Funding and Resources: "You Can’t Always Get What You Want…"

• Grants and Corporate Sponsorships
• Fundraising
• Fees and Subsidies

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But with some careful budgeting, creative project planning and innovative fundraising, "you just might find that you get what you need."

Grants and Corporate Sponsorships

The Rolling Stones anthem is probably the farthest thing from Pamela Blanchfield's mind when she sits down to write a grant application, but she often does manage to get just what she needs.

Blanchfield, of the Boys and Girls Club of Niagara in Niagara Falls, applies for and receives an average of five grants a year from various foundations and organizations. For example, she has received money from Ontario's Trillium Foundation for playground improvement, transforming the Club's standard wading pool into an accessible water park.

"The non-profit world tends to keep each other informed about what's out there, what's available," she says with a laugh. "It's just a matter of doing the research and planning, writing it up and sending it in. If it doesn't work, it hasn't hurt." Typing "grants" or "foundations" into an Internet search engine will produce many useful Web links, Blanchfield suggests.

Once she's received funds for a specific project, she carefully tracks how that money is spent and reports back to the granting organization at the end of the fiscal year. "Some organizations want a detailed 25-page report," she says. "Others only require a four- or five-page report." The grant application, budget tracking and reporting processes all take time, she admits, but are well worth it in terms of benefits to the children.

Blanchfield has also collected several corporate sponsors. Each year, they provide money for regular programs, such as her popular after-school arts program, sponsored by the Shaw Festival and the Royal Bank (see "Kids at Centre Stage").

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Fundraising

Instead of approaching a large organization for a large donation, funds can also be raised by appealing to the general public, point out this year's Prime Minister's Award recipients. Fundraising projects abound, though, and you have to be inventive to catch a possible donor's attention. An innovative fundraising project by the Childcare Family Access Network (C-FAN) in Manitoba combines C-FAN's need for an interesting, easy-to-administer fundraising project with convenience for parents.

As Tammy Gingras, a member of the C-FAN team, explains, "One of our parents owns a pizza place, so twice a year - at planting and harvest time, when parents are busiest - we sell frozen pizza." The frozen pizza project earns about $700 in two weeks, she reports. C-FAN also hosts the Home Party Extravaganza, bringing representatives of several direct sales organizations, such as Tupperware and Regal, together in one building.

Another interesting fundraising project takes place in Vancouver. There, the parents of the Little People's Parent Participation Preschool, other community members and local businesses donate items for an annual auction, says Liz Reid, who runs the preschool program. "My husband acts as the auctioneer and we raise anywhere from $3000 to $8000 in an evening." The donated items can be anything, she adds, from two evenings of babysitting, to a weekend at a cottage or six home-baked apple pies. It's a fun evening that draws the parents together as friends and community.

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Fees and Subsidies

Of course, the backbone of the budget of most early childhood education settings is the fees paid for each child. These may be paid entirely by the parent or may be fully or partially covered by provincial or territorial government fee subsidies.

The latter is the case for children attending the Trinin Tsul Zzeh Day Home in Old Crow, Yukon. Before 1990, parents in Old Crow relied on family or sitters to care for their children while they worked. Since most of the jobs in the community only pay minimum wage, parents ended up spending most of their income on child care. Elizabeth Kaye began her day home program when she realized that territorial subsidies were available for low-income parents to place their children in a licensed facility. Kaye's day home provides quality early childhood education to the children of her community at a more affordable cost for parents, a benefit to all concerned.

This benefit is well recognized by the band council, which contributes resources to cover any additional costs Kaye might have, such as improving the outdoor play area. Recently, Kaye submitted a proposal to the council to expand her program, converting her home - which is currently attached to the existing preschool building - into an infant and toddler centre, and renovating another building nearby to house her family.

Tracy Doyle, on the other side of the country and at the other side of the business organizational spectrum, faces a very different situation. "I'm at a crossroads right now," she says with a sigh. "My centre is entirely supported by parent fees and I'm just not making ends meet." Doyle is committed to providing a quality early childhood education program with no compromises on the nutritious meals served, activities provided and qualified and trained staff employed. "Yet I can't raise my fees. It will harm too many families. And I can't raise the wages, so some staff are leaving because they can earn more at McDonald's or a call centre."

Doyle has approached the provincial government to advocate for quality early childhood education, pointing out that without support she and others will have to close their facilities.

She hopes that the recognition of quality early childhood care and education programs brought by the Prime Minister's Awards for Excellence in Early Childhood Education will lead to "partnerships between government organizations and early childhood education providers that will financially support parents, early childhood educators and, most of all, our children." All of society would benefit from such a comprehensive early childhood care system, Doyle insists, pointing out that parents, educators, government and children are all necessary elements to create partnerships and promote the known benefits of quality early childhood care.