SPRING 2024 EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION RFP
OVERALL PROGRAM GOAL & APPROACH
The Stranahan Foundation’s Early Childhood Education Strategy focuses on increasing access to high-quality early care and education for low-income children (birth to five) by investing in developing and retaining a high-quality, thriving early educator workforce.
CONTEXT & FUNDING OPPORTUNITY
The spring 2024 funding cycle will support organizations and projects that advance our Innovation and Proven Professional Development strategies. This cycle has up to $1.1 million in funding available and is focused on soliciting proposals for the following types of projects:
- Development, piloting, and refinement of new approaches for improving knowledge, skills, or practices or growing and sustaining a thriving workforce of early childhood professionals. Innovation requests must have the following:
- A clearly defined logic model and plan for evaluating implementation and outcomes related to classroom environments, teacher practices, and, ideally, child learning.
- Provide preliminary evidence to advance the applicant’s and Foundation’s understanding of “what works,” for whom, and under what conditions” by the end of the grant period.
- Have an intention to repeat or scale the innovative approach, if proven successful, to multiple early childhood settings or various geographies.
- Expansion or modifications to a clearly defined, proven professional development model enabling future expansion or implementation in a new childhood setting. Proven Professional Development requests must already have the following:
- Existing substantial evidence of positive outcomes for early childhood professionals, classroom environments, and, ideally, child learning. The Foundation defines “substantial” as consistent with the definitions of What Works Clearinghouse or ESSA Tier 1 or 2 evidence.
- Clear evidence of repeated, successful implementation in multiple early childhood settings or various geographies.
This cycle, we are particularly interested in approaches and models designed to 1) build early childhood professionals’ knowledge, skills, and classroom practices to support children’s behavioral and social-emotional health and/or 2) grow the pipeline of high-quality educators in early childhood settings. These were the most requested needs by more than 50+ early childhood providers in our summer 2023 Provider cycle.
Additional consideration will be given to proposals that demonstrate any of the following:
- A strong track record of working with early childhood education professionals to produce positive learning outcomes for young children, especially children from low-income families.
- A deep understanding of how race, ethnicity, language, socio-economic status, and other factors impact access to high-quality early childhood education and career opportunities for early childhood professionals.
- Organization leadership (board and staff) represent the communities most affected by disparities in early childhood outcomes.
- Provide an opportunity to expand, pilot, or develop promising early-stage ideas with a clear rationale for how time-limited funding will enable the proposal to reach its long-term goals.
- Potential to expand and deepen impact on early childhood professionals and young children after the proposed grant ends.
BUDGET & AWARDS
Applicants may request funding up to $300,0000 over three years. Applicants will be asked at the full proposal stage to submit a project budget that aligns with the project's scope, supports proposed activities, and connects those activities with line-item requests.
The Foundation anticipates awarding up to five grants as part of this funding cycle.
ELIGIBILITY & RESTRICTIONS
Eligibility
This call is open to local, state, and national U.S.-based nonprofit organizations, fiscally sponsored organizations, public school districts, and higher education institutions.
Additional organization-eligibility criteria include having a demonstrated:
- Commitment to serving early childhood providers and professionals whose student populations comprise at least 60% of children from low-income families.
- Understanding and track record of directly collaborating with families, communities, and the early childhood professionals they seek to impact.
- Organization capacity and leadership to execute the proposed work, ensure quality, and use data to inform continuous improvement.
Restrictions
We will not consider proposals that request funding from the Stranahan Foundation for:
- Ongoing program operations
- Scholarships or tuition assistance (this can be part of the larger project)
- Significant levels of participant incentives (i.e., stipends, gift cards, etc.)
- Ongoing or repeat funding for a project that the Stranahan Foundation has previously supported.
- Professional development projects that are primarily focused on impacting a single early childhood provider or staff internal to the applicant organization.
- > 10% indirect/overhead expenses
APPLICATION PROCESS
The application process will consist of three stages: a letter of interest (LOI), a full proposal, and a site visit. To help you prepare, an overview of the stages and application elements included in each stage is provided here.
PLEASE NOTE: Only complete applications or those containing all of the required documentation will be reviewed. Additionally, please check the timeline carefully. Applicants should plan to submit materials well before each deadline, as we will only accept applications submitted in the designated system.
CYCLE TIMELINE
HOW TO APPLY
To start the LOI process, click here.
PROSPECTIVE APPLICANT SUPPORT
Prospective applicants are encouraged to take advantage of the following opportunities for proposal support:
Question Period from November 28 to January 10: Our team will answer questions about this funding opportunity and the application process via our grants@stranahanfoundation.org email box. We ask that you please check the FAQ below before submitting your questions, as we will update this document in real-time.
Office Hours from November 28 to January 4: Prospective applicants can sign up for 20-minute calls with our program officer to discuss their ideas for submission and get feedback. To schedule a call, please email three date/time options to grants@stranahanfoundation.org. Please note that our staff is in the Eastern Time Zone, and our offices will be closed between Christmas and New Year’s Day. We apologize, given the high demand, we do not have any additional times available for verbal pre-submission chats.
REVIEW PROCESS
Our staff, early childhood consultant, and Early Childhood Committee will review all letters of interest and full proposal submissions. Reviewers will rate and comment on a variety of criteria. For more details about the individual criteria, click here.
REPORTING & EVALUATION EXPECTATIONS OF GRANTEES
As a guiding principle, the Stranahan Foundation expects only one grant report every 12 months. However, as a steward of the Foundation’s assets, we will occasionally institute more frequent reporting requirements and/or formal check-in cadence if the organization has a short operating history, limited financial assets, a complicated organizational structure, or the project is experimental or complex.
Finalists will also be expected to work collaboratively with their assigned program officer to develop a set of grant metrics that will be used for reporting.
Please have a look at the FAQs (at the bottom of the page) for specific information about the level of rigor we are looking for with your evaluation plan.
RESOURCES:
2023 Federal Poverty Guidelines
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
For a list of our most commonly asked questions, please click here.