Interested in doing more to improve outcomes for young children?

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Here are four ways you can make an impact on Early Childhood Development in Bermuda. 

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1. Contribute to the Early Childhood Development Project and Research Fund at BCF 

If you care about early childhood development but do not have the time or resources to be involved in the way you would like, contribute to the Early Childhood Development Project and Research Fund (ECDPR). To date, the ECDPR Fund has been supported with contributions from the Hemera Foundation, the Gutteridge Family, the Bank of Bermuda Foundation and private individuals.  Your collective contributions to the ECPDR Fund go towards this work

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2. Create your own ECD Field of Interest or Designated Fund 

You can set up your own ECD Fund.  If you:

• Would like to make grants in the field of ECDPR

• Do not have the time or resources to conduct your own research, manage a grant application process or manage an ECD grantmaking programme

• Would like to review opportunities as they arise and perhaps even make grants to organisations in the early childhood development field more generally

Grants from your ECD Fund will go towards groups and causes working in the field.  You will receive information about grant opportunities.  BCF can manage an RFP process specific to your grantmaking areas of interest and provide you with a docket of grant applications for you to consider.  Or, BCF can make grants on your behalf, recognizing you as the funder.

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3. Commitment to Evaluating ECD Funding 

If you are already managing your grantmaking strategy and programme, your foundation or charitable giving committee can help the ECD effort by simply adding ‘participation in evaluation’ as a grant condition.  Almost all of us already attach a set of general terms and conditions to our grants.  In addition to the standard evaluation questions, which typically ask grantees to report on how our funds were spent, you can request a commitment up front for a grantee to participate in a future evaluation that measures the collective impact of ECD activities in Bermuda.  The Bermuda Community Foundation can provide you with some language to insert in your grant commitment letters for grantees working in the ECD field.

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4. Report on Your ECD Funding

Help us evaluate ECD philanthropic outcomes.  To assess the impact of funding for early childhood education, we will all have to track the grants we make.  Going forward, it will be important for all of us to keep a record of the types of grants we make to early childhood development initiatives, and to report on these grants as best we can.  Your responses to BCF surveys and other information gathering work is important!

 

To start a fund at the Bermuda Community Foundation, go to www.bcf.bm - “How to Give”.