IP Briefing: What’s Going on With Philanthropy for Early Childhood Education?

In a sentence: Early childhood education has gained more funding in recent years, but it still receives a small share of philanthropy compared to K-12.

What’s going on

Philanthropy has historically neglected early childhood education (ECE), instead focusing on K-12. But as research in brain science has shown that investments in the earliest years can yield outsized, life-long benefits, more funders are including early childhood education in their priorities. The pandemic, too, has highlighted the importance of early childhood care. Still, ECE remains woefully underfunded, we found in our State of American Philanthropy report.

The United States doesn’t have a functional system for early childhood care and education, but rather a scattering of child care facilities, preschools and home-based family care options of inconsistent quality and insufficient funding. In some parts of the country, there are not enough facilities to care for all the young children in the community. Many families cannot afford the cost of child care, and many child care facilities pay unlivable wages. Children of color and children living in low-income households are less likely to have access to quality early childcare and education.

Public funding for ECE is remarkably scant. Even Head Start, which many believe makes quality ECE available to all, is inadequately funded, so there are not enough spots available for all the children who qualify. Philanthropists, volunteers, and staff fill in some of the gaps. But even with funders directing more resources to this area in recent years, a lot more is needed.

By the numbers

“The U.S. spends 0.2 percent of its G.D.P. on child care for children 2 and under... other wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development spend an average of 0.7 percent of G.D.P. on toddlers, mainly through heavily subsidized child care,” reported Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times in 2021.
Chronically underfunded, Head Start reaches only one-third of preschoolers below the poverty line, and about 10 percent of infants and toddlers in poverty, Connie Matthiessen reported in the State of American Philanthropy.

Key funders

The lion’s share of charitable giving for ECE comes from private foundations, including some of the nation’s biggest, such as the Gates Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The Packard and Heising-Simonsfoundations are also big givers in this space.

Giving alongside these multi-issue funders are some ECE-focused philanthropies such as the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, the Pritzker Children’s Initiative (which has made ECE a priority for decades), the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, and the Foundation for Child Development, which at 100 years old is the oldest grantmaking foundation in the nation with a sustained focus on young children.

Locally focused giving for ECE is significant. For example, the Lilly Endowmentsupports ECE in its focus area of Indiana, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation gives for ECE in Flint, Michigan. Community foundations often include ECE in their local portfolios.

Among major donors, Jeff Bezos is funding an initiative to create tuition-free Montessori preschools through the Bezos Day One Fund, and MacKenzie Scott has included some ECE funding in her vast giving. The Ballmer Group also supports ECE. And data from Candid shows there is significant giving for ECE by individual donors through donor-advised funds.

Corporate philanthropy has not tended to do too much for ECE, though there may be some growth in this area, especially in corporations’ child care support for employees, now that the pandemic has brought pressing attention to this issue.

New and notable

The Early Educator Investment Collaborative was created by eight prominent funders aiming to create a diverse, professionally trained and mentored, and fairly paid educator workforce.
The Trust for Learning is a new partnership among several small family foundations aiming to support expanded access to high-quality early childhood programs for communities of color and children from low-income households.
The pandemic has dramatically highlighted the importance of early childhood education, and prompted some shifts in the funding landscape.

Food for thought

“…the American child care system is deeply broken. It doesn’t just need incremental patches. It needs wholesale reinvention.” — Elliot Haspel, program officer at the Robins Foundation, here.

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