It takes a village to raise a child, right? But if you don’t happen to have a village, helping a child grow and flourish requires a many-layered system of care—even before that child is born.
That is the idea driving Get Ready Guilford, a program launched in 2018 by the Duke Endowment, centered in Guilford County, North Carolina. Get Ready Guilford is “an ambitious 10-year strategy that uses large, targeted investments in early childhood to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty in Guilford County,” according to the funder’s website.
The Duke Endowment was built on the fortune of industrialist James Buchanan Duke, who founded the American Tobacco Company. Duke created the endowment in 1924 with $40 million; since 1925, it has awarded more than $4 billion in grants. The endowment focuses primarily on North and South Carolina, and supports programs benefiting higher education, healthcare, child services and rural church life, according to its website.
In 2017, the Duke Endowment announced a new strategic emphasis on early childhood. Pointing to cutting-edge discoveries in brain science, the endowment committed to addressing the needs of children ages 0 to 8. Its announcement said, “By attacking childhood challenges before they grow into adult-sized social problems, the endowment aims to spur better outcomes for families and communities across the Carolinas.”
In recent years, as our understanding of brain development has deepened, more funders have been investing in the earliest years of life as a way to tackle a number of social issues, including generational poverty. The list of other funders now active in this space is long, and includes the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, the Pritzker Children’s Initiative, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Foundation for Child Development, the Ballmer Group, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and the W.K.Kellogg Foundation, among others.
The Duke Endowment is putting this new emphasis into practice using a place-based grantmaking approach—that is, working at the community level to address local needs. The Duke Endowment is part of Blue Meridian Partners, an anti-poverty funder collaborative originally housed at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, now guided by the Bridgespan Group. Blue Meridian committed $32.5 million to support the first phase of the Get Ready Guilford initiative; the Duke Endowment contributed half of that investment.
“We are working with partners in Guilford County to create a set of supports and resources and tools—a community, really, that is saying that our children at the earliest stages are worthy of investment,” said Meka Sales, director of special initiatives at the Duke Endowment. “We need to be diverting resources to that age group and giving their families the social support they need to thrive.”
Support for communities in the South
Get Ready Guilford is one of several place-based projects Duke is supporting in an effort to revitalize local communities. The Renaissance West Community Initiative in Charlotte and the Northside Initiative in Spartanburg, South Carolina, offer housing, education, healthcare and supportive services. The Northside Initiative includes a new early learning center for infants, toddlers and preschoolers. “The comprehensive nature of place-based work—ranging from education to healthcare to parental support—is consistent with the latest research on improving well-being for children,” Sales said.
Get Ready Guilford is the endowment’s most ambitious place-based effort to date. Why Guilford County? The third most populous county in the state, Guilford was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and the Woolworth store in Greensboro was the site of a lunch counter sit-in to protest segregation in 1960. The region was hit hard when many textile and manufacturing jobs were exported overseas, and the 2008 financial crisis made matters worse. About half of the children in the county are born into poverty; only 45% of children are ready for kindergarten, and 47% are proficient at reading by third grade. North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad region, where Guilford County is located, has one of the worst rates of upward mobility in the country.
But statistics tell only part of the story. Even before the launch of Get Ready Guilford, the county had some strong early childhood programs in place. The organization Ready for School, Ready for Life (Ready Ready), located in Guilford County, was already working to create and coordinate early childhood services for families; the nonprofit has a long history in the region, and a demonstrated commitment to early childhood issues. The endowment partnered with Ready Ready to enhance and coordinate those programs and create a seamless system of care. The result was Get Ready Guilford.
With Ready Ready as the backbone organization, Get Ready Guilford integrates four evidence-based programs. Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits and support for pregnant and new mothers through their child’s second birthday. HealthySteps partners with pediatricians to offer child development information to families. Family Connects International, a Duke University program, provides home visits and ongoing family support services. Reach Out and Read promotes early literacy by partnering with pediatricians who offer books and reading support at well-child visits.
Get Ready Guilford has a long list of community partners, including Head Start, Early Head Start, and Guilford County Schools.
Guilford—and Beyond
From the start, the Duke Endowment and Blue Meridian Partners have recognized Get Ready Guilford’s potential as a project that can be scaled and replicated elsewhere. As the endowment’s website puts it, “Guilford’s diverse population and demographics make it an ideal place to scale and pattern solutions that could be applied in other communities across the state and nation.”
Get Ready Guilford is an example of the key role philanthropy can play by supporting innovative programs that have potential, but need a reliable source of funding to be put into practice and develop and refine over time. It’s far too early to say if Get Ready Guilford will be a success, and if more children in Guilford will be ready for kindergarten and reading proficiently by third grade. But research by expert James Heckman demonstrates that this comprehensive approach to early childhood is worth the investment in economic terms. More importantly, he has shown that it’s the best way to improve kids’ chances—not only in school, but for their entire lives.