Statistics underscore the long-lasting impact of the earliest years of life. Children who have nurturing, high-quality experiences from birth through age five are 25% more likely to graduate high school, four times as likely to complete a bachelor’s degree or higher, and can earn 25% more in wages as an adult.
These are just a few of the facts included in “Investing in Our Future: Critical Ways Philanthropy Can Help Every Young Child and Family Thrive,” a new report by The Bridgespan Group detailing ways that philanthropy can support early childhood — an area that has long been overlooked and underfunded.
The report is an update of an earlier effort: a decade ago, Bridgespan and the Pritzker Children’s Initiative published “Achieving Kindergarten Readiness for All Our Children,” which concludes that an alarmingly high number of children from low-income families enter kindergarten not ready to learn, and points out opportunities for philanthropy to have an impact.
Also funded by the Pritzker Children’s Initiative as well as Imaginable Futures and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the new report contends that there has been significant improvement over the last decade: “Expanded private and public investment has driven progress and further research has sharpened the case.”
The authors go on to make that case through a holistic lens, arguing that quality early care isn’t just about child care and preschool: “Investing in the early years means supporting the ‘whole child’ and the ‘whole family’ — recognizing that children’s development is inseparable from the environments and relationships that surround them from pregnancy through the early school years.”
Crucially, the report also highlights that early childhood provides an entry point for philanthropy to improve the wellbeing not just of children, but of their families and communities, by addressing the affordability crisis — an issue that is becoming increasingly central to the political debate and one that philanthropy has long overlooked.
This is a reality that many American families confront every day as paychecks increasingly fail to keep pace with the rising cost of child care , as well as food, housing and healthcare — not to mention extras like dinner at a restaurant or a family vacation. As the field acknowledges the importance of affordability as an upstream determinant of early childhood wellbeing, a question going forward is whether more grantmakers will prioritize it, especially amid rampant federal cuts affecting the most vulnerable.
Funders confront increasing stress on families and federal cuts
Despite a note of optimism, the Bridgespan team acknowledges the many ways U.S. society is failing its youngest children and their families. Included in the report is December 2025 data compiled by the RAPID Survey Project, which tracks the experiences of a cross-section of families in the U.S. and illustrates that failure: 38% of families with children under age six experienced difficulty meeting one or more basic needs; 74% of parents of children under age six experienced emotional distress; and 75% of parents of children under age six reported observing emotional distress in their children.
At the same time, if you set out to design policies intended to make matters worse for families with young children, you could hardly do better than the Trump administration and its Republican allies in 2025. Cuts to Medicaid and food assistance included in the GOP’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” threats to Head Start, attempts to freeze funding for child care and essential needs in blue states, the intimidation of immigrants, and other administration policies are adding to the distress that pervades daily life for many families.
“One of the things that has been so destabilizing to everybody that works in programs to support kids is this precariousness of funding that is seemingly arbitrary,” said Shannon Rudisill, the executive director of the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, an over-30-year-old nonpartisan organization that includes a long list of national, regional and local funders among its members, including prominent names like Ballmer, Annie E. Casey, Gates and Kellogg. The work gives the ECFC team a vantage point on the impact the Trump administration’s policies are having on programs that traditionally provide family supports.
“One day you have funding, the next day you don’t,” Rudisill said. “Today, it’s frozen. Tomorrow, it’s canceled. You can bring a lawsuit, but that takes time, and by the time it happens, the damage is done, in many cases. These moves don’t follow procedures, they don’t follow law and regulations. It’s a huge strain on the entire support system for families — there’s just no reliability in public infrastructure right now.”
“It’s not about politics or a specific party or candidate,” Rudisill added. “But I think I can safely say that, in terms of strengthening families, cutting children’s programs is the wrong direction, and canceling grants is the wrong direction, and communities scared to go to school is the wrong direction.”
In just one example, the administration attempted to freeze close to $10 billion in funding for child care and other social service funds in five states, all of them led by Democratic governors, after the fraud scandal in Minnesota. Courts have temporarily blocked the administration’s attempts to freeze child care funds. Meanwhile, the administration used the alleged fraud, which involved some Somali immigrants, as a pretext to send federal ICE agents to Minnesota, triggering months of unrest and violence. The fraud reports also unleashed “investigations” by right-wing influencers who attempted to enter Somali-run child care centers around the country, searching for evidence of fraud, spreading fear and disrupting operations.
“There have been many instances of providers being harassed by strangers that have not been reported in the news,” said Rudisill. “And families were already worried and afraid about ICE in their neighborhoods. So freezing the funding, if it happens, will be very bad and will delay payments to child care providers. But already, you have very scared people — providers, families and children.” Rudisill recently published a statement about the erosive effects of ICE’s actions titled “Children are Being Harmed. Our Responsibility is Clear.”
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Philanthropy backs early childhood bright spots
Despite the grim federal outlook right now, Rachel Schumacher likes to underscore the significant number of bright spots across the early child care landscape. Schumacher directs the Raising Child Care Fund, an ECFC project that pools philanthropic funding to support grassroots organizations working to promote equitable access to quality early childhood programs. Many of those organizations have worked on state and local campaigns to promote universal child care. New Mexico now has universal free child care (while the policy has broad support, there have been recent debates over funding). New York State is moving toward universal child care and New York City’s new mayor famously made it a prominent part of his political platform. In other examples, Connecticut recently adopted a universal child care program that will be free or discounted for all of the state’s families; it will go into effect in 2027. Washington, D.C. has a universal Pre-K program, and the mayor of San Francisco is developing plans for universal child care.
“We think all of this progress has potentially put people on notice that this is a really important affordability issue that has a lot of power,” Schumacher said. (A recent article in The New Republic called universal child care “a key plank in addressing the affordability crisis.”)
The new Bridgespan report also features early childhood programs around the country that, with support from philanthropy, provide examples of promising strategies. The report includes five case studies and highlights other approaches that are showing positive results, like programs that focus on maternal and infant care, and initiatives like Rx Kids and The Bridge Project that provide direct cash transfers to families.
The ECFC team shares the view that early childhood has to be addressed in a broader context. “I appreciate the way that field is moving toward understanding a whole ecosystem of support for families,” Rudisill said. “I think you see that mirrored in our work and the work of our members and the other foundations that we’re in relationship with: realizing that early care and education is important, but maternal healthcare and pediatric care and safe and stable housing are important, too.”
For Bridgespan’s Katherine Kaufmann, the ecosystem view creates tremendous opportunity — and a path forward for philanthropy. “There is growing attention to the plight of American families, particularly those that are expecting new babies and have children under five,” said Kaufmann, a partner at Bridgespan who co-leads its early childhood area of expertise. “Just the sheer fact that affordability is coming to the attention of public leadership, particularly those seeking office. All of this creates a moment — not only in our political debates, but in our public attention. That is exciting because it creates a window of an opportunity, and one for philanthropy to step right into.”
