Collaboration for Strengthening Early Childhood Education in New Mexico

“The Early Childhood Education and Care Department is addressing early childhood more as a system than as a series of discrete parts.” — Michael Weinberg, The Thornburg Foundation

Funders, advocates, and legislators join forces on early childhood reform

In the early 2010s, Garrett Thornburg decided that his foundation, The Thornburg Foundation, needed to change. It had been pursuing a traditional grantmaking strategy, donating about $1.3 million a year to about 35 organizations in New Mexico. But Thornburg wasn’t seeing broad, systemic change in the state. The foundation therefore hired Allan Oliver, a former director of cabinet affairs for Governor Bill Richardson, to take the organization in a new direction.

Thornburg challenged the team to rethink its approach—to address the root causes of New Mexico’s most intractable problems. Oliver led a comprehensive landscape analysis and in-depth research on several policy issues. This led to a focus on three strategic issue areas, one of which was early childhood (EC). The foundation also decided to embrace the need to support better policy and the importance of advocacy for achieving positive change across child and family-serving systems.

In 2014, Oliver hired Michael Weinberg to lead the foundation’s EC effort. Weinberg brought experience in both education (as a teacher and principal) and government (as a program evaluation manager for the New Mexico legislature). He developed a five-year plan for the EC initiative with metrics focused on access to quality programs, workforce development, and governance and finance.

One of his first steps was to convene a group of fellow state foundations in the EC field. The groups complemented each other—some were focused on the grassroots, some on particular regions of the state; one was a national foundation with a New Mexico program. The Early Childhood Funders Group eventually grew to eight members. The group made a point of starting gradually; the initial goal was simply for members to learn about each other and, where possible, coordinate grantmaking.

A key early decision was to invite government representatives to meetings. From the start, fiscal analysts from the legislature’s finance and education study committees were regular participants. This mix helped all parties better understand the overall EC landscape, the reforms that were needed, the players’ strengths, and how to move forward. For instance, analysts described needs they saw but that government couldn’t or wouldn’t fund. Philanthropists responded by funding several research and evaluation efforts. Meanwhile, funders could tell the government what they were learning. The government representatives used this information to develop recommendations for legislative action.

Legislators came to view the funders group as an objective, trusted resource. The group realized it could use this credibility to make the case for big actions on early childhood. It decided to test the waters by seeking more funding for the state’s home visiting program, which sends nurses to the homes of families with newborns for coaching and support. Several of the group’s members were already funding home visiting. It was well researched and had shown good outcomes, but it was serving only a small percentage of eligible families. And the state was interested in expanding the program.

Several legislators were already reliable champions of EC, but the group wanted to “build the bench,” as Weinberg says. So it offered tours of child care sites and arranged meetings with families, with the goal of “bringing programs alive” to legislators. Legislators visited an organization that provided home visiting services and met with a home visitor and a family that received services. Bipartisan interest ran high.

These efforts sparked the creation of an early childhood caucus in the legislature. The caucus remained open to input from the funders group. (The Thornburg Foundation consulted its lawyer to ensure that its role in supporting the caucus followed all legal requirements.) The relationship allowed the group to help set the agenda on EC reform, even as the caucus took leadership of the issue. The caucus would be instrumental in the future legislative wins.

Meanwhile, as these efforts were taking shape, the group was approached by The Alliance for Early Success, which had done successful work in Texas on K-12 funding by helping funders participate directly in advocacy and bringing in a wide array of allies. The Alliance offered to help the Early Childhood Funders Group use a similar approach in New Mexico in the early childhood sphere. The funders’ group was ready to make further inroads with lawmakers.

An early success on home visiting with a key strategy: unexpected messengers

In making the case for home visiting, the funders group brought in “unexpected messengers.” These were people or groups that legislators might not expect to support increased government spending. Legislators heard not only from pediatricians and parents, but also from member organizations of the Council for a Strong America. For instance, retired generals from its member group Mission Readiness argued that investing in EC was good for national defense; other member groups argued for investing in EC as a strategy for preventing crime and as a business strategy. EC advocates are often in the progressive camp. But these were conservative voices. They caught the attention of conservative legislators and moderate Democrats, as well as the Republican governor.

The funders group supported these unexpected messengers with small grants ($5,000 to $10,000) to cover their expenses. The messengers used their funding in varied ways. For instance, some used it for print materials to share with legislators or for travel to the capitol. The New Mexico Pediatric Association used its grant to bring in a consultant who trained doctors on how to talk to legislators—how to frame the issues, how to develop an “elevator speech.” Generation Justice used its grant to cover back-end support for a podcast for young people on EC issues.

In 2016, the legislature voted to increase funding for home visiting by $1.8 million dollars.

The funders group continued to use unexpected messengers over the years. Not every member participated every time, but in most years six of the eight made small grants ($5,000 to $10,000) that were pooled at the Santa Fe Community Foundation. With $50,000, they were able to make about five mini grants per year for the messengers.

The impact of these grants dwarfed their size. For instance, the additional $1.8 million in spending for home visiting leveraged an additional $25 million from Medicaid in 2017. Over time, these foundations collaborating on advocacy, making small grants, and supporting unexpected messengers paved the way for huge public investments to strengthen New Mexico’s EC system.

A business plan for early childhood leads to a new department

Excited by the home visiting win, EC advocates felt ready to press for continued funding increases. Yet they were hearing doubts. New Mexico’s early childhood system was spread among several agencies. Many legislators were reluctant to pour large sums into such a fragmented system. They were concerned about accountability and measurable results. They saw no overarching plan for how new funding would be spent.

The Early Childhood Funders Group decided to develop that plan. The group pooled its funding again and issued a request for proposals in October 2017, awarding a grant to Bellwether Education Partners to produce a business plan for expanding EC in New Mexico. The funders deliberately chose the term business plan to address the concerns of skeptical legislators. They selected Bellwether largely because it could effectively deploy business-oriented language.

One of Bellwether’s first charges was to assemble a steering committee. This committee included many members who could also speak that language: a former state treasurer, a former cabinet secretary for economic development, directors of key legislative committees, and the vice president of U.S. Bank in Albuquerque. The committee was involved as the plan was developed.

The plan, completed in May 2018, presented a set of “levers and strategies” for improving New Mexico’s early childhood system. That summer, the committee presented it to the legislature’s finance and education study committees.

The funders then made a second round of grants for community outreach. They funded the New Mexico Early Childhood Development Partnership to launch a vetting process that involved community groups, parents, and providers across the state. The process included large, open community gatherings and smaller community meetings, as well as interviews and hundreds of surveys. The feedback was broad and deep and informed advocates’ efforts during the legislative session, allowing them to confidently and accurately claim that the plan had broad support.

The plan was warmly received. It was praised for clearly spelling out the steps and sequence New Mexico would need to follow to strengthen its EC system. Conservatives appreciated that EC advocates were not simply asking for more funding but were also laying out a careful plan with metrics and accountability measures. One element was considered particularly useful: a cost calculator for estimating the costs and time frames of different assumptions on participation rates, salaries, and many other facets of the EC ecosystem.

The business plan did not advocate for a standalone early childhood department; rather, it presented a department as one of several options for better coordinating EC programs at the state level. But a new department soon emerged as the favored solution to the fragmentation and inefficiency of New Mexico’s existing EC services. A Republican legislator on the finance committee first proposed creating the standalone agency. This preference was confirmed in the community vetting process. A bill to create the department was introduced in the next legislative session, in January 2019. The newly elected governor also announced her support.

So did other unexpected messengers: the Albuquerque and Santa Fe Chambers of Commerce—groups not normally known to ask for more government involvement. The chambers had already become convinced of the need to be involved in EC reform and had been supporting incremental efforts to increase EC funding in New Mexico. But they eventually concluded that the various activities of EC needed to be joined in a department. The chambers threw their support to the bill, a decision that was very influential with legislators.

The bill passed almost unanimously, establishing the country’s fourth cabinet-level early childhood agency, the Early Childhood Education and Care Department. The department, which launched in 2020, was required to prepare and regularly update a strategic plan and detailed finance plans, specify outcomes, and provide more performance data.

A trust fund dedicated to early childhood

The new department meant there was more accountability for how money would be spent. As a result, this victory set the stage for additional funding increases.

“Had there not been a department, there would not have been the same appetite for aggressively growing funding for EC programs.”— Michael Weinberg

That growth initially came in the form of the Early Childhood Trust Fund, the nation’s first trust fund dedicated solely to early childhood, created by the legislature in 2020. New Mexico’s revenues are volatile because they depend on oil and gas prices. The trust fund helps manage the risk of boom-and-bust cycles. In good years, money is invested. In leaner times, the fund supplements the state’s EC budget.

Every year, the fund is required to distribute $30 million or 5 percent, whichever is more, to the early childhood department. In any year the fund is more than $600 million, it will kick out at least $30 million a year for EC.

The legislature seeded the trust fund with $300 million. At its creation in 2020, advocates hoped it might grow to $1 billion in ten years. But the initial growth has been much faster—in fact, it has been explosive: in 2021, the fund more than doubled, to $650 million, thanks to rebounding oil and gas sales and strong tax collections. In 2022 it reached $2.4 billion. This growth was so dramatic that in the 2022 legislative session a bill was introduced to take some of the money for other uses, which the EC community successfully fought.

Another proposed new source of early childhood funding: New Mexico’s land grant permanent fund

As these reforms were taking place, many EC advocates were also pressing for another long-term goal: increasing distributions for EC from the state’s land grant permanent fund. In early 2021, New Mexico’s legislature agreed.

The permanent fund was established as part of New Mexico’s statehood. It sets aside a percentage of revenue from the state’s mineral extraction and each year pays out 5% to public education and other activities. Under the proposed change, the yearly distribution would increase to 6%, with the additional 1% designated for EC. This increase would involve a change to the state’s constitution, so it will go on the ballot in fall 2022.

Over the last several years, the fund has grown aggressively from oil and gas revenue as well as market gains. It is currently over $20 billion, so 1 percent is more than $200 million—another massive increase for EC.

There has been pushback. Many conservatives and business interests feel that growth, not increased distributions, should remain the primary goal of the permanent fund, to prepare for a future when oil and gas revenues decline. They also argue that the explosive growth of the Early Childhood Trust Fund makes this change to the permanent fund unnecessary. Over all, the proposed change to the permanent fund has been more politically divisive than debates over the earlier reforms. Even within the funders group, opinions differed; as a result, the group mostly held back from this debate, focusing instead on the other reforms, where agreement and support were greater.

The impacts on New Mexico’s children: promising signs, but too soon to tell

For a state with such high levels of child poverty, the early childhood department and the influx of funding have been staggering. It will take time to evaluate their impacts on New Mexico’s children, and any early assessment will have to consider the impacts of COVID-19. The department launched in July 2020, just a few months after the pandemic took hold in the United States . As a result, it has essentially been in triage mode since it opened its doors, as it was confronted with a crisis that was particularly acute for the child care industry. Weinberg wonders if the crisis might have been even messier without a dedicated department to oversee New Mexico’s efforts.

Still, there are signs that one of the promises of the department—improved coordination among programs—is happening. Weinberg sees it addressing EC “more as a system than as a series of discrete parts.” For instance, on home visiting, the department is creating a centralized intake and referral process for addressing infrastructure needs. In light of the Medicaid expansion in the state, the department is considering ways to bring in more providers and make billing easier.

Lessons for early childhood reform

New Mexico’s experience offers several lessons for philanthropists, advocates, and lawmakers in other states seeking to strengthen or expand early childhood programming:

• Advocacy is appropriate for philanthropists. Foundations are often leery of advocacy or supporting policy best practices. But they are appropriate activities, as long as philanthropies proceed with care, in consultation with their legal counsel. Foundations should set firm boundaries, choose partners carefully, and pay close attention to lobbying and other restrictions.
• Collaboration is key. Collaboration amplifies all partners’ voices. It brings in new voices, experiences, and types of expertise. It gives the overall coalition more clout. In New Mexico, funders acting as a group had more weight than any single foundation could have marshaled. Coalitions made up of different types of partners can have more influence still.
• Include government from the start. The New Mexico funders group included government officials in its discussions from the outset. This strategy brings in much-needed expertise while paving the way for buy-in later as policies are being debated and voted on.
• Use unexpected messengers. Early childhood advocates often lean progressive and sometimes have trouble catching the ear of conservative decision makers. Unexpected messengers not only get policy makers’ attention, but they can also be extremely influential, as was the case with the chambers of commerce. In addition, their presence in the mix of supporters signals to policy makers that a proposed reform has broad backing.
• Stress bipartisan support. Bipartisan support helps to pass reforms in the first place, then helps ensure that the reforms last.
• Be flexible. Prepare to adapt. Assume that things will change—they will—and keep an open mind. For instance, before or during the legislative session, the landscape may shift. Grantees’ needs may shift, so funders must be prepared. Be open to varied solutions, as the New Mexico funders group was. When the group came together, members were not seeking the creation of the early childhood department; their goal was broader, to help address the state’s EC crisis. But as the need for the department became clear, the group was able to adapt its efforts toward securing it.

Capita thanks Education Policy Officer Michael Weinberg of the Thornburg Foundation for his time and help in preparing this case study.