This is a pivotal moment for the Partnership for America’s Children to release a new Strategy Roadmap. Our political landscape is more fractured and unpredictable than ever before, presenting both challenges and opportunities for child advocacy. Simultaneously, we are seeing a new generation of leaders step into key roles within many of our member organizations, including the Partnership.
Emerging from the pandemic, we have an unprecedented opportunity to build a better future for children. The disruptions of the past several years have laid bare the inequities facing kids and families, but they have also sparked new energy and innovation. Now is the time to reimagine what’s possible, creating an environment where children’s needs are prioritized and their voices amplified. Our new Strategy Roadmap reflects this moment of transformation, centering equity, power-building, and collaboration as the foundations for meaningful policy change.
In this context, more than 50 of our members, funders, staff, board members, and other stakeholders collaborated throughout 2023 to take a hard look at the Partnership, our operations, and the advocacy landscape. The result is a Strategy Roadmap that not only reflects our roots as a national capacity-building peer network for child advocates but also reimagines how we achieve transformative policy change for children and families. With equity and power-building at the core, we’re rethinking everything—from our funding model to capacity-building strategies and the ways we advocate collectively.
Doubling Down on Support for Child Advocacy Organizations
In this critical moment, we can’t afford for children’s issues to take a backseat. The Partnership network is committed to keeping the voices that champion children front and center in state capitols, local councils, and other decision-making spaces—standing alongside those most impacted, including parents, youth, and grassroots organizations. This means we must all adapt and innovate, and our Strategy Roadmap provides a clear direction for how the Partnership intends to support child advocates in meeting that challenge.
Becoming a Strategic Partner for Funders Invested in Transformative Policy
We are also redefining the Partnership’s role as a philanthropic intermediary, transforming into a strategic partner that helps funders maximize their impact on kids and families through public policy change. Our unique position allows us to guide funders in making informed investments that align with the needs of advocates and the communities they serve. We are focused on ensuring that resources are directed toward the most pressing issues, as identified by advocates and the people most affected, and how to resource and support those change that delivers greater results.
Committing to Responsive Advocacy for Stronger Communities
Equity and power-building are foundational to our programming. Throughout the strategic planning process, we asked our stakeholders how we could better support advocates in operationalizing their own commitments to center equity, build community power, and transform systems. We learned that investing in child advocacy differently was crucial. In response, we will be streamlining our grant-making process. We are also leaning toward strategically pairing funding with cohort-based technical assistance from experts, including those with lived experience.
In our policy and advocacy hub, we’re not just sharing successful policy models—we’re equipping advocates with the tools to answer key questions: How do we get there? Who needs to be at the table? And have we considered the long-term impact on communities? For us, it’s not just about winning policy change but about how we win—ensuring that the process aligns with our values and strengthens communities.
From vision to action
When I joined the Partnership in August 2023, we were in the early stages of this strategic planning journey. I shared a vision for strengthening the child advocacy movement, and in many ways, the Strategy Roadmap provides a blueprint for realizing that vision.
Achieving greater equity is an ongoing, iterative process. As we move from planning to action, we will pilot new approaches to funding child advocacy, provide technical assistance, leverage expertise among child advocates, and build power while evaluating and refining along the way. This work requires real commitment, and I am deeply grateful to our members, Board, staff, funders, and advocacy partners for being part of this journey.
