In late October, early childhood funders in New England approached the Alliance for Early Success about hosting a regional convening of early childhood advocates. The idea was sparked by Mary Peniston at the Connecticut Early Childhood Funder Collaborative and Brian Gold at the Massachusetts Early Childhood Funder Collaborative, and they were soon joined by the Couch Family Foundation, New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and Liftoff in Western New York. These organizations decided to pool their funds to support a connecting and strategy-sharing convening of early childhood funders and advocates from Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.
The Alliance for Early Success is no stranger to meetings like this that bring advocates and funders together to build relationship that accelerate learning across state lines. “Convenings are one of our highest purposes,” says Helene Stebbins, the Alliance’s Executive Director. “By sharing strategies, successes, and failures, we are building communities focused on state actions that are necessary for every child to thrive.”
The convening took place in Springfield, Massachusetts in late October, and highlighted early childhood coalitions and campaign in the region, who shared some of what they have learned from their work.
Lessons from coalitions:
- Build bridges, not gates.
- Attack problems, not people.
- Just because you are, you’re invited.
- Unfiltered advocacy is more effective than polished talking points.
- Not every partner has to be behind every priority.
- What would it take to move from scarcity to abundance?
- You can’t know what abundance is until you feel it.
- Engage everyone. If you didn’t say it, it doesn’t count. You need to say it.
- Disrupt. Dismantle. Do it differently.
- Does it matter on Monday morning?
- 5-year stable funding allowed us to build the coalition structure and governance.
- Respect is the key. Listening to other perspectives and respect.
- Growing pains on how to share power; balancing the need for broad inclusive voice and the ability to be nimble and respond quickly.
- Some of us are paid a salary to do this work, we’ve had to figure out how to resource those who are not.
Lessons from campaigns:
- Create urgency. Set a timeframe.
- Stay super nimble so you can adapt and respond (caution, can cause whiplash).
- Clearly define metrics of success.
- Hold everyone accountable, including campaign staff.
- Grassroots mobilization is essential. Have a big field team, cover the state, elevate the voices of families and the workforce.
- Make people feel like they are part of a movement; part of something big.
More resources shared at the convening can be found on the Meeting Resources page in the Past Convenings section of the Alliance website.
More information about the groups and campaigns featured can be found on their individual websites.
New York Empire State Campaign for Child Care
Rhode Island RIght From The Start
Massachusetts: The Early Childhood Agenda and The 9:30 Call
Vermont’s Let’s Grow Kids
Connecticut’s Child Care for CT
New Hampshire organizations including: New Futures, MomsRising, Waypoint, and New Hampshire Association for the Education of Young Children.