What We Learned From a Deep Dive Into Funding for Early Childhood Education

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The first thing I learned when I started working on Inside Philanthropy’s newly released research paper on funding for early childhood education is just how much there is to learn.

I embarked on the project, the latest installment in our ever-expanding State of American Philanthropy series, thinking that it would be pretty reasonable to manage. After all, I’ve covered K-12 education for a long time, at IP and other outlets, and assumed that early childhood education (ECE) would be an easier topic (smaller humans, far less funding).

In fact, as most of those who work in the sector will tell you, our early care system is not a system at all, but a mish-mash of different programs with many moving parts. As such, the state of philanthropy on the topic is similarly chaotic.

The ECE landscape was also tough to get a handle on because we were examining the sector at a moment that was particularly charged. The child care crisis was already brewing before COVID-19, and then a combination of pressures including pandemic-related closures, increased costs, class-size restrictions, and labor shortages simultaneously devastated early care facilities and reminded us how essential it is — not just for families, but for the smooth functioning of society at every level. 

ECE, and how to fix it, was suddenly in the public spotlight. As parents struggled to find care for their kids, headlines blared news of rising childcare costs, worker shortages, shuttered facilities and child care deserts. The crisis gained increased attention from lawmakers on Capitol Hill and the new administration in the White House. 

As a result, there’s been a flurry of activity, making this one of the more exciting and dynamic corners of the funding world right now. We dive deep into all of the details in the paper, and I hope you’ll spend some time with it and find it as eye-opening as I did. In the meantime, here’s a preview of some of the key findings for readers of the blog.

Where the money is coming from

For a stalwart group of funders that have made ECE a priority for years, the increased attention on the issue was welcome. That was another thing we learned when we explored the issue: while early care has gained more funding support in recent years, it still receives a small share compared to K-12 education, for example. But there are a number of funders, experts and organizations who have been working in this lane for years, and have helped both establish the importance of ECE and worked to improve it. 

For these funders, the growing awareness made it a time of tremendous opportunity. As Jessie Rasmussen, president of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, put it, “Many of us have been using the phrase ‘moment in time.’ This is a moment in time, and we can’t blow it. We don’t want to miss this opportunity to create the kind of lasting, durable early interventions that are going to make such a difference in the lives of so many children and so many communities.”

The Buffett Early Childhood Fund, as its name indicates, has made ECE a priority from the start, and so have the Pritzker Children’s Initiative and the Foundation for Child Development. The welfare of children has always been the focus of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and other high-profile names in the funding world, such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, all of which count ECE in their funding priorities. Newer foundations like the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Ballmer Group, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative are also major ECE funders, as is the Bezos Family Foundation. Many local and regional foundations, like Chicago-based Irving Harris Foundation, also support early care in their own backyards.

Where the money is going

Over the last several decades, cutting-edge brain science has boosted the visibility of early care by increasing our understanding of infant brain development. We now know that brains begin vital growth even before birth, and that quality early education nurtures young minds and helps children develop skills that prepare them for kindergarten and far beyond. If we were to design an effectively holistic education system today, knowing what we do now, we would start much earlier than age five. As Scott Moore, executive director of Kidango, a Bay Area-based early education program, told us, “If you don’t start until five, you are missing so much.” 

Many ECE funders support research into brain and child development; others promote prenatal and maternal support. Improving child care access, quality and affordability are also goals many ECE funders share, and they pursue these goals with a wide mix of strategies. Developing and supporting a skilled and fairly compensated ECE workforce is another priority for funders. A number support a whole child approach to early care, including providing healthcare and family support before birth and beyond. Other funders support advocacy at the local, state and federal level to promote a more equitable and affordable early care system. 

Equity is a focus for most ECE funders, since low-income children and children of color are less likely to have access to quality early care, and funders have long recognized the need to target funding to communities with the most need. There is also a critical need for increased support for early care for children with special needs, dual-language learners, foster children, unhoused children, and children whose parents or caregivers are incarcerated.

Equity is also an issue when it comes to the ECE workforce, which is made up primarily of women, many of them women of color. As Jessica Sager, CEO and co-founder of All Our Kin, which provides training and support for early care educators, told us, “Our whole child care system is built on the underpaid or unpaid labor of women of color. Starting with Black women who were caring for white children without any pay at all under the system of slavery, and then building through a system that exploited the labor of women in care-giving. If we are to move toward a system of equity, we have to acknowledge that we can’t run a child care system that is funded through that continued exploitation and asking Black and brown women to take less than they are worth.”

Early care as a public good

Many ECE experts argue that early care is a public good that deserves public support — which is how it is treated in most other developed countries. But many Americans — and many American lawmakers — cling to the notion that early care is a private matter that families must grapple with on their own. The childcare crisis and the flaws in our early care “system” that the pandemic revealed may be changing that perception — and if so, philanthropy will deserve some of the credit. ECE is an area that has gained increasing attention from funders in recent years, and the events of the last few years have seen many donors boost their commitments, stepping up to raise the visibility of an issue that impacts everyone.

Shannon Rudisill, executive director of the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, summed it up this way, “One of the things that early education funders understand — and it’s really so evident now because of the pandemic — is the biggest issue in early childhood: We have no system. We have no publicly-funded system. And so while funders are doing their best to fill in gaps in their local communities, there is a widespread recognition that early education is a public good, and that we’re going to need to increase public investment. So I see more funders opening up to funding in the advocacy space, and I see more funders funding organizing.”

One more thing we learned: as dynamic as the ECE funding landscape is today, everyone we talked to agreed that there is much more that needs to be done to boost both the visibility — and the resources — of this essential sector.