Impact Fellows provided funding support to 13 states in 2022: Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia.
Our support went to strategic actions in 7 key areas:
- Voter Support – 11 states
- Legislative Lobbying – 12 states
- Electoral Campaign Advocacy – 10 states
- Paid Media – 10 states
- Deep Canvassing – 5 states
- Political Polling – 4 states
- Grassroots Mobilizing – 9 states
We measure the efficacy of our funding by analyzing outcomes in our 4 Areas of Impact. Following are just some of their impressive highlights:
Area of Impact:
Increased pro-child and family political advocates and voters
Arizona Stood for Children
Stand for Children Arizona was a model for pro-child and family voter outreach in ’22. Their campaign focused on a bloc of 150,000 moderate voters with more than 1.2 million combined text messages, mailers, and digital messages to help sway the governor’s race, and another 1.3 million text messages that were sent to voters in key legislative races. Stand for Children Arizona’s election outreach staff contacted over 700,000 voters directly about legislative and governor races, encouraging them to vote for early education champions. Though the race was one of the most tightly contested in the nation, Arizona successfully elected a pro-child and family governor. In 2023, they will lobby hard to hold the new lawmakers accountable for expanding early childhood funding.
Overall Impact
- 12 states combined reached 39.6m voters through digital media and campaign events to support pro-early childhood/child care candidates
- 6 states combined got 21.4k people to take specific political actions: volunteered on campaign activities, called voters and elected officials, attended events, knocked on doors during election season
Area of Impact:
Increased pro-child and family champions, policies, and funding
Pennsylvania’s Continued Push
In 2022, Pennsylvania elected a Democratic governor, reached a 1 seat Republican majority in the Senate and a 1 seat Democratic majority in the House, following a groundswell of media coverage and record grassroots voting outreach. As a result, Children First Action Fund will retain their lobbyist and engage their grassroots army to pressure new lawmakers for: $100M for Pre-K/Head Start to increase pay to providers serving 36,000 children and $860M over 3 years to provide high quality care for 11,140 more infants/toddlers and 29,500 more children ages 3-5. In conversations with old and new lawmakers, Children First was told they have a much bigger likelihood of succeeding, given the changing politics and their relationships with the new leaders.
Overall Impact
- 10 states helped get a total of 215 pro-child and family candidates elected to office
- 13 states protected or added a total of $5.73B for young children and families
- IFAF invested $2.3M in the 13 states so the whopping ROI=22,490%
