Decades of research shows that afterschool programs help young people attend school more often, get better grades, and build skills like communication, teamwork, and problem solving. But for every child enrolled in an out-of-school-time program, three more would participate if one were available to them. Without public funding, a family’s income alone dictates whether a child can have access to these high-quality programs and other essential services.
Now, imagine a nation where all youth thrive because all communities maintain equitable, coordinated, and sustainable funding for out-of-school-time programs and services. That’s exactly what Elizabeth Gaines envisioned in 2018 when she founded Children’s Funding Project, a nonprofit organization that helps communities, states, and Native nations gain access to public funding to expand opportunities for children and youth.
The organization collaborates with local leaders and advocates to help them think differently about how cities, counties, and states fund the full set of experiences that young people need during their first two decades of life, what many in the sector refer to as “cradle to career.” It helps them understand the sources of funding available and develop customized financing solutions tailored to their needs.
We chatted with Gaines, who has almost three decades of experience working in youth advocacy, to learn more about the work Children’s Funding Project is doing, which is partly funded by Wallace. This interview was conducted over Zoom and has been edited for length and clarity.
Through all of those different experiences in the youth sector, I found that no one was focusing enough on moving more resources and money into those systems, and it always felt like it was a big elephant in the room that never got addressed.
Wallace Foundation: Can you talk about why you started Children’s Funding Project?
Elizabeth Gaines: My entire career has been focused on youth. I have done things in various capacities, starting with direct service, running youth programs, afterschool programs, doing advocacy in my home state in Missouri, and then moving to The Forum For Youth Investment, where we were really providing technical assistance to state leaders.
Through all of those different experiences in the youth sector, I found that no one was focusing enough on moving more resources and money into those systems, and it always felt like it was a big elephant in the room that never got addressed. I looked around and saw that on the national landscape, there wasn't really anyone laser focusing on the money that exists to support programs and services for children and youth. I said, "I guess it's me. I gotta do it.”
WF: Your organization officially incorporated as a nonprofit in 2019 and then months later the pandemic hit. How did that change what you had set out to do?
EG: We knew we were going to have to pivot and do something slightly new that we hadn't intended to, like so many people had to. We started diving into some of the funds that the federal government was starting to provide. We wrote a long guide to help share all of the flexibilities that were being made available to folks who are running programs for kids.
Then the bigger stimulus dollars started flowing. We did what we could to shine a light on what those were, making sense of them for people on the ground because people had questions. "How do you access these? Who are they going to? What are they for? How many dollars are there?” We developed a comprehensive tool that mapped out every state dollar, every county, every city, every school district, every higher ed institution, every tribe, the amount of money that was going to all of those entities that could be repurposed or was intended to be purposed for kids. It was a pretty massive undertaking.
WF: Clearly there was an increased demand for your services. How did you meet that demand? And were you thinking about sustainability?
EG: About three years ago, we started trying to lay out some advanced thinking. The ARPA funds were time-limited, so we wanted people to think about what they were spending before the pandemic. They had to know what the real costs of doing this work are. They had to know where new revenue can come from when these dollars go away.
We started calling that “strategic public financing.” This meant getting people to wrap their heads around being planful for current stuff that was going on, and then one and two years from now, where we're going to be. It really created a huge demand for what we were, just new on the scene, trying to do. We've had to scale pretty rapidly to meet that demand.
One of the things we realized is we were not going to be able to do a fiscal map and a cost model for every single state, county, city, tribe that wants it in this country. We thought, "Okay, this seems like work that's here to stay. How do we start building the capacity of folks in communities to do this work as a regular course of business? How can you have somebody in your community?" We now have a name for those. We're calling them “children's funding coordinators.” They are people that wake up every day thinking, "Okay, where are the current resources? Where do we need to be putting more money, and where can that money come from to meet our community’s goals for kids?”
When you actually price this stuff out, and you do what we call cost modeling, we find that what we've been asking for or "demanding" in budget processes is way less than what it actually costs to provide these services at quality and at scale.
WF: What other services does Children’s Funding Project provide for state and local leaders to help them sustain the investments they make with federal dollars?
EG: We put the information in front of policymakers and advocates so that it's real. We help people get comfortable saying the big number. When you actually price this stuff out, and you do what we call cost modeling, we find that what we've been asking for or "demanding" in budget processes is way less than what it actually costs to provide these services at quality and at scale. We shoot ourselves in the foot by not socializing the big number from the beginning. If we need $120 million to support an afterschool system in a state, why are we asking for $1.2 million dollars in the budget process? That doesn't make sense.
To get to that big number, we support state and community-level cost modeling and estimation. This can help people to get a handle on the true costs of implementing, maintaining, or expanding a youth program. Our team also supports a network of states and state partners who are trying to develop a consistent, standardized approach to fiscal mapping to support experiences for youth from cradle-to-career. We provide support for state and local fiscal mapping because we believe that as a nation we need to better understand what we are spending on our kids, so that we know what good looks like.
The other service that we offer is related to the revenue side of things. There is a very complex set of rules and authority in this country at the state and local levels. Each state is different. Each locality within each state can be different in terms of what is allowable. We help communities to do that state and local revenue research and assess what the possibilities are for generating new revenue.
Then, the last bit of work that we help folks to do is in understanding how to pursue ballot measures locally. We offer a boot camp, called Children’s Funding Institute, where we gather teams from cities and counties that have an interest in generating local revenue to support children. They learn all about the process of putting something on the ballot to generate new revenue that ultimately creates what we call a “voter-approved children’s fund.” After the institute, they receive support from Children’s Funding Project as part of a cohort of communities doing the same. Both the cohort and institute support communities that are at various stages in their campaign planning process. Some are just beginning to explore the idea while others are actively working toward a specific election as their target for bringing a proposal before voters.
The point is that this work isn't ever complete. It's getting pieces accomplished and then adding the other pieces on so that we can start to have a full system of support for children and youth from cradle to career.
WF: Could you share an example of a partner who has sustained and expanded the work they started with Children’s Funding Project?
EG: Each partner has different ways that they're continuing the work as time goes on, but San Antonio is a good example. We have been working with the UP partnership, which is their collective impact organization in San Antonio. We did a comprehensive fiscal mapping effort with them. We helped get a task force of people together in San Antonio to look across cradle to career and think about where there could be better alignment of existing funding. San Antonio also has San Antonio Pre-K, which is a voter-approved children's fund, and we supported San Antonio Pre-K in their reauthorization efforts. Now, the San Antonio community is trying to figure out how to pursue essentially a county-level charter amendment that would be 20 percent of the county budget to prioritize children and youth, which is big. Most cities and counties are not spending that kind of percent of their budget on young people.
The point is that this work isn't ever complete. It's getting pieces accomplished and then adding the other pieces on so that we can start to have a full system of support for children and youth from cradle to career. We've seen some other cities start to do that, too. Denver has Denver pre-K. Now, they're going for Denver afterschool. New Orleans has their broad youth master plan, and they were able to secure infant and toddler property tax millage. Now, they're thinking about how to fund the rest of the child and youth master plan.
WF: What barriers or challenges have you come across since you started the organization, and how are you overcoming them?
EG: In some ways, American Rescue Plan dollars have been, obviously, a blessing because, this nation would have been in a world of hurt had those dollars not come through. But also they have been an organizational challenge for us because we were attempting to get people to think about seeking out this new local funding strategy to build local infrastructure that cares about kids. Now, we've got to help people think about backfilling the big funding infusion from ARPA that people are already used to, which is a very different mindset than what we were initially setting out to do.
Also, one thing that has been incredibly challenging from where I sit, is the pendulum swinging. Build Back Better is a really good example. We're an organization that focuses on the state and local levels. Not because we don't think that the federal government has an incredibly huge role to play, but because we saw there was a gap. We wanted to make sure that folks were supporting people at the state and local level to take action, too.
When something like Build Back Better comes on the scene, and everybody runs over there as an advocate to focus on this strategy and this one level of government, it creates ripple effects and challenges. We're over here going, "Hey, don't forget about continuing to stay focused at the state and local level." Then Build Back Better doesn't pass, then everybody runs back over to us. It has been interesting to try to navigate the fickle nature of where the field's head is at any given moment.
WF: What are you looking forward to achieving in the next few years and beyond?
EG: We’re aiming to see 13 million children and youth grow up in communities with dedicated public funding for kids’ services. We're at about 8 million children who live in a community that voted to tax themselves to pay for children’s services. We think there is something to that—knowing your community cares enough to vote for its children.
Another of our goals is to support the development of fiscal data infrastructure in 50 percent of the nation. This means a state or a locality has a person, or they've got a recurring fiscal mapping effort, or they've got a really good handle on true costs. I’d say we’re close to 30 percent now.
We want to train 1,000 professionals. Of course, the children's funding coordinators are part of that. Also, people who come to the boot camp or people who take our courses on how to do fiscal mapping and how to do cost modeling. We're basically trying to build a small field of study around this public financing work. We're probably at about 700 professionals right now.
We also want to help communities and states secure $2 billion in new recurring dollars for kids. In our first six years, I'd say, we were able to help with about $1 billion in recurring dollars that are happening in communities. We think we can get to $2 billion total in new funding.
We know that this is a nation of abundance. We know supporting our children should be seen as a public good. We are strong believers in "what gets budgeted gets done" and local voters of all stripes remind us of that as we do our work.
