Learning from Decades of Collective Action: the BUILD Initiative and Early Childhood Funders Collaborative

Did you know that the BUILD Initiative was ECFC’s first collective project?  Did you know that BUILD was initiated primarily by state-based funders who put their talent and funds together to create infrastructure for their state early childhood systems efforts?

As BUILD (20 years!) and ECFC (30 years!) celebrate milestone anniversaries, what can we learn from about how this effort started and how it has evolved?

On December 2, 2022, ECFC and the BUILD Initiative hosted a discussion to consider:

• Why funders initiated the idea that became BUILD (their goals, pathway to collaboration, growing pains);
• What growth in state EC systems change has happened over 20 years; and how BUILD catalyzed action for systems change.
• How equity evolved in the work;
• Philanthropic practices that helped the initiative grow.

Portia Kennel, former Senior Advisor at the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, and one of the Co-Founders of the Educare Learning Network will join us to moderated discussion with: Susan Hibbard, Executive Director, BUILD Initiative; Sherri Killins Stewart, Director of Systems Alignment and Integration, BUILD Initiative; Phyllis Glink, Executive Director, Irving Harris Foundation, and Sara Slaughter, Executive Director, W. Clement and Jessie V. Stone Foundation (an original BUILD funder partner at the Robert M. McCormick Foundation). [Speaker Bios]