The Bainum Family Foundation recently announced its largest investment ever: a $100 million, five-year commitment for early childhood education. With this funding, “the foundation is doubling down on its mission to create lasting systems change for the wellbeing of children and families,” according to the announcement.
This longstanding family foundation doesn’t tend to make splashy headlines like some of its larger peers in the philanthrosphere. Still, as my colleague Ade Adeniji made clear when he traced the foundation’s development over its 56-year history in an in-depth profile last month, Bainum has been growing and expanding its reach.
It all began with a rags-to-riches origin story. Stewart W. Bainum, born in 1919, hitchhiked from Ohio to Washington, D.C., with $3 in his pocket and a cardboard suitcase. He went on to build a fortune, first with his own plumbing business, then real estate, then elder care and hospitality. The multinational hospitality company he created, Choice Hotels International, is one of the largest hotel chains in the world. Young people have always been a focus for the family’s giving: Stewart Bainum and his wife established their philanthropy — originally called the College Foundation — in 1968. Today, the Bainum Family Foundation continues to evolve as younger generations assume larger roles in its operations.
We’re particularly interested in the Bainum Foundation’s commitment to early childhood education, an area that, despite increased philanthropic interest in recent years, could still benefit from more support, as IP detailed in our brief on early ed funding. Some funders, like the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, the Foundation for Child Development and Pritzker Children’s Initiative, for example, make early childhood a singular focus, while others, including the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and MacKenzie Scott include it among their funding priorities.
A number of funders, large and small (including Bainum), back the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, and others support early educators through the Early Educator Investment Collaborative.
Youth has long been a priority for the Bainum Family Foundation, but in recent years, it has zeroed in specifically on very young children (although the foundation also continues to support several legacy projects).
“We’ve always been focused on children and families and communities, but about eight years ago, we narrowed the focus to early childhood education,” said Marica Cox Mitchell, the foundation’s director of early learning.
Why this shift? The foundation found — in its work with youth, its examination of the latest science and its own research, and feedback it received from the communities with which it works — that all roads lead back to early childhood. As Cox Mitchell put it, “Early childhood lays the foundation for lifelong learning.”
A sweet spot between practice and policy
It is impossible to explore the latest science on child development without being astonished and dismayed that the U.S. doesn’t do a better job providing quality care for very young children. Research demonstrates that infant brains are rapidly growing information sponges and that early experiences shape an individual’s development into adulthood. We also know that quality early care has a huge impact on that development, yet our disorganized, haphazard, costly and underfunded early care system leaves far too many children behind.
The Bainum Family Foundation is addressing this issue from several directions. It supports organizations that provide direct early services, as well as a number that advocate for policy change. In terms of direct services, Bainum supports what it calls “practice partners” that provide affordable, quality early care (see a list of Bainum practice partners).
Bainum also supports organizations that advocate, engage in research and provide public education to create a more effective and equitable early childhood education system. These “policy partners” include organizations with local, state and national reach. National partners include, for example, the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, the Council for Strong America, and the National Association for the Education of Young Children. (see a list of the foundation’s policy partners.)
Cox Mitchell underscored the foundation’s intention to encourage a cross-fertilization between the two groups of partners, with direct service and policy partners supporting each other and sharing ideas.
“I think what’s really critical to our work is the intentional collaboration between the two,” she said. “We want to ensure that our direct service partners are engaged in advocacy conversations and helping define the policy agenda. And we support our policy partners to ensure that they’re making room at the policy and advocacy table to include proximate perspectives of early childhood educators and families. The sweet spot is that intentional collaboration, flattening the hierarchy between research, policy and practice.”
Making the ideal real
The Bainum Foundation has also created its own early childhood education learning lab of sorts. WeVision EarlyEd is a Washington, D.C.-based initiative that works with families, early educators and administrators, and advocates to collect data and develop ideas. The goal is to create a model of what early childhood education could and should look like, or as the website says, to “generate equitable and practical solutions that make the ideal vision of child care in America real.”
“We have to navigate the system that we currently have and we support our partners doing that, but WeVision EarlyEd allows us to lean into systems change,” Cox Mitchell said. “The goal is to not just reimagine the system, but earmark funding and time and resources to ask the important question: What if this childcare system was designed in a completely different way? — while making sure that that the child care ideal is defined by those who are most proximate: early childhood education professionals and families.”
This recalls other cases where foundations have built out their own in-house or specially funded research arms — say in the hard sciences, as with the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute or the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus. HopeLab, started by the Omidyar Group, is another example: It calls itself “a social innovation lab and impact investor at the intersection of tech and youth mental health,” and receives backing from the Omidyars, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation and other partners. The Bainum Foundation’s efforts through WeVision EarlyEd also reflect foundations’ capacity to bring to bear their institutional knowledge in a given area not only through grantmaking, but also as research hubs in their own right.
On top of that, the Bainum Foundation is also seeking to support early educators and build the field’s professional pipeline. Bainum, along with four other partners, supports DC Early Educator Experience. This annual convening provides professional development, networking opportunities, and recognition for early educators.
Washington, D.C.’s pathbreaking Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund is considered a model by early care supporters around the country; when it was threatened during budget negotiations earlier this year, Bainum joined educators, families and other advocates fighting to save it. “Failure to continue this program erodes trust locally and nationally at a time when it is most needed. This is a vital program that must be protected from any cuts,” Cox Mitchell said in a statement. The fund survived, but faces cutbacks as budget details are being hammered out in D.C.
From naming problems to naming solutions
So what does the Bainum Family Foundation have planned for its additional $100 million early ed commitment over the next half-decade? Well, it’s looking to reinforce its ongoing work and expand its reach to additional regions (right now, the foundation’s work is focused on Washington, D.C., and Florida). The goal is to provide its partners the financial stability to continue and build on their work.
Bainum’s leaders have also gestured toward building the field of early ed funders. “Reimagining a system to support children and families requires giving those closest to the challenges the time and space they need to develop innovative solutions,” said David Daniels, Bainum’s president and CEO, when the new funding was announced. “I encourage other philanthropies to explore partner-centric approaches anchored on community feedback and directed by those closest to the work.”
Like Daniels, Marica Cox Mitchell believes philanthropy could be providing more support in the area of early childhood — support focused specifically on solutions.
“We can and should continue to raise awareness about the brokenness of the system and the ways in which the system is inequitable, ineffective and underfunded,” she said. “At the same time, we have sufficient research to help bring forth more solutions. Shifting away from naming the problem to naming those solutions and making those solutions real — I think that’s a unique role philanthropy can play.”
