Beyond relief – New tools to help sustain the impactful pandemic investments in afterschool and summer

Children’s Funding Project, in collaboration with Grantmakers for Education and our team at the Afterschool Alliance released an important new tool for the field, “Funding Out-Of-School Time Programs – Now and in the Future.”

Recognizing that COVID-19 education and child care relief funds soon expire, the tool outlines opportunities for generating new federal, state, and local funding sources that may help advocacy groups, intermediaries, programs, families, and other stakeholders keep quality programs operational and meeting needs of youth in their communities. The tool is aligned with the efforts of the U.S. Department Education’s Engage Every Student initiative, which seeks to ensure all students have access to quality afterschool and summer learning opportunities.  

The brief highlights a number of mechanisms and examples for securing new funding, including:

• Budget Processes – A number of states added afterschool funding to their budgets in the last few years, including a new $1.5 million investment in afterschool by the state of Alabama in 2022
• TANF Funds – Which can support child care for summer and afterschool hours or youth prevention programs
• Tax Revenue – Such as Massachusetts’s percentage set aside of sports betting revenue for a youth development fund or state taxes on recreational marijuana as in Alaska
• Ballot Measures for Voter Approved Children’s Funds – Such as Oakland’s Fund for Children and Youth
• Non-Tax Revenues – Such as Tennessee’s Education Lottery Tax with a component dedicated to afterschool programs
• General Obligation Bonds – Such as Massachusetts’s Early Education and Out of School Time Capital Fund
• Fees – Such as Illinois Park District Youth Program license plate fee
• Assets – Such as Nashville Public Schools providing a year of in-kind facilities usage, transportation, and staff support for their community’s Afterschool Zone Alliance

The brief also references additional tools which provide a list of funding sources already available along with eligibility criteria for programs. The Afterschool Alliance Funding Database, the Wallace Foundation’s Building, Sustaining, & Improving: Using Federal Funds for Summer Learning and Afterschool, and the Children Funding Project’s Federal Funding Streams for Children and Youth Services database may all help programs as a short term bridge between relief funds and new funds. However,the existing funding streams  mentioned in the additional tools  are simply not capable of replacing all of the COVID relief dollars or providing high-quality afterschool and summer opportunities for all 25 million youth nationwide waiting for and deserving of access.

To meet the needs of all youth for quality afterschool and summer programs will require broad community movements like those we are seeing across states and localities with a commitment to securing new funding opportunities. These new funding streams can include some of the funding mechanisms highlighted in the brief, or even, potentially new ideas that haven’t yet been discovered. Working together, advocates including providers, community and state leaders, government agencies, families, schools, businesses and other partners,  can secure the long-term resources their youth, programs and communities need, as well as a more complete vision of afterschool for all.