One Colorado built the GSA network. Now it’s backing the campaign against Initiatives 109 and 110.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

A political committee called Families Not Politics registered with the state of Colorado on February 10, 2026. It said it existed to protect families. Within three months it had raised nearly $320,000. None of it came from Colorado parents’ organizations while calling itself a “grassroots group”. 

What it did raise came largely from an abortion rights group, a Planned Parenthood affiliate, a Portland-based PAC that had just abandoned its own ballot campaign in Oregon and the organization behind the Colorado Gender and Sexuality Alliance Network. Together those four sources account for nearly 90% of everything Families Not Politics has taken in.

The committee exists to defeat ballot initiatives heading to Colorado voters this November built by Erin Lee of Protect Kids Colorado, the Fort Collins mother whose years-long effort to obtain records and accountability from Poudre School District.

The Original Registration

When Families Not Politics first filed with the state on February 10, 2026, it was specific about what it was opposing and why. 

The original registration statement named “transgender youth and the broader LGBTQ+ community” and listed all three of Lee’s initiatives as targets — including Initiative 108, the Children Are Not For Sale Act, which targets child sex trafficking.

Twenty-seven days later, the committee filed an amended registration. The language about transgender youth was gone. The reference to the LGBTQ+ community was gone. Initiative 108 was no longer listed as a target.

Both registration documents are on file with the Colorado Secretary of State.

What the Initiatives Would Do

Initiative 109 would require K-12 and collegiate school athletic teams to designate participation based on biological sex. It creates an exception allowing a female student to participate on a male team if no female team is available. The measure also bars government entities and athletic associations from investigating schools for maintaining separate sports for females.

Families Not Politics describes Initiative 109 on its website as something that would “force students to confirm their gender publicly” and open girls to “invasive gender inspections.” The final text of the initiative contains no inspection process, no mechanism for anyone to challenge a student’s sex, and no requirement for any public declaration. Enforcement is assigned to the Commissioner of Education only after a determination of intentional noncompliance by a school district.

How Families Not Politics describes Initiative 109 on its campaign website. Accessed May 29, 2026, at familiesnotpolitics.com/#measures.

Initiative 110 would prohibit healthcare professionals from prescribing, administering, or providing surgery to a child for the purpose of altering biological sex characteristics. It would also bar the use of federal funds, Medicaid, and state funds for such procedures on minors.

On Initiative 110, Families Not Politics claims the measure “could block surgeries for teens who need life-saving treatment for certain cancers.” 

How Families Not Politics describes Initiative 110 on its campaign website. Accessed May 29, 2026, at familiesnotpolitics.com/#measures.

Despite that claim, the initiative’s final text prohibits surgery on minors only “for the purpose of altering biological sex characteristics” in response to a minor’s perception of sex or gender. It expressly excludes treatment for “acquired physical or chemical abnormalities.” Cancer surgery would not fall under the prohibition.

Both cleared the signature threshold this spring. Both were certified for the November 3, 2026 ballot. Lee also built Initiative 108, the Children Are Not For Sale Act targeting child sex trafficking, which was also certified for the ballot.

The GSA and What Came After

One Colorado runs the Colorado Gender and Sexuality Alliance Network — a statewide system of GSA clubs operating in schools across Colorado, including inside Poudre School District. That network is where this story starts.

In the spring of 2021, Lee’s daughter was a sixth grader at Wellington Middle School. Her art teacher, Jenna Riep, was the staff sponsor of the school’s GSA club.

In early May, Riep personally invited Lee’s daughter to stay after school, describing it as the “GSA Art Club.” Lee’s daughter did not know what GSA stood for. She texted her parents, who gave permission, believing she was attending a club for students interested in art.

The meeting she attended was hosted by Riep and Kimberly Chambers of SPLASH Youth of Northern Colorado. 

Students were told at the outset that what was discussed in the room should stay in the room and that their parents may not be safe people with whom to share what they heard. Lee’s daughter came home that evening and told her parents she was transgender. Lee said her daughter had no prior history of gender dysphoria.

Lee took her concerns to Wellington’s principal and got nowhere. She spent the following years obtaining records through Colorado Open Records Act requests and filed a federal lawsuit. 

The PSD Response and One Colorado

In late April and May 2022, as national media coverage mounted about the Wellington GSA, PSD responded on two fronts. 

On April 28, Communications Director Madeline Noblett sent written responses to The Epoch Times, stating that resources available to guide GSAs in the district “include but aren’t limited to those from The GSA Network and One Colorado.” She described both organizations as making things available “like lesson plans and recommendations for what clubs can do each month.”

On May 12, 2022, as the story spread nationally, Principal Kelby Benedict sent a letter to the Wellington school community. That letter also named One Colorado, stating that resources available to guide GSAs “include but aren’t limited to those from The GSA Network and One Colorado.”

One Colorado built the GSA network. Both PSD’s media response and its principal’s community letter named One Colorado as a guiding resource for the clubs operating in its schools. 

One Colorado is now helping the campaign to defeat the ballot initiatives brought by the parent who spent five years fighting the school over that network.

The Organization Powering the Campaign

Families Not Politics is not run by a collection of Colorado parents. It is largely funded by Cobalt Advocates and powered by One Colorado Education Fund.

Colorado TRACER records put One Colorado’s in-kind contribution to Families Not Politics at $99,812.85. That money went toward campaign management, political strategy, fundraising consulting, staff time, digital services, list acquisition, and texting. Not a donation — an operation.

One Colorado Education Fund is a Denver 501(c)(3). Its stated mission is equality for LGBT Coloradans and their families. The 2024 tax filing puts their revenue at $1,624,438, lobbying at $72,250 and staff at 20. Field organizing was the biggest line item that year at $315,305.

One Colorado’s funders include two Colorado foundations. The Gill Foundation put in $175,075 in 2024 for LGBTQ issues project support and general operating costs. 

The Colorado Health Foundation gave One Colorado $207,000 for capacity building and general operating support. 

The same foundation also gave $156,000 to SPLASH Youth of Northern Colorado — the organization whose director, Kimberly Chambers, was the guest speaker at Wellington’s GSA meeting in May 2021.

The Funding Coalition

Cobalt Advocates dropped $100,000 into the Families Not Politics committee in two installments — $50,000 on April 9, another $50,000 on April 27. On April 14, the organization announced it had joined the campaign as a full leadership partner and Executive Committee member.

The organization started in 1967 as the Colorado Association for the Study of Abortion, the same year Colorado became the first state to legalize abortion. It later became NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado, then rebranded as Cobalt in 2020. 

Cobalt’s 2024 tax filing shows $2,213,599 in lobbying expenditures, including work on Amendment 79, a Colorado abortion rights ballot measure. Its stated mission has nothing to do with transgender youth.

The Colorado Health Foundation donated $102,600 to Cobalt Foundation in 2024. 

Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains paid $50,000 to Families Not Politics on April 14. 

Its VP of Government Affairs, Jack Teter, was at the Families Not Politics launch event at the Capitol on March 27. The event was co-hosted by One Colorado. 

Teter had served on One Colorado’s Political Action Committee as an executive committee member until 2025 and is an Executive Committee member of New Era Colorado, according to his LinkedIn. New Era has endorsed the Families Not Politics group. 

Teter’s LinkedIn profile lists him as an executive committee member of One Colorado from 2018 to 2025 and of New Era Colorado since 2023. Accessed May 29, 2026.

He spoke for an organization that wrote a $50,000 check weeks later to a campaign whose operator he recently served on — and whose endorsement came from another board he currently sits on. 

Oregon Equal Rights for All donated $33,000 to the Families Not Politics committee in April. The Portland PAC had spent months trying to get a measure on the Oregon ballot that would have enshrined transgender healthcare, abortion rights, and same-sex marriage in the state constitution. On February 6, 2026, they abandoned the effort. The money left over went to Colorado.

One Colorado’s $99,812.85 in-kind contribution brings the total from these four sources to approximately $282,812. Families Not Politics has raised $320,113.85 total through the most recent filing period ending May 13, 2026 — $220,301 in cash and $99,812.85 in-kind. The committee has spent $33,292.20 of it so far.

What the Records Show

One Colorado built the statewide GSA network. They were named by PSD in its own media statements and in a letter sent directly to Wellington families. 

One Colorado Education Fund is now the largest in-kind contributor of the campaign to stop Erin Lee’s ballot initiatives, providing nearly $100,000 in campaign infrastructure to Families Not Politics. 

Initiatives 109 and 110 will appear on the November 3, 2026 ballot. The Families Not Politics committee is trying to defeat them.

Erin Lee will speak at RMV’s Freedom Fest on Friday, June 26.