The Irving Haris Foundation fuels ideas, leaders, and movements led by and for people most impacted by harm. We partner with those who are reimagining systems, centering equity, and shifting power and resources to eliminate racial and gender disparities among pregnant and birthing people, babies, very young children, and their families. We invest across five interconnected areas: Early Childhood, Reproductive Health and Justice, Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, Jewish Values, and Arts and Culture. To maximize our impact, the Irving Harris Foundation leverages our resources, time, knowledge, and influence to further fuel the efforts of our grant partners and advance our core values of justice, courage, persistence, relationships, and equity. We work side by side with our partners and foster supportive relationships rooted in trust.

I lead the Early Childhood program where we seek to ensure that all pregnant and birthing people, infants, toddlers, families, and caregivers have the power, resources, and equitable access to the services they want to thrive in strong and nurturing communities. We invest in partners driving change in Illinois, in many states across the country, and at the federal level. We fund an ecosystem of organizations working at the intersection of racial, gender, and economic justice using strategies of policy, advocacy, and systems building; grassroots power¹ and multi-issue movement building; and leadership development. These organizations work on early care and education, Early Intervention, paid family leave, infant and early childhood mental health, birth justice and equity, immigrant justice, maternal mental health, reproductive health and justice, civic engagement, leadership development, and many other intersecting issues to ensure a more just world for every baby, family, and community.

Addressing economic equity and opportunity shows up across our work in different ways, whether we are investing in groups that organize families and communities to advocate for greater public investments in early care and education or maternal health services; or coalition-building and advocacy to build power and demand living wages, paid family leave, or fair reimbursement rates for early care and education providers, doulas, midwives, and many others; or developing community-driven policy solutions to transform systems that actually work for families.

We announced in February 2024 that the Irving Harris Foundation will spend down all of our remaining financial assets over the next several years and sunset in 2032. We believe that spending down allows us to lean even deeper into our values of equity and justice and provide more meaningful support for communities here and now—to shift more power and resources back to those who are most impacted by oppressive systems.

_{¹While the Irving Harris Foundation supports advocacy and grassroots organizing, it in no way engages in directly supporting lobbying.}

What I’m proud of includes the work we have done internally since 2017 to build out and shift one-third of our Early Childhood program funding to support groups in grassroots power and movement building in our Early Childhood program area.

I am proud of partnerships and collaborative funding efforts that I have helped co-lead with trusted colleagues over many years. It is core to my work to engage in funder organizing to connect, champion grant partners and fundraise so we can collectively use our power and influence in service of our grant partners.

Many years ago, Irving Harris Foundation was one of the original funders to launch the Raising Child Care Fund (RCCF), a project of the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative (ECFC) which pools private foundation funding to support grassroots organizations that elevate the voices of families, early educators, and allies -working alongside them to build power and expand equity.  RCCF is dedicated to transforming child care in the US so all families have access to the care they want and need, and early educators receive fair compensation for their invaluable contributions to society.  Many working on child care including grassroots organizers, federal and state policy and advocacy partners, and care coalitions have contributed to securing some of the largest public funding increases for child care, and made early care and education part of the national dialogue but so much more is needed.

More recently, I worked with colleague funders and community leaders over the last several years on an effort to advance child and family well-being by building power in communities. This effort eventually became the Racial Justice and Equity Fund (RJEF), a collaborative pooled fund also housed at ECFC and dedicated to resourcing organizations and leaders representative of historically underserved communities. RJEF uses a participatory grantmaking model that includes several cross-movement community leaders to guide strategy and impact. In our initial landscaping, we used the Power Flower framework that centers community organizing and base-building to ensure historically excluded populations have power, agency, and voice surrounded by an ecosystem of capacities, including advocacy and policy, coalition-building, communications and narrative change, research and legal, leadership and organizational development to achieve an inclusive democracy. It is a framework that I apply across my work.  ((Source: Leading Locally: A Community Power Building Approach to Structural Change))

Finally, I’m really excited by the opportunity that sunsetting offers to truly be bold. 2032 is not that far away. I hope that we can lay the groundwork and plant seeds to continue growing and strengthening the ecosystem that centers community as in the Power Flower framework.  In addition, I would like to challenge philanthropic norms and traditional practices that don’t serve grant partners and figure out ways to do different in philanthropy.

It feels like we are constantly in a “moment.” The environment is rapidly shifting, with looming cuts to the social safety net, states scrambling to fill budget gaps, lots of families struggling to make ends meet and afford care for their children, and an increase in polarization and othering.  There are threats across multiple fronts, with grant partners trying to support those being targeted and then being targeted themselves and feeling vulnerable to cyber attacks, and legal and funding uncertainty. You take all that with the philanthropic contraction of funding for racial equity and gender justice work which was already underfunded in the first place, and it feels very challenging and overwhelming.

Nevertheless, philanthropy, with its power and privilege, can choose stand with partners and show them that it will continue to support them in this place of uncertainty. It can feel paralyzing, and yet we have to act.

About a year after I started in philanthropy, I attended my first EOF Annual Budget and Tax Briefing in 2014 at the recommendation of a state-based colleague funder who talked about the importance of understanding the federal budget and its impact on the funding that flows into our state (Illinois) to support programs and services for very young children and families. It really got me engaged. Since then, I have attended lots of EOF offerings – learning from organizations on the frontlines, connecting with funders that support partners’ work, and keeping me updated on issues. I have broadened my network and increased my knowledge. It has been great to explore and grapple with issues and challenges together and collaborate.

How can we partner and collectively use the power and resources we have in philanthropy to boldly meet the moment, be accountable to community, and direct resources to those most impacted by injustice so they can drive change and develop solutions?

I’m constantly inspired by our grant partners—those impacted by injustice who continue to respond to community need and work to create solutions to complex challenges.

But I want to name that my family has always inspired me – my parents for shaping my values of justice and equity, and my children for fueling my drive to keep fighting for social justice and the world that they, and all children and families, deserve.