About Us

BUILD’s work and its vision of comprehensive early childhood development systems is at the center of an emerging and vibrant state-based policy movement in the early childhood development field.  BUILD helps states construct a coordinated system of programs, policies and services that responds to the needs of young children and their families.   We work with organizations and agencies that set policies, provide services and advocate for our youngest children to make sure that they are safe, healthy, eager to learn and ready to succeed in school.  
 
BUILD helps state leaders prepare young children aged birth to five to succeed by helping their families access high quality early learning, family and parenting support, early intervention for children with special needs and comprehensive health, mental health and nutritional services.  BUILD assists states in planning and implementing a comprehensive early childhood “system of systems” that crosses policy domains and helps ensure that families get the services they need. Ultimately, BUILD serves as a catalyst for change and a national resource on early childhood development and policy.

BUILD states are leaders in a national movement to innovate effective comprehensive services to children and families.  Currently, BUILD works with seven states:  Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.  As part of our work with the states BUILD offers a combination of services including evaluation coordinated by Charles Bruner of the Child and Family Policy Center, technical assistance liaisons and professional development opportunities.

BUILD is a national initiative created in 2002 by the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative (ECFC), a consortium of private foundations.  The ECFC provides networking, information sharing and strategic grant making opportunities to its members. Through its work, the ECFC recognized that current programs, policies and services for young children and their families often operated in isolation, at cross purposes, or without enough resources to meet critical needs. In response, the ECFC created BUILD to invest private funds to stimulate public investments in early learning to foster greater coordination of comprehensive programs, services, and policies for young children.  A group of ECFC members make up the Build Funders' Advisory Council, which works closely with BUILD staff and provides broad strategic oversight to the initiative.

BUILD THEORY OF CHANGE

This Build Initiative's 'Toward a Theory of Change' paper  organizes the conceptual work undergirding the Build Initiative into an explicit theory of change framework.

The executive summary of Build's Theory of Change provides an overview and graphic depictions of the three interlocking theories.