Presentation for the Early Childhood Funders October 28, 2003

1. Lessons Learned fromThe Quality Child Care Initiative (QCCI) A Project of the Early Childhood Funders Presentation for the Early Childhood Funders October 28, 2003 Deborah KoganSocial Policy Research AssociatesQCCI Evaluator

2. QCCI Emerged as a Project of the Early Childhood Funders in 1997 • To increase the availability of high quality child care for low-income families in Bay Area. • In response to welfare reform pressures to move large numbers of mothers with young children into the workforce. • Supported by research findings on the importance of quality child care for early childhood development.

3. Goals of QCCI • Illuminate critical issues in child care. • Increase the knowledge base of various sectors of the child care community. • Develop new partnerships between the philanthropic and government sectors. • Form a child care response that addressed regional and local needs.

4. Distinctive Features of QCCI • A comprehensive vision of the issues that affect quality child care, drawing on input from experienced funders, experts, and the child care field. • A program of joint grantmaking that drew on both pooled and directly aligned funds. • A multi-pronged approach that made direct grants, sponsored community forums, funded technical assistance resources, supported grantee convenings, promoted public-private partnerships, and engaged in dissemination of best practices.

5. Distinctive Features of QCCI,Continued • The availability of a wide range of engagement levels for participating funders. • An open and highly collaborative leadership structure. • Use of an action learning loop that unites funders and practitioners in a shared learning community. • A regional approach to quality child care issues. • An ability to support flexible responses to changing circumstances.

6. Two Rounds of QCCI Grantmaking • During Round 1, QCCI raised $1.2 million in pooled funds and made 67 grants to 56 organizations targeting five strategic areas: training, advocacy, linkages, facilities, and consumer education. • At the end of Round 1, participating funders felt that their work together was not yet complete. • Funders contributed $2.1 million to support a second round of QCCI grantmaking. A total of 29 grants were made under Round 2.

7. Framework Guiding Round 2 Grantmaking • Four Strategic Goals: • Build a sustainable child care workforce. • Strengthen advocacy for child care. • Create new/improve existing child care facilities. • Make child care more accessible to families.

8. New Approaches Tested During Round 2 • In response to review and feedback from Round 1, new features included: • A reduction in the number of grants made. • An increase in the average grant level. • Focus on a priority issue: compensation and retention of the child care workforce. • Grounding of advocacy efforts in focused high-stakes issues. • An increased emphasis on disseminating best practices using resource/TA organizations.

9. Support for Local Compensation/Retention Projects • Provided coordinated support ($865,000) for local projects and regional technical assistance efforts. • QCCI support was valued by grantees, because: • QCCI support was timely and flexible. • Funding enabled several counties to weave together an integrated project from multiple funding streams. • QCCI supported networking and information sharing among grantees on challenges and accomplishments. • QCCI encouraged grantees to think about both short-term and longer-term strategies.

10. Lessons Learned from Compensation/Retention Projects • Workforce compensation/retention worked well as an organizing issue for advocacy projects: • It brought together center-based staff and family-based care providers. • It enabled child care advocates to build broad coalitions of parents, educators/trainers, labor organizations, worthy wage coalitions, and care giver associations. • Successful public education campaigns emphasized the link between improved compensation and improved quality of care.

11. Lessons Learned from Compensation/Retention Projects, Continued • Grantees found it difficult to sustain involvement by child care teachers in advocacy/organizing efforts. • Planning grantees said that design of local stipend programs will be a “work in progress” for some time. Design issues include: • How much to raise the bar between initial and continued eligibility? How to reach family child care providers and individuals from underrepresented groups? Whether to link stipends to permit applications?

12. Lessons Learned from Compensation/Retention Projects, Continued • Implementation project grantees found it essential to build partnerships with key players in the education/professional development arena: • To facilitate access to professional and career counseling for child care providers. • To expand opportunities for classes and workshops needed by individuals participating in the stipend program. • To increase early childhood education offerings at non-traditional sites, during evening or weekend hours, and for Spanish-speaking participants.

13. Support for Provider Training and Leadership Projects • Support included $100,000 to each of four resource organizations, with a focus on under-served groups and local areas, to expand training on: • Providing quality care to infants and toddlers. • Providing quality care to an increasingly diverse population of children and families. • Providing quality care to children with a wide array of special needs. • Leadership development for child care center directors.

14. Lessons Learned from Provider Training and Leadership Projects • Grantees found that training projects were not limited to delivery of training. Rather, needed steps included: • Meeting with representatives from targeted communities to build trust and identify needs. • Developing training curricula and resource materials in appropriate languages and with culturally sensitive content. • Recruiting and training trainers. • Arranging for academic credit for successful completers. • Conducting outreach to potential participants. • Delivering training. • Providing ongoing hands-on support to providers.

15. Lessons Learned from Provider Training and Leadership Projects, Continued • Projects reaching out to underserved populations found that intensive interpersonal outreach efforts by community organizers were needed to recruit targeted individuals. • Sometimes the necessary precursors to training took time: • One grantee found it necessary to work at the system level to raise the visibility of children with special needs before undertaking intensive practitioner-level training. • Another grantee entering a new geographic area found that it had to talk with caregivers and build a trusting relationship before offering training on serving infants and toddlers. • Practitioners valued training that offered academic credits, which helped practitioners advance on the permit matrix and qualify for local stipends.

16. Lessons Learned from Provider Training and Leadership Projects, Continued • One grantee emphasized the importance of mentor-to-trainee and peer-to-peer dialogue during and after training to share experiences and solidify learning. • Organizational (employer) involvement in planning and delivery of training supported individual caregiver participation and made it easier for caregivers to apply their new skills in the workplace. • When preparing a curriculum for use by a new cultural and language group, a process of “cultural translation” was often needed to reveal the hidden cultural assumptions in the training content before the language translation was made.

17. Support for Parent Advocacy • The Parent Action for Child Care Today (PACCT) project received a QCCI grant of $80,000, designed to: • Develop and promote a parents’ platform and communicate it to key state and local decisionmakers in a public Parent Summit. • Support three local chapters of Parent Voices in recruiting parents and involving them in meaningful child care advocacy work. • Increase the stature and maturity of Parent Voices as a parent advocacy organization and public policy stakeholder at the state level. • Using the Parent Summit as a stepping stone, the project helped mobilize parent energy around a key state budget issue (reduction in funding for child care set-aside for families who had recently left welfare).

18. Lessons Learned from Parent Advocacy Project • It is possible to focus parent advocacy efforts around a critical issue and to influence key decisionmakers at the state level. • The work of paid staff is essential to sustain the momentum of parent involvement. • Interest from parents in additional counties around the state demonstrated the potential to form new local chapters of Parent Voices. • As a result of its involvement in state budget issues, Parent Voices has been collaborating closely with other child care, labor, faith-based, and non-profit groups.

19. Support for Child Care Facilities • QCCI provided a $100,000 grant to Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) to: • Provide technical assistance to build provider capacity on business practices and facilities development. • Link child care providers to expert consultants in the fields of facilities financing and development. • Create a Predevelopment Fund to support individual planning and predevelopment grants to licensed nonprofit child care centers (12 grants awarded). • Expand LIIF activities beyond San Francisco to eight additional counties.

20. Lessons Learned from Facilities Grant • Building relationships with child care organizations and prospective applicants in new counties requires personal contacts and a substantial investment of time and effort. • A number of applicants lacked the threshold organizational capacity to manage a capital development project. Used referral linkages to basic capacity building resources. • Priority centers (those serving low-income families and children with special needs) often need the greatest amount of technical assistance and capacity building. • Predevelopment and planning activities are only the first step in a long process. Need to develop outcome measures that track progress toward actual facility development.

21. Support for Centralized Eligibility Lists (CEL Project) • During Round 2, QCCI continued to play an important supporting role in its partnership with the State of California Department of Education/Child Development Division supporting the development of county-level CELs (lists of families eligible for subsidized child care): • Facilitated meetings of the state’s CEL Task Force. • Supported networking among counties on CEL design and implementation issues.

22. Lessons Learned from CEL Project • Modest but strategic investments by the philanthropy community can stimulate the public sector to make significant investments in projects that address the needs of children and families. • QCCI support helped ensure use of uniform design and data elements across county CELs, which was critical to build the potential for state-level summaries. • Without continued state funding, many counties were unable to continue/move forward on CEL development.

23. Evolution of QCCI During Round 2 • Funder participation grew from 16 to 21 foundations. Nine new foundations joined the initiative. • Second-round participating funders were more comfortable contributing to the pooled fund. • QCCI handled turnover in administrative staffing without disrupting operations.

24. Evolution of QCCI During Round 2,Continued • QCCI Leadership Team remained in place overseeing shared funding until the end of QCCI Round 2 grants; led planning for end of formal QCCI grantmaking. • Group of interested ECF members met to develop new ECF leadership and assess the feasibility of continuing some QCCI-related functions as part of ECF.

25. Exit Strategy for QCCI • Short-term funding to leadership and training grantees to support planning for organizational sustainability. • Clear communication with grantees about the end of the formal QCCI collaborative grantmaking program. • Dissemination of lessons learned: • About funder collaboratives. • About regional projects supporting quality child care. • Discussions about continuing some QCCI-related functions as part of ECF or as independent projects by individual funders.

26. Funder Perspective on QCCI Accomplishments • Funders particularly valued QCCI’s contribution to: • Increasing the visibility and priority of child care issues on the public agenda. • Viewing and addressing child care issues from a regional perspective. • Helping document and disseminate information about best practices in the child care field. • Providing grantees with a single point of access to potential funders. • Reinforcing funders’ decisions to make independent grants in the areas of QCCI’s funding priorities.

27. Grantee Perspective on QCCI Accomplishments • Grantees particularly valued the following aspects of QCCI: • Grant flexibility; the willingness of QCCI to adapt terms of grant to meet changing conditions. • The fact that QCCI gave attention to issues not recognized by other funders, such as advocacy, community organizing, and inclusion of children with special needs. • Modest and streamlined oversight and reporting requirements. • Provision of valuable and interesting information at grantee convenings. • Assistance in developing relevant outcome measures.

28. Grantee Interest in Continued Philanthropy Support for Quality Child Care • Surveyed grantees indicated that they hoped the philanthropy community would continue to: • Support innovative projects, such as CARES, that build on current efforts and require an extended period of time to mature. • Support advocacy efforts to help protect hard-won child care quality improvements. • Help broaden the child care discussion to include voices not always heard, including parents and teachers. • Convince the business sector of the economic benefits of quality child care. • Convene regional stakeholders to develop new strategies for quality child care in today’s difficult economic and political environment.

29. Lessons Learned About Funders’ Collaboratives • Most funder staff that participated in the funder survey would recommend that their foundation participate in future collaboratives. • Perceived benefits of collaboration included: • Ability to leverage individual foundation’s investment with pooled funds from other funders. • Ability to learn from other funders (about the field and about other approaches to grantmaking). • Coordinated grantmaking strategy that resulted in a greater impact on the early childhood education field.

30. Lessons Learned About Funders’ Collaboratives, Continued • Funders identified the following factors as contributing to the success of QCCI as a funders’ collaborative: • Having strong but flexible leadership. • Using a multi-pronged approach that includes both individual grants and grantee/community convenings. • Securing funder buy-in to a broad regional picture of the issues and grantmaking strategies. • Allowing funder participation at a variety of different levels of commitment. • Offering both aligned and pooled funding opportunities. • Coming together in a flexible and time-limited project, rather than creating a permanent program or organization.