Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/MariaDMontilla

Conducting child advocacy involves more than generating good ideas. Nonprofits that engage in advocacy need organizational structures, financial resources, good leadership, and active constituencies to carry out their work. This report examines organizational factors such as mission statements, leadership, and internal communication tools that contribute to policy advocacy. Based on extensive interviews and focus groups with child advocates in three states (Georgia, Massachusetts, and Washington), the study found six types of child advocacy organizations working to change state-level policies. These organizations had different structures, different perspectives on the policy process, and different ways to define "success" in the policy arena. Given this diversity, the report offers a series of lessons for child policy advocates, foundations, and the research community.

This policy brief outlines the features of the Military Child Care System (MCCS) that make it an exemplary model of quality care and affordable costs; and compares it to several civilian models that undertake quality reforms. The study highlights the importance of public investment in child care programs and of establishing and enforcing standards for quality care.

Interest in compensation for child care workers gained momentum in the latter half of the 1990s because of the strong economy and changes in the federal welfare laws. Nearly three-quarters of the states have developed a strategy to either directly or indirectly raise the compensation of child care workers. This paper examines how advocates in three states (Georgia, Massachusetts, and Washington) introduced child care compensation initiatives in their states. It addresses three questions: (1) how is the issue framed; (2) who are the key players or organizations in promoting the initiative; and (3) what types of barriers or challenges are faced in getting the issue on the public agenda.

Exploring Organizations and Advocacy is the second volume of four reports on the "Nonprofit Advocacy and the Policy Process: A Seminar Series". This issue, Governance and Accountability, contains the complete text of five papers that were presented during the Winter/Spring 2001 series. They examine the internal operations of nonprofit organizations and how their mission, capacity, governance, and constituency shape their advocacy and their internal and public accountability. They also examine important aspects of nonprofit advocacy at the international level from a practitioner and legal perspective.

Exploring the Organizations and Advocacy, the Fall/Winter 2000–2001 series, examined the operations of nonprofit organizations and their interaction with the regulatory and policy environment, funding sources, and citizens. The papers presented during the three seminars that composed the Fall/Winter series, as well as summaries of the seminar proceedings, will be published in two separate issues: Issue 1, Strategies and Finances, and Issue 2, Governance and Accountability.

With more than half of all mothers with preschool-age children working outside the home, there is substantial demand for high-quality, affordable child care. But as many parents know, the supply of good quality child care is both limited and costly: There are relatively few well-trained and experienced child care workers; recruitment and retention of staff is difficult; and wages for child care workers, among the lowest paid in the U.S. labor force, generally come with few employee benefits. Not only does this situation defy economic models of supply and demand, it has confounded attempts to secure better compensation for child care workers.

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