The Bridgespan Group’s guide, Investing in Our Future: Critical Ways Philanthropy Can Help Every Young Child and Family Thrive, offers a clear, field-tested guidance for funders committed to ensuring that all children and families flourish in the earliest years. Funded by the Pritzker Children’s Initiative, Imaginable Futures, and the WK Kellogg Foundation, the guide highlights four high-impact opportunities for philanthropic investment and reinforces growing evidence that experiences from prenatal to age five profoundly shape lifelong health, learning, and economic mobility.

A decade after Bridgespan and the Pritzker Children’s Initiative published a landmark report on early childhood philanthropy, the field has made meaningful progress. Expanded investment, new research, and deeper implementation experience have sharpened the case for renewed attention—especially from funders in adjacent domains.

“Families across the country are struggling to provide the nurturing care they most want for their youngest children,” said Katherine Kaufmann, Bridgespan partner and co-author. “Funders active in early childhood can play a catalytic role not only with their own engagement but also by introducing peers from fields such as maternal health, K–12 education, economic mobility, and housing. Broadening the coalition is essential to ensuring all families have access to needed supports.”

Drawing on empirical research and insights from nonprofit leaders, funders, and community partners, the guide highlights the foundational conditions for healthy development—nurturing relationships, stable families, quality early learning, accessible health care, and economic security—and the persistent disparities that leave many families without these supports. The guide outlines four critical areas for philanthropic investment:

• Closing gaps in family supports, ensuring all families with young children can access evidence-based services tailored to their needs
• Nurturing community-led solutions for families with young children
• Building the chorus of supporters, cultivating broad-based support and a bench of influential champions for young children and their families
• Strengthening public investment and advancing smart policies so public systems can reliably support young children and families

Author: The Bridgespan Group

ECFC members/partner contributions:  Pritzker Children’s Initiative, Imaginable Futures, and the WK Kellogg Foundation