Bill Vandenberg

Bill Vandenberg is the director of the Open Society Institute Democracy and Power Fund, a social change grantmaking program housed within U.S. Programs.

Prior to joining OSI, Vandenberg lived in Denver for 17 years, where he was the executive director for the Colorado Progressive Coalition, the statewide, multiracial nonprofit that he co-founded in 1996.  Vandenberg led the coalition's work to advance civil rights, with highlights including long-time leadership in the state’s pro-affirmative action coalition, stewardship of the organization’s immigrant justice and juvenile justice system reform organizing, and lobbying successfully to pass one of the nation’s strongest anti-racial profiling laws.

He also led campaigns to raise Colorado’s minimum wage in 2006; expand grassroots support for rolling back the most onerous provisions of the “Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” the nation’s most restrictive and anti-government public investment law; and build the largest non-partisan voter mobilization drive in Colorado history, recognized by TrueMajority in 2004 as one of the nation's top-five community-based voter programs.

Vandenberg is an experienced organizer, nonprofit lobbyist, campaign strategist, media spokesperson, and multiracial coalition and organization builder and has served on boards or steering committees for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, Colorado Unity Coalition for Affirmative Action, Denver Foundation Expanding Nonprofit Inclusiveness Initiative, Rights for All People/ Derechos Para Todos, Shadow Theatre Company, and USAction.

He is a 1991 graduate of Boston College and a 2007-2008 fellow in the Rockwood Leadership Program's yearlong national fellowship for transformative leadership in the nonprofit sector.