Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: Building Powerful Coalitions to Advance Early Childhood Policy

Working in coalition is an essential strategy to realize policy wins for young children and their families. Bringing together organizations and stakeholders who contribute different strengths, networks, and perspectives can help to identify blind spots before they become insurmountable obstacles, refine messaging that will resonate with diverse audiences, and distribute the heavy lifting of policy advocacy across many entities.

Simultaneously, coalition work can be challenging because it often brings together a diverse set of stakeholders who may not share the same strategy even if they share a goal to create policy change. Effective coalitions focus on alignment of purpose, so together they can pursue a unified strategy. Coming into alignment as a coalition is a process, which can surface tension and even conflicts. This makes bridging differences amongst stakeholders, being attuned to power dynamics, and leveraging strengths all vital to the success of a coalition.

Veteran coalition builder Celesté Martinez helped us explore the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and limitations impacting the coalitions we are a part of. We learned from peers across the network about the structures and agreements that make their coalitions strong, effective, and even how they can improve so we can continue to advocate for early childhood policy changes in solidarity with one another across the U.S.