This year on Giving Tuesday, the unspoken “kick-off” to many holiday giving campaigns, Child Care Aware® of Missouri, decided to do something a little different. They threw their hat in the ring with over 160 other organizations, for a $25,000 Wells Fargo grant that focused on community building—and were one of 10 chosen grantees!

Child Care Resource and Referral (CC&R&) Agencies are among the most important non-profit agencies in communities, connecting parents with needed services, building capacity in the child care market, and educating businesses and elected officials on child care needs. Child Care Aware® of America (CCAoA) wants to support your efforts in connecting with the broader non-profit and philanthropic community. Here are a few organizations that you may want to connect with—in person and online—to jumpstart fundraising activities.

As a Child Care Resource & Referral Agency (CCR&R), you are in the important (and messy) business of getting, using, and reporting data of all kinds. Data is critical to helping CCR&Rs serve providers and families with the most up-to-date information. Capturing this data over time also helps us understand trends in child care so we can target limited funding and services for the greatest impact.

But we all know there are many challenges with managing data. So how do we make sure everyone has the tools to be able to contribute to high-quality data? A little investment in developing your organization’s data literacy and creating an intentional data culture can go a long way. Try the strategies below and comment or email us if there are other steps you’ve taken that have helped you.

Massachusetts was in search of more funding for its Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) agencies after a massive cut to their budget line in 2010. Since then, CCR&Rs in the state have had to continue to do their critical work of managing cases, providing referrals and subsidies and more, despite a 16% increase in workload and decreased funding.

Child Care Aware® of America’s (CCAoA) advocacy team worked with our friends at the Massachusetts CCR&R to help them launch a new digital action center on their network website and come up with an actionable alert and email to share with their appropriate email list. Their goal was to restore the previous funding cut and bring the budget line item for CCR&R work back up to full funding.

“We have a Facebook page but we don’t get a lot of engagement on it.”

I’ve heard this sentiment time and time again while helping CCR&Rs and providers with their social media marketing strategy. Each time I hear that, I ask the following questions:

• How often do you post on it?
• Do you have a content schedule?
• What’s been your most engaging post in the last few months?

As child care providers prepare for young learners to return to their classrooms, it’s important that they add an emergency plan to their program. It’s unfortunate that we have to think about dangerous situations—natural disasters, fires, bomb threats and dangerous intruders—but it’s necessary to have a plan in place. Through effective preparation, CCR&Rs can help providers prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergency situations.

Do the child care providers you work with have emergency plans? We hope they do, but if not, here are some critical first steps.