Full Dreams Ahead (COPY)

Imagine what would be possible if we shift from the current paradigm of mission chasing money to money fueling mission. 

That question is at the core of our latest report, The 2Gen Investment Case: Making the Most of Capital in All Its Forms. The report documents a unifying success story that shows how when we galvanize and focus financial resources, we can go from pilot capital to long-term, system-shifting capital. It is — in clear, simple terms — a proof point illustrating how a new mindset and approach can change the trajectory for millions of families. 

As more communities and states embrace 2Gen approaches, we can expect the financial capital dedicated to 2Gen approaches to grow from the current estimate of $500 million to over $1 billion. 

The report findings make a case for other good ideas ready for a quantum leap forward, informed by data and science, lived experience and expertise, and insights from on-the-ground innovation and best practice. Together, we can shape and strengthen the political readiness and will for an exponential increase in investments that can make improving the well-being of children and families one of our greatest achievements. 

We need to ask simple, but essential, questions: 

• Does the funding model build or break social capital?
• Does it incentivize cross-system collaboration? 
• Does it allow us to track outcomes for both children and the adults in their lives?

1. Align capital to new ways of thinking.
For 2Gen, this means focusing resources on the earliest years and following new systems thinking, not old systems tinkering.

2. Tap philanthropic and public funding streams and create buy-in at the onset.
Philanthropic capital proves models worth trying, and government funding gives new models the reach to make the difference. For long-term sustainability and scale, efforts must attract both kinds of capital from the start and not as an afterthought.

3. Focus resources to incentivize services and systems to streamline and link existing programs and policies for big payoffs without starting new programs.
A big part of the 2Gen approach has been linking programs for parents with programs for children to unite families instead of creating silos within them. Applying a 2Gen child and adult outcome framework is a proven, productive, and pragmatic organizing tool that provides a clear family framework — offering population-level outcomes that can feel distant or daunting and avoiding the disconnected output and activity trap.

4. Invest “patient capital” that gives room for growth.
For 2Gen to be embedded at the local, state, and federal level, we needed to grow and support a field of practitioners, policymakers, researchers, caregivers, and parents. It took time for this field to modernize, build relationships, and mature as reimagined systems took hold. We have needed capital throughout each phase to move innovations from idea to impact.

5. Engage in participatory grantmaking and investments that involve families as co-equals. Engaging parents as co-designers and not just program recipients is a critical mindset shift and practice. We have developed new methodologies and funding models to demonstrate how involving parents and caregivers in program design, implementation, and evaluation improves funding strategies, results, and relationships. By investing financial resources with an intentional commitment to human and intellectual capital, we can show participatory grantmaking in action along with its results.

6. Fund inter-sector and interagency collaboration with the express purpose of serving whole families, not just parts of them. By investing in mission-aligned public sector leaders at important levers of change, like those working in health and human services, we can build on front-edge state efforts like Washington state’s Poverty Reduction Initiative and Task Force, which was sparked by Department of Social and Health Services leadership. From the beginning, state agency leaders successfully built political will; ensured cross-agency buy-in; and created and funded new models, structures, and processes to embed racial and economic equity, lived experience, and community engagement. They ultimately steered more than $1 billion in funding informed by 2Gen approaches to child and family well-being. We have an opportunity to shift from traditional models of public-private partnership to future-forward community-public-private partnerships with a clear focus on intergenerational family prosperity and well-being.

7. Create more streamlined and agile evaluation capacity that measures interconnectivity, tracks multiple contributions, and applies real-time learning to improve outcomes and processes for strong case-making.
With technology advances, we can measure impact like never before. It is essential to build on existing case studies with data and apply new rapid-cycle evaluation tools, lived experience, and technology. Strong numbers attract strong capital streams.

These insights offer keys to unlock the trillion-dollar sleeping giant that is the public health and human services sector and lay a foundation for a new community-public-private partnership model. While The 2Gen Investment Case documents $273 million in seven state-level 2Gen efforts to align workforce and training services with early care and education services, this is just the beginning. We look forward to seeing how these insights shape what is possible across other systems and sectors.

This piece has been excerpted from  The 2Gen Investment Case: Making the Most of Capital in All Its Forms. The full report will be available Spring 2025 at ascend.aspeninstitute.org.