Early Childhood Development Grants is sponsored by W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation.

Provides grants to organizations supporting early childhood development initiatives across the United States.

W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation “Make the world a better place for this and future generations.

” W. Clement Stone “Make the world a better place for this and future generations. ” W.

Clement Stone The Foundation is dedicated to bringing about positive change in five major urban areas in which Foundation family trustees are affiliated – Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area and the states in which they are located — with a commitment to providing the educational and developmental opportunities that support equitable outcomes and enable all children and young people to fulfill their potential.

The Foundation awards scholarship grants to youth leadership organizations that are currently part of the Foundation’s youth development portfolio. Executive directors are able to use funds for purposes that they believe will most strengthen their own organizational impact, flowing from their leadership and professional growth.

Grantee Convenings on Equity Annually, the Foundation staff and grantee leaders from the three portfolios and all funded geographies, in partnership with Dr. Sherri Killins-Stewart, co-design an annual convening focused on racial equity. The convenings allow both the Foundation and grantees to forge a closer partnership to address the challenges of system wide inequities.

Mission-Related Investing The Foundation goes beyond grantmaking and uses the impact portion of its investment portfolio to help achieve the Foundation’s mission. Together with our advisors, we actively track the rapidly-growing field of impact investing, and continually re-examine our approach to make sure we are making the most of opportunities in a dynamic investment landscape.

Reflecting on Program, Policy, Research: A conversation with Diana Rauner Sara Slaughter, Executive Director of the W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation, invites outgoing Start Early President Diana Rauner to reflect on 15 years of leadership in early childhood in Illinois and nationally.

Drawing on Start Early’s direct work with young children, families, educators, and communities, and its distinctive approach connecting direct service, research, and policy, Diana shares timely and enduring principles for the field, including the importance of an abundance mindset, the long game required of funders and advocates, and the broad coalition needed to sustain meaningful progress for children and families.

Illinois business leaders want more funding for child care as facilities close and demand increases Illinois businesses are advocating for more funding for child care assistance as facilities close while demand for services remains high. ReadyNation Illinois, a nonprofit representing Illinois business leaders, reported Tuesday that Illinois is losing $6. 2 billion each year because of the child care crisis.

Parents are not able to be productive workers because they have to take care of their child instead, according to the report. Bloomington-Normal has recently seen child care facility closures even though demand is still high. The cost of running a child care facility has also increased, leading to increased prices for parents and making some places unaffordable for some families.

Development of CPS Safety Plan Can Serve as Model for Other School Districts: Study Nearly two years after Chicago Public Schools removed police officers from campuses and implemented a new holistic approach to school safety, officials believe that shift could serve as a replicable model for school districts across the country.

Those findings come from a new study from the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research and the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital, which examined the CPS process for removing school resource officers in 2024 and replacing them with a new Whole School Safety plan. Foundation to Co-host Webinar on Higher Education and Early Childhood Educators.

Higher education programs that prepare early childhood educators are at a critical inflection point as new policy and accountability pressures threaten the strength and sustainability of the early educator pipeline. On January 22 from 3:30–4:45 pm ET, AACTE, NAEYC, and the W. Clement & Jessie V.

Stone Foundation will co-host Education Bookends: Threats to Higher Education and the Impact on the Early Educator Pipeline and Profession, a timely webinar bringing together national leaders from higher education, philanthropy, and early childhood to examine what’s at stake.

New Poll: Most Chicagoans Unaware of 2027 School Board Transition; Strong Support for State Action on CPS Funding Kids First Chicago, Kids First Chicago Blog A new citywide poll commissioned by Kids First Chicago (K1C) reveals that while Chicagoans strongly support new State and City revenue options for Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the vast majority remain unaware of the most consequential governance change in CPS in decades: the transition to a fully elected 21-member Board of Education in 2027.

Foundation Grantee Publishes Massachusetts Student Opportunity Act Progress Report Foundation grantee, Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation published a comprehensive progress report of the Student Opportunity Act. The goals of the Student Opportunity Act were expansive, and the final bill included a range of education policy initiatives.

But above all else, the SOA aimed to dramatically increase the resources available for the highest need school districts across the state and create a data-driven structure to accurately assess how those resources were being used to close persistent disparities in student achievement.