Raising the Visibility of Children’s Issues
&
Making Investments in Children a Political Priority

The Every Child Matters Education Fund (ECMEF) is a 501(c)(3) organization focused on making the needs of children and youth a national political priority and promoting the adoption of smart policies for children, youth, and families—including stopping child abuse, helping working families with child care, expanding pre-school education and after-school programs, and ensuring that children receive good health care.

Our Approach

Many national and state organizations advocate for children and youth, but budget and policy setbacks in child and youth services show that advocacy, while important, is not enough when children’s needs run up against more powerful special interests. A necessary companion strategy is to make children and youth a priority during the election cycle, not just after. Children and youth issues are much more likely to gain political attention when office seekers believe that they can gain public approval by supporting pro-children policies. We employ a multi-pronged, non-partisan approach for raise the visibility of children and youth issues in elections.

Strong Track Record

ECMEF was founded on the premise that children and youth policy issues are of great concern to the public and that elections offer an important opportunity to educate the public and policy makers about the needs of children.

In 2002, we ran our first campaign in Arkansas to test this proposition. We employed and refined the techniques that we have used in our campaigns since then, including polls, direct contact with the candidates, paid and earned media efforts, and public education and engagement campaigns. Every Child Matters then proceeded to conduct extensive public education campaigns during the presidential caucus in Iowa and the primary in New Hampshire.

In 2003/2004 ECMEF conducted candidate and public education campaigns during the presidential caucus in Iowa and the primary in New Hampshire —including eight forums we hosted on children and youth issues featuring one hour each with the presidential candidates.

Our evaluation showed significant increases in public awareness of children and youth issues and where the candidates stood on them after our work in Iowa and New Hampshire. For example, before-and-after-polling we conducted in Iowa showed that among parents with children under 18 in Iowa, the importance of the health, education, and protection of children increased significantly from May to January (from 62% to 81%). In May, more of these parents thought it was more important for the federal government to deal with the economy (71%). After the caucus, these parents thought the issue of children the most important, slightly higher than the economy (81% compared to 75%).

In 2004, we built state coalitions and conducted public education and engagement campaigns in Colorado, New Hampshire, Ohio, Maine, Washington, and West Virginia. In 2005 we conducted a similar campaign during Virginia’s elections. In 2006, we ran similar campaigns in Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Washington State.

2008 Presidential Election and beyond

We are currently running a campaign to highlight children and youth issues in the lead-up to the presidential primaries and caucuses in early 2008. We are running state campaigns in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. By drawing attention to children and youth issues during the earliest stages of the presidential campaigns, we hope to make children and youth issues a major theme of the 2008 election season.