As we work toward our 2030 strategic plan to put 4 million more young people on a path to economic mobility, StriveTogether is collaborating with national policy partners to champion key initiatives. In the lead-up to our annual Cradle to Career Convening, we’ll be sharing insights and updates on our policy priorities for the upcoming legislative year. Together with our national policy partners and the Cradle to Career Network, we can create the systemic change needed to ensure every child succeeds.
This guest blog was written by Allie Farrell, partnerships manager at Children’s Funding Project, and Brett McPherson, communications manager at Children’s Funding Project.
It’s no secret that making equitable opportunities a reality for all children and youth in our communities will require significant public investment.
At Children’s Funding Project we work closely with communities, states and Native nations to help local leaders and advocates identify sustainable ways to fund their goals for young people through a process we call strategic public financing. This approach allows states and communities to assess their current spending on youth programs and services, add a price tag to their goals and policy priorities, and identify ways to cover those costs.
At the 2024 StriveTogether Policy Summit, our founder and CEO Elizabeth Gaines offered 10 reflections for the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network to consider as network members pursue sustainable public funding for children and youth:
- Pay attention to the whole child, from little to big. Children need support and opportunities from cradleto career. For too long, advocates have been splintered into different focus areas — early childhood, out-of-school time, workforce development, behavioral health, etc. — all competing against each other for funding. By contrast, there are some great examples of communities taking a comprehensive approach to funding, such as King County’s Best Starts for Kids in Washington state.
- We need to align and strengthen the people, data and money. Bringing ambitious agendas to fruition requires strengthening, coordinating and aligning people, data and money simultaneously. Relationships matter and cradle-to-career partnerships must be nurtured and developed. Goals and outcomes, tracked using data, lead to better informed strategies. Demystifying the money requires equal attention. Children’s Funding Project helps communities answer the three key questions of strategic public financing:
- How much funding currently supports our goals?
- How much will it cost to fund our goals in full?
- How will we fill the gap between current funding and fully-funded goals?
- What gets budgeted gets done. The process of creating effective, community-wide strategic plans often includes months or years of engaging community members in visioning and collecting rich data about how kids are doing. Too often, though, those plans then fall short when they lack the necessary financial resources. Public budgets must accurately reflect a community’s goals to achieve them. If one thing is certain, it’s that what doesn’t get budgeted doesn’t get done.
- As the pendulum swings, find the balance. It can be challenging to determine where to put your advocacy energy. Over the last five or six years our country has vacillated greatly between who is responsible for funding children’s services. One extreme puts the onus on parents or private philanthropy, while the other points to federal, state or local government. The reality is that no one funding source will save the day. Luckily, communities can find balance through strategic public financing plans that pursue funding from all possible sources.
- Move from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. Advocates for children and youth historically have operated in a scarcity model, believing they must settle for whatever funding their programs receive and accept narratives like “now is not the right time,” “wait your turn,” or “the revenue just isn’t available.” We have to shift our mindset! There is abundance in this nation and kids deserve it. We are working with communities to find out where the money is, and just how much different taxing mechanisms can yield. One example is Multnomah County, Oregon, and its approach to funding its Preschool for All program through a high income earner’s tax.
- Don’t be afraid of big numbers. It is time to normalize discussing the true cost of programs and services in pursuit of the funding those programs need — and deserve. Stop asking for how much you think you can get and start asking for what the data shows it will actually cost to provide full-scale, high-quality services. Sharpen your advocacy by understanding true costs through cost estimation and modeling, and start socializing the “big number” from there.
- Local action — it’s a trickle-up approach. Local organizing and action are important for building a children’s movement nationwide. More than 50 localities around the country stopped waiting for state or federal funding for kids and took matters into their own hands by going directly to the voters to raise new revenue. In many cases, neighboring communities were inspired by the creation of these voter-approved children’s funds and followed suit. Sometimes, the local action triggered state action through the creation of matching funds.
- Be an opportunist, for kids’ sake. Stay vigilant! Look for windows of opportunity to win funding for parts of your agenda, then just keep moving forward. Things will rarely be won exactly how they are envisioned, so it is important to remain open to a wide array of opportunities.
- “Be unrelenting in walking toward the danger.” Those were the words of Dr. Sarah Baray, CEO of San Antonio’s voter-approved children’s fund Pre-K for SA, speaking at our 2023 Children’s Funding Institute. (The event brought together 23 communities from 10 states working to secure dedicated funding for kids via ballot measure.) Pursuing public funding is challenging work. There are politics and failed campaigns to endure, which are not for the faint of heart. But it is worth the effort! New Orleans advocates walked toward the danger after a failed campaign in 2021, achieving a huge early childhood funding win at the ballot box in 2022.
- The Cradle to Career Network is the network to do this work! StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network members and other place-based partnerships are well-positioned to lead successful strategic public financing efforts in their communities, being equipped with an equity-driven community agenda and deep cross-sector relationships. Our team at Children’s Funding Project is here to support that work.
Allie Farrell is partnerships manager at Children’s Funding Project and resides in St. Louis, Missouri.
Brett McPherson is communications manager at Children’s Funding Project with a background in multimedia journalism and previous experience in education, public health, and state government. He lives in the Dallas, Texas, area with his wife and her two children.
