Increasing support and funding to help families with infants and toddlers
Client
National Head Start Association
Services
Strategic communications planning, messaging, advocacy toolkit with customizable resources, messaging training, storytelling campaign
“Forthright helped us to tell a series of stories about topics important to us like homelessness, immigration, foster care and social inclusion. It has been great to work with an organization that has the same values as we do”
- Emily Wagner, National Head Start Association Former Director of Communications
The Brief
The Background
When families have the right support – resources and services focused on early development and learning – parents can build a strong foundation for their young children’s future. Yet only 1 in 10 infants, toddlers and families who should have access to Early Head Start based on their income currently do. Why? Because of insufficient funding.
The Challenge
In 2022, the National Head Start Association needed to increase funding to ensure all families have access to crucial support and services during their child’s earliest years. To make it happen, National Head Start Association (NHSA) advocates – many who don’t have communications expertise – needed the right tools to fight for increased funding. That’s where we came in.
Our Solution
We partnered with NHSA to create a comprehensive advocacy campaign designed to empower NHSA members and stakeholders.
Our team started by analyzing:
NHSA’s internal and external materials, along with existing research and materials.
The experiences of pregnant women, young children and families, especially those from low-income households, through a landscape analysis.
We then used this data to create:
a robust advocate toolkit filled with flexible, customizable resources that advocates across the country could easily adapt and use in their outreach efforts. (Think fact sheets, talking points, social posts and more!)
a messaging training to ensure advocates could easily use the messaging and toolkit.
a storytelling campaign that centered the lived experiences of families and caregivers benefiting from Early Head Start.
We designed the resources to be user-friendly, making them accessible for individuals with varying levels of communications expertise.
Our Results
After our partnership, NHSA had the research, messaging and resources to successfully advocate for change. And the campaign worked! National policymakers shared the messaging on social media, and NHSA received overwhelming support from parents and stakeholders for the initiative. Even better? As part of this partnership and advocacy, NHSA saw a $960 million funding increase for 2023 over 2022!