Last week, more than 100 participants representing 25 communities in 14 states participated in our 2022 Children’s Funding Institute, our third such event. This three-day boot camp offered  communities of all shapes and sizes the tools and expertise necessary to secure local dedicated funding for kids via ballot measure. The group included communities that have established voter-approved children’s funds, such as King County’s Best Starts for Kids; communities with a potential voter-approved children’s fund on an upcoming ballot, such as Yes for NOLA Kids; and communities just starting to learn what voter-approved children’s funds are.

In sessions with our staff and leading national experts, attendees learned how to assess the feasibility of their campaigns, take the steps necessary to place their effort on the ballot, and manage and administer a children’s fund after their measure passes. Here are our top five takeaways from the event:

1.  We’re part of a national movement.

As of March 2022, there are voter-approved children’s funds in 45 communities in 10 states. The oldest fund, the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County, was established in 1946, while the newest funds (in Alameda County, CA; Escambia County, FL; Leon County, FL; and Multnomah County, OR) were created in 2020. Despite being spread across time and geography—and having different purposes and pathways to establishment—the successes of these funds collectively serve as proof points and build support for the value of communitywide investment in our youngest residents.

Embracing your community’s place in this decades-long movement opens the door to the collective wisdom and support of your peers across the country and builds our nation’s constituency of voters who believe in investing in kids.

“Kids can’t do this themselves. They need adults who are securing resources for them,” says our CEO Elizabeth Gaines. “We’ve seen enough success at the local level that we need to be thinking about this as a locally grown children’s movement. … It’s by getting engaged where we live … that we will have a national children’s movement across the country.”

2. Successful movements intentionally engage local residents.

In fast-moving policy efforts, community engagement often gets pushed aside; but at this year’s institute we heard repeated stories about the value of sustained community engagement from ideation to campaign to implementation. Our panelists described the essential role their neighbors played in establishing their children’s funds—from volunteers collecting signatures to get the measure on the ballot to ensuring that an established children’s fund effectively serves the community it was intended to support to championing a children’s fund through its reauthorization. “Twenty years ago, the bulk of fund supporters were youth-serving organizations, nonprofit organizations, and a few political leaders. Today your coalition must resemble the broader community it plans to serve,” says institute presenter Todd Patterson, president of Public Progress, a government-relations firm that spearheads ballot initiatives for organizations.

3. Don’t let fear of failure stop you from trying!

Many stories we heard at this year’s institute involved major setbacks along the road to establishing a voter-approved children’s fund. These stories made it clear that a failure at the ballot box doesn’t doom your effort. “It is possible to [re]build your coalition, be stronger, and take another run at it,” says institute panelist Jim Keddy, executive director of Youth Forward in Sacramento. For instance, the Yes for NOLA Kids team in New Orleans talked about its work to rebuild after a failure at the ballot box in November 2020 and the team’s unwillingness to accept failure as an endpoint. (Yes for NOLA Kids will be back on the ballot April 30, 2022). In each case, teams that experienced a setback stressed that it’s important to analyze what went wrong, learn from it, and try again. “This does not happen very quickly. It’s years and years of relationships. Keep pushing forward and do not give up,” says Rochelle Wilcox, CEO, Wilcox Academy of Early Learning and an advocate with Yes for NOLA Kids.

4. Know your audience.

As our communications director likes to say, there is no “general public” when it comes to messaging. When a campaign operates on a shoestring budget, it’s crucial to maximize the impact of your messaging by (1) knowing who you need to reach and (2) how to customize your message to each unique audience. During the institute, political experts shared tips for identifying who campaigns should target as potential champions, while leaders from current and recent campaigns talked about ways to tailor key messages to specific audiences.

5. Have a vision for the future of your community.

A majority of American voters would pay higher taxes if the revenue generated were used to support programs and services that give all children a strong start in life. Despite our highly polarized political climate, American voters repeatedly demonstrate a willingness to vote optimistically. While it is tempting to focus on your community’s deficits or failures, especially in comparison to other communities that appear to do better, polling (and the lived experiences of people in the movement) indicate that your effort is better off building a coalition around a shared, hopeful vision of your community’s future. Even decades after establishment, funds like St. Lucie County, FL’s Children’s Services Council find it helpful to switch from messaging around kids who are “at risk” to a “kids at hope” framework when engaging their community. (For additional information about voters’ attitudes toward supporting funding for children and youth, check out the collection of resources from our national poll.)

Our 2022 institute demonstrated that each individual voter-approved children’s fund—and our larger national movement to prioritize funding for kids—stands on a foundation of small wins. One of the best ways to win over your community is to show how your proposed children’s fund aligns with and builds on what your community already has done. Have your elected officials allocated American Rescue Plan dollars to early childhood or put a small line item for youth mental health supports into the city budget? Educate the public about how your community implemented those funds effectively and the positive impacts they are making. Share how your proposed children’s fund will sustain the gains made by that investment for years to come. Help voters envision what it would look like to double or triple that investment. As our institute panelists and attendees demonstrated, just because you can’t do everything at once, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do something.

Olivia Allen is strategy director at Children’s Funding Project.