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Top Takeaways is a series of recaps from important conversations, town halls, webinars and virtual events about early learning.

The pandemic isn鈥檛 letting us get back to business as usual yet. In the case of foundations with missions centered on young children, it鈥檚 compelling a thorough re-evaluation of assumptions and methods. Making grants the way foundations did in 2019 would mean overlooking acute crises in communities across the country as well as the underlying inequities that COVID has exposed.

Foundation officers not only see the importance of expediting support to children whose households are at greatest risk of the health and economic fallout鈥攖hey also recognize that even the foundations with largest coffers will achieve greater impact through collaboration. This is no time to go it alone.

On Sept. 1, the Hunt Institute presented the third in a series of conversations on this topic, featuring:

• Dr. Marquita Davis, deputy director for early learning at the
• Isabelle Hau, partner at
• Dr. Elizabeth Pungello Bruno of the

Dan Wuori, The Hunt Institute鈥檚 director of early learning, moderated the conversation. He set the scene by reminding the participants of steep declines in state revenues and the resulting reductions in pre-K funding. Here are our takeaways from the conversation.

1. The emergency continues. Davis said she makes a point of showing up and engaging with the communities her grants are intended to help. She reported, 鈥淭hey鈥檙e dealing with food deserts, inadequate housing and poorly funded schools. All this puts pressure on families and is driving abuse and neglect.鈥� Hau added, 鈥淨uality early child experience is a human right. It鈥檚 not just about parents getting to work.鈥�

2. Trauma endures. Hau noted that research in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters unmistakably points to the long-term consequences of trauma. Philanthropy can and should help build the infrastructure for ongoing support. Aside from the inevitable rise in inequities, she said that 鈥測oung girls are affected more, as well as children who were already vulnerable owing to prior experiences.鈥�

3. Inclusion and equity are more than buzzwords. Citing Mahatma Gandhi鈥檚 dictum What you do for me, without me, you do against me, Davis urged her fellow grant makers to welcome people to the table who are part of the solution. 鈥淲e can鈥檛 abandon this equity charge,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t is a moral imperative.鈥� For Bruno, embracing the strengths of diverse communities has become increasingly urgent, as opposed to clinging to what she called the 鈥渄eficit models鈥� of the past.

4. Data matters. While Davis underscored the importance of data by saying, 鈥淲ithout benchmarking, we can鈥檛 measure progress,鈥� it鈥檚 safe to say that nobody on the panel appreciated data quite like Dr. Bruno. Her organization makes grants for research and program evaluation rather than operational support, and at first she felt sidelined by the pandemic, but then it hit her: We need data today more than ever, so we know what works and what doesn鈥檛. 鈥淩esearch,鈥� she said, 鈥渁llows and forces us to hold ourselves accountable.鈥� Referring to the troubling history of social science, she admitted, 鈥淭he early seminal studies we all cite were racist. I know鈥擨 took part.鈥� To rectify this situation, she called for putting researchers of color on leadership teams.

5. Solutions abound. 鈥淧hilanthropy is risk capital,鈥� Hau said. 鈥淲e can demonstrate what鈥檚 possible so public dollars can scale up.鈥� She said she was pleased to see collaboration among unusual suspects during the pandemic, citing the private sector鈥檚 support of child care for essential workers as an example, which she called 鈥渋nfrastructure investment that鈥檚 here to stay.鈥� Collaboration with other sectors enables foundations to think bigger and more ambitiously.