be "cured" by voters – These are ballots where one or more of the following verification steps were incomplete: the signature on the envelope did not match, the signature on the envelope was forgotten, or an ID was required and not provided. These voters will be mailed a letter no later than Thursday, June 28 (and sent an email if an email address is on their voter registration record) informing them of the status of their ballot. Additionally, they should have already received a message, if they are signed up for our Ballot Track system. By law, these voters have until Thursday, July 5 at 11:59 p.m. to address these items (because of the holiday, the 8th day following the election is July 5).
  • 786 UOCAVA military and overseas voter mail ballots – Most military and overseas voters that intend to vote return their ballot by Election Day. However, by law, UOCAVA mail ballots have until 8 days after the election to be received. Historically, we have received less than 5% back from this category for a Primary Election.
  • 232 Ballots that were picked up by Denver election officials at the Central USPS mail processing facility at 7 p.m. on election night – Plus an unknown quantity of ballots that may have been returned by the election deadline to another county clerk’s office and will be transferred to our office within a few days – typically less than 25 ballots. Assuming the signatures on these mail ballots are verified, these ballots will be added to the preliminary results as well.

Thus, from the above categories, there are upwards of an additional 1,653 ballots that may potentially be added to the preliminary election results at the end of the 8-day statutory window. Those results will be added to the unofficial results on Friday, July 6along with the 2,537 ballots that we know will be counted, highlighted above.

If a voter would like to check to confirm that we received and processed their mail ballot, they can check online using our Ballot Track tool, which is linked from our home page www.BoulderCountyVotes.org. While checking on the status of their mail ballot, the Elections Division encourages all voters to login and sign-up Ballot Track notifications for future elections.

Tentative summary schedule for remaining results postings:

Friday, July 6 – mid-to-late day:  Add the votes of the 2,537 ballots + the “potential” categories of ballots listed above – up to around 1,653 ballots

TBD, but most likely Thurs, July 12: Certified Election Results posted (typically results do not change after 8th day posting)