First Children’s Finance CI Report – Final

What has been most instrumenta to your progress?

The overall goal of our grant funding was to improve the Greater Than MN Project process, increase its impact by improving the community engagement process design, and expand its presence in rural North Dakota and Minnesota. As the project moved from a pilot phase to a program, it was renamed the Rural Child Care Innovation Program (RCCIP). Several improvements had significant impact on communities: 1) the implementation of an application process required communities to demonstrate their willingness to participate in the process and to garner local leadership to champion the process, 2) recruitment of a diverse Core Team of local leaders and onboarding them to the process increased their capacity to lead innovation over time, 3) moving communities beyond studying the child care shortage through an improved, supported implementation process began to result in new child care slots, new community partnerships and the investment of local resources into child care.

In Phase 1, FCF learned a great deal about how to effectively work across an entire state with limited staff capacity. FCF created internal financial models for the costs of delivering Business Leadership Cohorts and the RCCIP program in each region of the state, ensuring that we have budgeted and obtained an appropriate level of funding to sustain our work and deliver on our promised outcomes. As interest in the RCCIP has grown, we experienced an increased demand to add new communities to the project. In July 2017, FCF opened an application round for 4 communities to join the RCCIP, and we received 17 applications for the 4 slots. In 2015, FCF added two Business Development Specialists to work on the RCCIP, and the team has recently expanded again to add another 2 Business Development Specialists. This increased capacity has enabled us to adequately serve rural communities with more staff.

Throughout the Phase 2 redesign, FCF has identified alternative ways for communities to access the RCCIP project. In many cases, communities don’t need the entire community engagement process, but need technical assistance regarding child care licensing or program financial modeling. FCF has developed affordable consulting packages, increasing access to specific technical assistance, and diversifying FCF’s earned revenue prospects. FCF continues to share lessons learned from the RCCIP at conferences, state and national webinars and community meetings to encourage communities to reframe child care as a rural economic development strategy.

Key lessons learned

FCF continues to be challenged by demand for the RCCIP, as well as consultation and technical assistance for rural communities. Although the team has expanded in size, FCF still needs to explore ways to deliver these services by adding capacity across North Dakota and Minnesota.

As mentioned in the midterm report, one the stark differences between the two states is the amount of public funding dedicated to child care and early childhood. The public funding conversation in Minnesota has resulted in communities feeling empowered to demand solutions for the rural child care crisis. There was an unprecedented amount of debate during the legislative session, and local media, the private sector and local governments were raising concerns about the impact of child care shortages on the rural economy. Because North Dakota has not historically funding child care or early education in systemic or adequate way, it was a ‘harder sell’ for communities. All the same factors exist: the economy suffers when child care is in short supply. However, there is not a statewide awareness of the importance of this issue, and our work in ND was slower as a result.

FCF developed strong relationships with the USDA office in Bismarck, ND, and collaborated to host a child care conference in December 2018. The USDA was a strong proponent of our initiative, and continually refers communities and child care businesses to FCF for inclusion in the RCCIP, for financing, and for technical assistance. FCF provided professional development to USDA staff so they could learn more about business models that are sustainable and impactful in rural communities. Developing a partnership with the USDA proved beneficial, as we could communicate directly with their field staff across the state and share resources and knowledge about our aligned work.

Reflections on the community innovation process

The Community Innovative Breakthrough was the most related to our work completed through the grant term. Throughout the two years, FCF partnered with 9 communities to develop innovative solutions that would result in an increase in child care slots, and local investment of resources into new and existing child care businesses. Each of the 9 communities approached the issue with different ideas, but worked on implementing ideas that could make a difference.

At the conclusion of 2017, FCF had assisted in the creation of 533 new child care slots. The timeline for the creation of new licensed child care slots can vary, and often extends to a 24 month (or longer) timeline. Although FCF has counted 533 new slots, many more remain the development pipeline. As financing and partnerships are established, we anticipate that number of child care slots to increase. Through our community engagement process, we educated 583 community members about the realities of the child care model and shared strategies that they could use to support new and existing child care through investment, co-location and community partnerships.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

The RCCIP if very closely aligned to the Community Innovation model used by the Bush Foundation. If there were was an element to describe, it would be the community outreach and education FCF is able to provide community stakeholders. Throughout the facilitated process, FCF diligently trains Core Team members to understand the complexities of the child care business model, and to advocate for right-sized, sustainable solutions. FCF also frames child care as an economic development strategy, and abandons the use of moral arguments. This combination of education, advocacy and messaging creates an environment hospitable for child care partnerships with the private sectors, schools and local government. Although we may be directly involved in the development of new slots in an RCCIP community, we have begun to identify another trend. It seems that the RCCIP creates an awareness of the importance of child care care in a community; for example, in Itasca County, FCF has identified that new child care slots increased by 20% in the 6 months after the Town Hall. Even when FCF is not directly responsible for assistance, it appears that the RCCIP creates an awareness in a community.

Progress toward an innovation

First Children’s Finance is much closer to breakthroughs than when we started the grant term. Over the past 4 years (including a previous two-year CI grant), FCF has partnered with 20 communities. We are beginning to see the results of our early initiatives: the child care supply typically increases long after the RCCIP ends, and sometimes even after grant funding ends. We will continue to track progress, local resources invested, and additional slots created.

As we exapnded RCCIP to ND, we gained valuable insight into how to leverage licensed group care and cooperatives to impact supply.

Our initiative has been helpful in advocating for additional resources for child care supply at the Minnesota Legislature. For the first time in history, the Minnesota DEED received a legislative allocation to provide grants directly to rural Minnesota communities who were building facilities for child care programs that would result in new slots. The impact and effectiveness of the RCCIP allowed FCF to obtain additional funding from Minnesota Department of Human Services for Fiscal Year 18 and Fiscal Year 19, increasing the sustainability of this work from a systems perspective.

What it will take to reach an innovation?

What’s next?

As mentioned above, FCF received funding from MN DHS to continue and expand this work in rural Minnesota. In October 2017, FCF hosted a national event, the ECE Business Collaboratory, that provided an opportunity for states to innovate to support child care businesses from a system framework. 12 states were selected to participate (including MN and ND), and FCF highlighted the RCCIP communtiy engagement process as a promising strategy to address child care deserts in rural communities. We continue to train community stakeholders about our recommendations for building a sustainable child care supply. To date, we have trained stakeholders in South Dakota and Nebraska, and have plans to submit proposals to national conferences highlighting our strategies.

In the future, we are interested in adapting the community engagement model to meet the needs of Native communities and encourage comprehensive business plans for all early childhood programs in tribal communities.

If you could do it all over again…

FCF has been engaged in the pilot and redesign of the Rural Child Care Innovation Program for over 5 years. The results and impact continue to grow as communities work to implement community-based solutions. We feel like the project is very stable, and producing positive outcomes for child care businesses, rural communities and child care deserts. If I could go back in time and give myself advice, it would be to move into an advocacy role sooner. We spend a significant amount of time improving the community engagement process, which was critical. In hindsight, I think we could have simultaneously been advocating for additional resources and support to rural communities at the same time. I am proud of what we have accomplished: securing new state funding for rural supply-building directly to communities was wonderful. But, I think we could have been communicating that message earlier in the project.

One last thought

Emmons County was selected into the RCCIP during the second year of this grant term. Their Core Team is actively working to establish a child care cooperative, leveraging the family group licensing model available in ND. FCF continues to partner with USDA and ND Early Learning leaders in Bismarck to advocate for additional funding to early childhood initiatives. As a result of our partnerships, the ND Child Care Administrator is implementing additional child care business supports.