A sturdy roof over one’s head and access to high-quality knowledge is essential to a person’s long-term well-being. For a community striving for genuine progress, it’s imperative to prioritize these two elements, which are vital for creating lasting change and fostering a brighter future for Milwaukee and our region.
Advancing quality education and affordable housing are key among the commitments the Greater Milwaukee Foundation has made through the years to help ensure a more thriving and equitable region. Both strongly influence a person’s physical and financial security. Both are means to economic mobility and the opportunity to grow generational wealth. Both are fundamental to health and social wellness.
According to recent research released by the Wisconsin Philanthropy Network – of which we are a proud member – education and housing are the top two areas of grantmaking focus for Wisconsin funders. Among those who participated in WPN’s 2024 Wisconsin Gives Report, education is a focus area for 77 percent of respondents, and for 66 percent of respondents, housing and homelessness is a focus area.
With such heightened emphasis, donors, funders, service providers, policymakers and community members collectively have an opportunity to leverage our specific strengths and collaborate where we have gaps to move the needle like never before.
Driving success in early childhood education
Over the last six years, the Foundation has adopted a leadership role in the early childhood education space. We work in partnership with those throughout the community who provide care to our youngest learners – critical for a child’s development, essential for parents’ participation in the workforce and a crucial factor in the region’s economy overall.
Research indicates that children who participate in quality early childhood education programs are more likely to attain higher levels of education, earn higher wages and form more stable families as adults.1 The impact of early childhood experiences on brain development and future outcomes is particularly pronounced for children from low-income backgrounds. Addressing these disparities through high-quality early education can help mitigate the effects of poverty and set children on a positive trajectory for school success and economic mobility.2
As a result, we are pulling all our levers to prioritize early education and coalition-building: commissioning first-of-its-kind research, increasing grant allocations, leveraging impact investments, advocating for policy change and public funding, and sharpening the focus of our longstanding educational work via Milwaukee Succeeds.
Alongside our donors, we’ve mobilized millions of dollars to address quality and access in early education, especially for underserved communities. I am grateful for the generosity shown and the awareness we’ve generated together.
Our efforts align with collaborators across greater Milwaukee – from the focused investment of our partners at the West Bend Community Foundation to increase early education access in Washington County, to funding that helped build new classrooms and make multiple facility upgrades at Notre Dame School of Milwaukee on the city’s south side, to our support of Malaika Early Learning Center’s new, high-quality site inside the ThriveOn King development, where the Foundation is now headquartered in Milwaukee’s Bronzeville area.
The progress is poignant, but much potential remains. Nationally, philanthropic funding for early education is up but still only represents 3 percent of all education giving, according to the Grantmakers for Education 2023 benchmarking survey. To accelerate change, we must continue to lead locally.
Serving as convener and catalyst in housing matters
With leadership comes the recognition that strategies should not be siloed – community building blocks like education and housing are connected, one impacting the other throughout lives and generations. By bringing stakeholders together for catalytic solutions, the Foundation can help positively impact multiple systems.
Being a founding member and funding partner for the Community Development Alliance helps ensure our efforts are connected and aligned with a broader, communitywide affordable housing strategy. WPN’s research illustrates the need. Housing assistance was the top service request of Wisconsin residents who dialed 211 for basic needs help from September 2023-September 2024. Over 70 percent of housing calls were for low-income housing or rental assistance.
Thankfully, our shared strategies are designed to answer the call. For example, community land trusts are highlighted in Giving USA’s 2024 report on philanthropy as an innovative solution to the nation’s housing crisis. Only about 300 such entities exist in the U.S. Locally, the Milwaukee Community Land Trust has been a bright spot in the housing landscape for the last several years, making homes permanently affordable to low-income buyers. To date, the Foundation has provided $190,000 in support to the nonprofit MCLT, which is one star in a constellation of strategies stemming from the CDA’s housing plan.
Thanks to our donors’ enthusiastic coinvestments in housing, the Foundation has been able to impact a range of intentional efforts that ladder up to the broader goals of the CDA. Beyond our role as an initial convener, we helped finance and facilitate an acquisition fund to combat predatory investors and an anti-displacement fund to help longtime residents stay in their homes. Our grantmaking supports myriad agencies dedicated to making quality housing more accessible and affordable.
Collectively, the CDA has reported impact of 140 new homes completed or started, over 1,500 new homeowners and $30 million invested in housing solutions for our community. Among the CDA’s most creative, connected endeavors: the Early Childhood Educator Home Initiative with LISC Milwaukee is subsidizing construction of 40 entry-level homes reserved specifically for qualified early childhood educators.
This is the kind of cross-sector, all-hands-on-deck partnership we need to realize a Milwaukee for all. As each of us – individuals and institutions alike – contribute to solutions in our respective and coordinated ways, we will see more children and households achieve stability and even higher levels of success.
We are deeply grateful for the community’s continued support of our Early Childhood Education Fund and Housing Fund. Your support fuels our investments in these strategic priorities and allows us to partner with donors who see other issues of importance they would like to advance. We welcome new opportunities in 2025 for our community to apply their time, talent, treasure and ties to making a true difference for all.
1 Love, J. M., Chazan-Cohen, R., Raikes, H., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2013). What Makes a Difference: Early Head Start Evaluation Findings in a Developmental Context. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 78(1), vii-viii, 1-173.
2 García, J. L., Heckman, J. J., Leaf, D. E., & Prados, M. J. (2020). Quantifying the Life-Cycle Benefits of an Influential Early-Childhood Program. Journal of Political Economy, 128(7), 2502-2541.