The Children’s Funding Project (CFP) helps states and communities close equity and opportunity gaps for children and youth through comprehensive strategic financing, which includes identifying and leveraging existing funding, creating strategic financing plans, generating new revenue, and developing collaborative infrastructure to administer funds in a coordinated and equitable fashion.
Alliance-Funded support for State Advocacy
CFP will provide technical assistance and expertise to state advocacy organizations in the following domains:
- Fiscal mapping. CFP has developed a suite of tools and best practices to coach state advocates on the process of fiscal mapping, or identifying the existing funds that support children’s services. Fiscal mapping provides the background research that is needed to improve the way a state finances it’s services and supports. This can be accomplished by generating new revenue, aligning funding streams and budget holders working towards similar goals, and holding policy makers accountable to commitments they’ve made.
- Cost modeling. CFP can assist state advocates in cost modeling to determine the ‘true’ cost of their ideal system for early care and education. Once equipped with this true cost estimate, advocates can start planning and working towards generating the revenue needed to meet their goals.
- Strategic financing plans. Once advocates have an estimate of the amount of money needed to finance an ideal early care and education system, CFP can help determine what revenue generation strategies are sufficient and feasible in their state to finance the various parts of that system.
- Revenue generation. There are many action steps needed for a state to be ready to generate new revenue, but CFP can provide expertise and assist states as they move through the stages of readiness.
