The 16th annual Cowboy Up Carbondale fundraiser will take place Friday, Aug. 22, at Chacos Park from 6 to 10pm. Each year, Cowboy Up selects one local cause to benefit while gathering the community to celebrate Carbondale’s Western heritage. This year will feature live music from the Highway 82 Band plus games, arts and crafts, food trucks, ice cream and both a live and silent auction, all to help fund the Carbondale Education Foundation (CEF), the first beneficiary chosen for two years in a row.
“All of the money raised from Cowboy Up this year will go toward teacher grants again this year,” Katy Nardecchia with CEF explained. “We have earmarked roughly $30,000 to go toward teacher grants for the 2025-2026 school year. As soon as the school year starts … that’s when we’ll open the application process for teachers for those grants.”
CEF was founded in 2023, inspired by other education foundations supporting local schools. According to Jamie Nims, another member of CEF, they have been successful since early last year with fundraising efforts.
“Our sole mission is to raise funds on behalf of Carbondale schools to support our teachers, our students, our staff members and our schools,” Nims stated. “We have been really fortunate in our early launch and having been selected last year as the beneficiary for Cowboy Up, which served as a catalyst for us to get our name out and do some significant fundraising that was hugely beneficial directly to our teachers.”
His sentiments were shared by Nardecchia, who stated that the event helped the organization to hit the ground running. “We provided the volunteers, organized a silent auction and did a lot of the leg work, but the structure of the event and a lot of the pieces of the event were already orchestrated by the Cowboy Up board. That made it very easy for us to jump in and do some significant fundraising for our organization. We were psyched to be able to do it again this year,” she said.
A big way these funds come in is through the auctions. Some of the items and experiences folks can bid on this year include a stay at an Airbnb in Mexico, wisdom teeth removal through Roaring Fork Oral Surgery, original work from local artists, hotel staycation packages from places like Aspen’s The Little Nell, Belly Up tickets and a plethora of gift certificates for Carbondale businesses.
In discussion with Eric Rudd, a member of the Cowboy Up board of directors, these events bring the community together and it all begins when folks lend their time to volunteering to make it happen. He encourages folks to come out not only to support the efforts of the CEF but to interact with neighbors in a family-friendly, laid-back and fun setting.
“It’s amazing to me how much the community supports,” Rudd shared. “Everybody’s a volunteer, everybody’s here to make our community better, and the people that can do the most to make it better is the community coming to support the beneficiary. Some of them bring tears to your eyes after you listen to their story about what they do for the community. For us never to have a back-to-back beneficiary showed how important and critical [CEF] is.”
For additional information on CEF, contact info@carbondaleeducationfoundation.org. For more information about or to get involved with Cowboy Up, visit www.cowboyupcarbondale.com or follow @cowboyupcarbondale on Instagram.