PLATINUM2024

Start Early

aka Ounce of Prevention Fund   |   Chicago, IL   |  https://www.startearly.org/

Mission

Start Early advances quality early learning for families with children, before birth through their earliest years, to help close the opportunity gap.

Ruling year info

1982

Principal Officer

Ms. Diana Mendley Rauner

Main address

33 West Monroe Street Suite 1200

Chicago, IL 60603 USA

Show more contact info

Formerly known as

Ounce of Prevention Fund

EIN

36-3186328

NTEE code info

Kindergarten, Nursery Schools, Preschool, Early Admissions (B21)

Alliance/Advocacy Organizations (B01)

Family Services (P40)

IRS filing requirement

This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.

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Communication

Programs and results

What we aim to solve

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Start Early advances quality early learning for families with children, before birth through their earliest years, to help close the opportunity gap. For 40 years, Start Early has made a significant impact on hundreds of thousands of children and families and the communities in which they live. With a focus on the children that are most vulnerable and least served, Start Early works for a future where every child in the U.S. has equitable opportunity to reach their full potential to thrive in school and in life. With five and a half million young children currently living in poverty in America, we work tirelessly to ensure that all children and families receive the highest quality services and supports during the most formative years of development from birth to age five.

Our programs

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?

Start Early

At Start Early, we work directly with children and families, support and train the early childhood workforce, and partner at the local, state, and federal levels to ensure policies put families first.

Through training and partnerships, we bring quality early learning and care to under-resourced communities across the country.

We provide early childhood development services to low-income children and families in Chicago's Grand Boulevard community and through our statewide network of voluntary home visiting programs; offer specialized training to professionals working in community agencies throughout Illinois; conduct research to understand what works (and what doesn't work) when helping families; share lessons learned with the early childhood field; and advocate for public policy changes that better serve the needs of children and families in Illinois and across the country.

Population(s) Served
Infants and toddlers

Where we work

Our results

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.

Number of Early Childhood Education Professionals Trained per Year

This metric is no longer tracked.
Totals By Year
Population(s) Served

Adults

Related Program

Start Early

Type of Metric

Output - describing our activities and reach

Direction of Success

Increasing

Context Notes

Those trained include teachers and school support staff, home visitors and doulas, and early childhood center leaders/administrators.

Program Expense by Year (in USD)

This metric is no longer tracked.
Totals By Year
Population(s) Served

Infants and toddlers, Families, Economically disadvantaged people

Related Program

Start Early

Type of Metric

Input - describing resources we use

Direction of Success

Increasing

Context Notes

On average, our program expenses account for 86% of our overall expenses over the last seven years. (FY17: 85%)

Goals & Strategy

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.

Charting impact

Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.

Start Early advances quality early learning for families with children, before birth through their earliest years, to help close the opportunity gap.

For 40 years, Start Early has made a significant impact on hundreds of thousands of children and families and the communities in which they live. With a focus on the children that are most vulnerable and least served, Start Early works for a future where every child in the U.S. has equitable opportunity to reach their full potential to thrive in school and in life. With five and a half million young children currently living in poverty in America, we work tirelessly to ensure that all children and families receive the highest quality services and supports during the most formative years of development from birth to age five.

Start Early runs programs in support of children and families, provides professional development tools and trainings to scale best practices within the field, innovates programs for continuous quality improvement and advocates for public policies that ensure access to quality programs for all children.

Our early childhood programs support each aspect of a child’s development, from prenatal to age 5. We have created proven models and spurred improvements to boost program quality across states and at the national level, ensuring that more children have access to the programs best suited for their future success.

We explore the latest science about early childhood education and translate those theories to the ‘real world’ of our programs, and we rigorously evaluate our programs to collect information that will help us improve our models. Start Early shares its findings with policymakers to encourage them to strengthen early childhood programs in their communities.

Start Early is well positioned to deliver the highest quality scalable professional development solutions and systems-building work for the early learning field. Start Early has research and innovation teams, state and national policy teams, and sophisticated marketing capacity that allows us to stay on the cutting edge of both content creation and content delivery. We have built networks of partners across the nation that allow us to leverage our resources more effectively and share in the advances our peers pioneer.

We work with early childhood leaders, instructors, and advocates across the country, in addition to keeping close relationships with legislatures in the places we serve directly. At the federal level, we have deep, positive relationships through our work at the First Five Years Fund with both major parties and many independents; our “middle way" approach to advocacy helps to ensure that early childhood education and care always get a hearing in the halls of power.

Start Early has established a national platform and program, policy and research networks, based on our decades of fieldwork and service to families in Illinois. With the addition of our policy arm at First Five Years Fund, expansion of our internal capacities in marketing, innovations and development, and a rigorous program of research and ongoing program evaluation, Start Early is poised to become the premier provider of scalable solutions to advance the quality of early childhood education across the country.

The next step for our organization is to take the amazing resources we are piloting here in our home state and with our many regional research partners and bring them to the greater market; it is our goal to make best practices in home visiting, center-based care and education and policy/advocacy available to field leaders and professionals across the nation in the next several years, improving early childhood services and outcomes for millions of children and families.

Financials

Start Early
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Operations

The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.

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Connect with nonprofit leaders

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  • Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
  • Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
  • Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations

Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.

Start Early

Board of directors
as of 07/26/2024
SOURCE: Self-reported by organization
Board chair

Ms. Diana Sands

Billie Wright Adams

Pediatric Associates

Curt R. Bailey

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Guaranteed Rate

Board leadership practices

SOURCE: Self-reported by organization

GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.

  • Board orientation and education
    Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes
  • CEO oversight
    Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes
  • Ethics and transparency
    Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes
  • Board composition
    Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes
  • Board performance
    Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes

Organizational demographics

SOURCE: Self-reported; last updated 1/13/2022

Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.

Leadership

The organization's leader identifies as:

Race & ethnicity
White/Caucasian/European
Gender identity
Female, Not transgender
Sexual orientation
Heterosexual or Straight

Race & ethnicity

Gender identity

Transgender Identity

Sexual orientation

No data

Disability

No data