June Newsletter

Crowd at 2025 Children's Funding Institute opening reception.

2025 Children's Funding Institute Energizes Communities

The energy is palpable this week as teams from more than 40 communities in 16 states join us in King County, WA, for our 2025 Children’s Funding Institute—our biennial training event for communities interested in securing local dedicated funding for kids through a ballot measure. Since 2019, nearly 500 people have attended our institutes and 11 community teams have successfully created voter-approved children’s funds that collectively generate $542 million annually for kids.

Learn About the Institute

What's New

Protect Federal Funding for Kids in Your State

With billions of dollars in federal budget cuts looming, advocates can now see how the proposed cuts will affect the children and youth in their states by searching our updated Federal Funding Streams for Children and Youth Services database, which now organizes federal funding by state.

Explore the Database

Small child gazing off in front of a graph chart.

Getting Real About the True Costs of Child Care

Our two new Cost Modeling 101 training courses, which include real-time coaching, teach local leaders and advocates how to assess the true costs of their child care goals for infants and toddlers and children from birth to age 13.

Explore Cost Modeling 101: Child Care

Explore Cost Modeling 101: Infant and Toddler Care

Child care provider showing a young kid a playing card.

In Case You Missed It

Big Tech Lawsuits Should Fund After-School Programs

Join our national coalition that is working to direct potential dollars from lawsuits against social media companies to after-school programs.

Learn More

Public Financing in Times of Uncertainty

Watch our latest webinar for strategies that states and communities can use to fund programs and services for kids in the current political climate.

Watch the Recording

Spotlight on Out-of-School Time

Summer break is here for kids across the country and many communities are once again facing challenges funding out-of-school time services. Despite the evidence that quality out-of-school time programs improve youth well-being, current proposed federal budget cuts threaten to eliminate critical sources of funding for summer programs. As the current federal budget proposal moves through Congress, we remain committed to helping states and communities explore a variety of sources of funding to support out-of-school time programs.

Our national coalition of advocates is actively working to direct potential dollars from social media company lawsuits to these historically underfunded programs. Meanwhile, in many states, communities can dedicate a portion of public tax revenue to support summer programs by using ballot measures to create voter-approved children’s funds. These are just a few of the sources of additional funding that advocates and leaders can pursue to ensure that all young people have the rewarding and engaging summertime break they deserve.