Guest blog by Jason Callegari from The Buell Foundation

New Report: What happened when Colorado gave early childhood programs the freedom to try something new

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it didn’t just close schools and child care centers. It exposed just how fragile Colorado’s early care and learning system already was and how urgently it needed support.

In 2021, the Colorado state legislature responded by passing a bill to create four grant programs aimed at strengthening early childhood care and education. One of those programs was the Community Innovation and Resilience for Care and Learning Equity (CIRCLE) Grant Program. Early Milestones Colorado led the program in partnership with the Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC). Together, they awarded 226 grants totaling nearly $23 million to community-led projects across the state.

A large number of those projects focused on one of the biggest challenges in early care and learning: the workforce.

What the CIRCLE Program Did Differently

What made CIRCLE stand out was its flexibility. Grantees were given the freedom to design their own solutions. They didn’t have to fit their work into a rigid template. They could experiment, try new ideas, and adjust as they learned.

Some experiments worked. Some didn’t. But both outcomes mattered. When a strategy didn’t pan out, grantees gained real knowledge about what to try differently. That kind of honest learning is rare and valuable.

After the CIRCLE grant program wrapped up, the Buell Foundation stepped in. The Buell Foundation has a long track record of supporting early childhood workforce initiatives in Colorado. It invited CIRCLE grantees whose projects focused on workforce issues to apply for a second round of funding.

Ten organizations were selected to form a cohort. Early Milestones Colorado helped bring them together, creating regular opportunities to connect, share ideas, and support one another’s work.

The cohort included a diverse group of organizations from across Colorado: Clear Creek Schools Foundation, Colorado Mountain College, Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, Denver’s Early Childhood Council, Early Childhood Service Corps, Empowering Communities Globally, Gunnison-Hinsdale Early Childhood Council, Join Initiatives, Mile High Early Learning, and Resilient Futures.

Each brought a unique approach to addressing workforce challenges in their own communities. Together, they showed what’s possible when organizations are trusted, supported, and connected.

What the Cohort Learned

Over the course of this additional year of funding, four clear themes emerged.

Creativity needs room to breathe. When grantees had the freedom to take risks, they came up with ideas they never would have tried under a more restrictive grant. The continued funding from the Buell Foundation gave them time to test, refine, and improve those ideas even further.

Relationships are the foundation of everything. One of the most powerful things that came out of the cohort wasn’t a program or a product. It was the connections grantees made with each other. They partnered on recruitment efforts, shared resources, and helped each other reach more diverse communities. Early Milestones played a key role in making that happen by intentionally connecting organizations working on similar challenges across the state. Grantees said those peer connections were some of the most valuable parts of the whole experience.

Real change takes time. The first year of CIRCLE funding helped grantees identify the big obstacles in their way, whether those were structural problems, lack of resources, or gaps in relationships. The second year, supported by the Buell Foundation, allowed grantees momentum to solve these problems.

The need is not going away. Families, children, and early childhood educators are under more stress than ever. Grantees worry that large federal funding opportunities like CIRCLE may not come around again for years — while the workforce shortage continues to grow. The urgency of this work is only increasing.

What Needs to Happen Next

The lessons from CIRCLE and the Buell Foundation cohort point toward a few clear priorities.

First, Colorado needs to keep building leadership pathways, especially for home visitors and early childhood educators from underrepresented backgrounds. The people closest to the work should have a voice in shaping it.

Second, the field needs better data. When programs can show that their investments lead to lower turnover, stronger retention, and more engaged communities, that evidence becomes a tool for advocacy. It can help make the case for continued funding at both the local and state levels.

Third, funders and policymakers need to keep investing in flexibility and connection. Rigid grant requirements stifle creativity. And peer relationships, like those built through CIRCLE, help spread promising ideas across the field far more effectively than any top-down mandate ever could.

Fourth, local and state leaders need to recognize the importance of the early childhood workforce as a key contributor to a community’s success, fiscally and culturally. Without stable child care, parents can’t contribute to the economy, businesses can’t expand and entrepreneurs can’t make a bet on their big idea. What is a community without children and those that care for them?

The Bottom Line

The CIRCLE Grant Program started as a pandemic response. But the problems it uncovered existed long before COVID-19, and they haven’t gone away.

Colorado’s children deserve a strong, stable early care and learning workforce. That means investing in the people who show up every day to care for and teach our youngest kids. It means giving communities the freedom to find their own solutions. And it means sticking with that investment long enough to see real results. To read more about each grantee’s work and their advice to legislators and funders read the full report on Early Milestones’ website.