Children’s Funding Project is a nonprofit social impact organization that helps communities and states expand equitable opportunities for children and youth through strategic public financing. Through our hands-on technical assistance and collection of resources, we help advocates, policymakers, public agencies, and funders identify and align existing funding, generate new revenue, and implement strategies to administer funds in ways that maximize their impact.
Communities come to us with all levels of need and at all levels of readiness to tackle strategic finance planning. Consequently, we offer a range of services to help local and state leaders understand the multiple sources that fund programs for children and youth, equip advocates with the skills and resources to build support for children and youth services, and assist communities in planning their long-term funding needs and generating new and sustainable revenue sources. Our work focuses on the following areas (click on each section to expand):
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Since March 2020, the U.S. Congress has passed six major federal funding packages designed to help the nation recover from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, these packages dedicate $361 billion to children and youth nationwide. These funds offer an opportunity not seen since the New Deal to kick-start meaningful change for our children and youth. But policymakers, service providers, and advocates need guidance and support to make the most of these funds and to leverage this historic level of federal aid into a sustained and robust investment in our kids going forward.
We coach local and state leaders and advocates so they can
identify and access the federal relief funding available to their states and communities,
align those federal funds with local priorities and goals, and
build the capacity of leaders and agency staff to administer and manage federal funds themselves.
In addition to advising individual communities and states directly, we create national tools and resources to share information, creative solutions, and federal guidance with children- and youth-serving organizations and supporters more broadly. For example, The Cradle-to-Career Guide to Federal Relief Funding for Kids During and Beyond COVID-19 summarizes the six federal relief packages and explains how states and communities can use these new funds. Additionally, we are tracking the amount of funding that individual states and more than 100 localities will receive for children and youth services from the American Rescue Plan Act, the newest and largest federal COVID-19 relief package. This data will be available soon as a searchable web-based tool. In the coming months, we also will share how individual communities are using their new federal dollars. Finally, our ongoing work will track how the recent federal investments influence long-term local and state spending for children and youth services.
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Federal relief funds are only a start. If we genuinely want children and youth to thrive, rather than just survive, we must use the recent federal relief funding as a down payment on a longer-term and shared investment between federal, state, local, and private dollars. That means states and localities must develop strategic financing plans that plot out how they will sustain these initial investments in children and youth services during the next decade and beyond.
Our team helps state and local policymakers, agency staff, and advocates identify existing revenue sources, align current funding with their goals, and explore ways to generate new and sustained funds to support programs and services for children and youth. This work typically includes three parts:
Fiscal Mapping: We analyze the existing funding streams that support children- and youth-focused programs in a city, county, or state to map the multiple revenue sources currently available. Then we coach local leaders so they can conduct this type of budget inventory on their own to track where and how they allocate funds going forward.
Cost Modeling: We work with local leaders to estimate how much money they need to achieve their goals to identify the true cost of the services and support a community’s children need.
Identifying Innovative Financing Options: We investigate creative funding approaches and collaborate with local leaders to determine which options are legal and viable for generating new revenue in their locality. Our goal is to fill the gap between current investments (identified in the fiscal map) and target investments (identified in the cost model) to support children and youth. We make our research publicly available through our surveys, case studies, toolkits, webinars, and other resources to improve the state of children’s funding nationwide.
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Many localities decide they need a sustained, dedicated stream of public revenue to support their goals for children and youth. We have supported dozens of state and local teams nationwide in establishing voter-approved children’s funds—city or county revenue streams that voters elect to dedicate exclusively to providing children and youth with the resources and services that help them thrive. We help communities and states pursue and create these funds in the following ways:
Research available taxing options for a fund and advise advocates as they select their preferred approach.
Coach community leaders to craft a compelling case for earmarking the new fund to the needs of children and youth.
Build a coalition of supporters and facilitate decision-making among the group.
Conduct public opinion research and polling.
Initiate and manage a ballot measure campaign.
Draft ballot measure language and negotiate ballot measure questions and ordinances.
Advise local leaders on monitoring and maximizing the impact of their funds and distributing the resources equitably.
Additionally, through our Children’s Funding Institute, we provide training for community teams interested in establishing voter-approved children’s funds. Collectively, more than 85 cities and counties participated in our institutes in 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2022.