Can you picture business leaders lobbying for more state spending on early care and education? Sound unlikely? That’s why it’s effective, say children’s advocates who have been working to enlist these “unlikely allies.”

Last spring, Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea testified in support of child care spending before the California Assembly’s Budget Committee. “It was the first time a corporate person testified in a legislative hearing for child care,” says Patty Siegel, executive director of the Child Care Resource and Referral Network. “I think people really noticed.”

In the last few years, more business leaders have been getting involved in advocacy for child care, after-school care and other children’s issues.

• In Massachusetts, executives of many of the state’s largest companies have been among the leaders of the Early Education for All campaign, which last month filed legislation calling for universal preschool for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds.
• In Florida, dozens of the largest corporations have committed their lobbyists to spend “An Hour a Week for Kids,” talking with legislators about children’s issues. And the state Chamber of Commerce Leadership Council has made early education a priority issue for the year.
• A year-old national organization, Corporate Voices for Working Families (CVWF), including 32 Fortune 500 companies such as Marriott and Abbott Laboratories, in November issued a briefing paper, Early Learning and After School, and plans meetings on universal preschool with federal legislators and the White House.

Although some employers provide child care and other benefits to employees’ families, spending by private companies pays only about 1 percent of the nation’s child care bill. Spending by employers can’t meet the need for quality preschool experiences for all children, says Donna Klein, a former Marriott executive who’s now CVWF’s president and CEO. That’s why CVWF is organizing to “raise the profile on early education as a business issue to state and federal politicians.”

Why Involve Business Leaders?
When Massachusetts children’s advocate Margaret Blood surveyed state legislators, she says, they told her “children’s issues are important, but you need to get people with clout, like business leaders.”

Abby Thorman leads a Kansas City campaign called Partners in Quality, which has organized business executives to promote state programs to improve quality in early education. “The business ‘capital’ that’s most important,” she says, “is their political connections, their ability to gain entrée to places of power.” In addition, says Children Now vice president Amy Dominguez-Arms, policy-makers see business people as “rational and moderate,” without the self-interest that child care providers have in expanding child care.

Bill Nelson, chair of George K. Baum Asset Management, helped found Kansas City’s Partnership for Children. After the group persuaded the state of Kansas to pass a law reducing barriers to childhood immunization, he says, “in Missouri I went to...the governor and said, ‘Look, Mel, here’s a solution.’” Nelson says he already knew the governor because “I’d supported his campaign, helped raise money for it.”

Why Do Business Leaders Get Involved?
Business executives give two main reasons for pushing public investment in early education:

• Workers are more productive when they know their children are being well cared for.
• Early education contributes to success in school and later in work.

Orfalea says advocacy for child care is “a natural extension of the work I began at Kinko’s,” where he established an on-site child care center at company headquarters. “I...found that when I could help [workers] deal with the challenges they faced in their lives, not only did I feel good, the business prospered. Productivity increased, turnover was lower.”

Alan Macdonald, a former GE executive, now heads the Massachusetts Business Roundtable. He first got interested in the issue, he says, because “at GE we had a lot of young families who needed day care nearby to maintain a full-time work schedule.”

But when he helped survey business leaders, he says, “they were not interested in day care. But they were very interested in preschool. [That] stems from their interest in K-12. All the studies show that if you get children early, at three and four, they’re better prepared to meet the standards. And there are other benefits—not as much conduct problems, not as many kids in special education. In the long term, people who have more ability in reading, writing and general problem-solving are quicker to adapt to worker training....Having productive citizens is good for everybody...if they’re buying into the system and getting something out of it.”

What’s Happening in California?
In California only a few business leaders, such as Paul Orfalea and Jim Wunderman of Providian Bank, have long been active advocates for children. During the past year, Children Now, the Child Care Resource and Referral Network and the Orfalea Family Foundation nurtured a fledgling effort called Business Voices for Working Families.

Last spring the group urged legislators to support spending on child care and after-school programs, in letters signed by executives from Clorox, Levi Strauss, Macy’s West and other companies. Dominguez-Arms says, “We’re hoping to step up these efforts in the coming year.”

Siegel sees the greatest potential in “engaging the business sector to articulate long-term solutions” like universal preschool. “But this year,” she adds, “the survival of California’s child care system will depend in part on revenue enhancement—and building support for revenue enhancement in the corporate community is a challenging task.”

How To Involve Business: Advice From the Pros
“Don’t call it child care. Call it early education. Use the data [about the effectiveness of early education]. It’s very compelling to them.... It’s key to have a few business leaders involved, then they can get others to step up....Use business leaders’ time sparingly and strategically.... Political and business leaders need to get credit, to get visibility.”
—Margaret Blood, president, Strategies for Children, Massachusetts

“We need to clearly articulate the business case [for early education]. We’ve learned through our experience that there’s a strong tie-in between education and child care and employees’ productivity.”
—Bernadette Fusaro, vice president of Global Work/Life Strategies, Merrill Lynch

“You need to have a clear message—how this benefits the community—and clear action steps for them. How are their skills and assets going to be maximized? It’s not different from working with preschoolers. You set people up for success, give them clear goals, and follow through. They’re just taller and have more money.”
—Abby Thorman, program manager, Metropolitan Council in Child Care, Kansas City

Resources

• Children Now, 510-763-2444
• Corporate Voices for Working Families, 301-380-6856
• Council for Economic Developmen (a business think tank that published its report, “Preschool for All,” in February 2002), 202-296-5860
• Foundation for Child Development, publisher of Business Leaders as Legislative Advocates for Children, by Margaret Blood and Melissa Ludtke, 212-697-3150
• Strategies for Children (Massachusetts), 617-330-7380

Talk Back

If you’ve got comments or questions about this story, we’d like to hear them. Send your response to Susan Phillips.

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This article originally appeared in the January-February 2003 issue of the Children's Advocate, published by Action Alliance for Children.