Early Childhood Fellow

Overview

The Donnell-Kay Foundation is a Colorado-based private foundation committed to improving the lives of children, families, and communities. For over two decades, the foundation has invested in research, policy, and community-informed solutions across education, early childhood, food systems, and housing. Our work is grounded in curiosity, learning, and a belief that systems should better reflect the lived experiences of families most affected by them.

This fellowship builds on the Donnell-Kay Foundation’s commitment to early childhood education with a particular focus on Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FFN) care, the most common form of child care for young children in Colorado and across the country.

At the Donnell-Kay Foundation, our early childhood work centers around the belief that FFN caregivers are essential to children, families, and communities. More importantly, they deserve meaningful recognition, respect, and support.

FFN care is license-exempt, home-based early child care provided by relatives, family friends, or parents caring for other children alongside their own. FFN caregivers provide loving, culturally-responsive, and flexible care that enables parents to work, attend school, and meet the needs of their families. Yet these caregivers are often left out of policy conversations and face significant barriers to accessing public resources and financial supports.

This fellowship is designed for someone who resonates with this belief and is eager to translate them into actionable research, learning, and strategy.

The Early Childhood Fellow will work closely with Donnell-Kay Foundation staff, primarily the foundation’s early childhood lead, to explore how Colorado’s early childhood systems can better support FFN caregivers, with particular attention to accessing financial resources and public supports.

This is not a traditional program officer or grantmaking role. Instead, it is a learning- and project-oriented fellowship intended for a highly self-directed individual who wants time, space, and support to dig deeply into complex policy and systems questions.

The fellowship is especially well-suited for someone in a mid-career transition, a policy or systems thinker seeking applied experience, or a practitioner looking to step back and examine how systems work and how they could function better.

While the exact scope of work will be shaped collaboratively based on the fellow’s interests and strengths, the fellowship will center on questions such as:

• How do current early childhood financial support systems succeed (or fail) to reach FFN caregivers?
• What structural, administrative, or policy barriers limit FFN caregivers’ access to financial resources and compensation?
• What can Colorado learn from other states that have taken different approaches to supporting license-exempt caregivers?

The fellow’s work may include research, landscape scans, stakeholder interviews, site visits, and the development of materials to inform the foundation’s strategy.

The Early Childhood Fellow will:

• Conduct research on state and national policy approaches that affect compensation, subsidies, and public resource access for FFN caregivers.
• Engage with advocates, community leaders, and policy-makers to learn from existing efforts and innovations in Colorado and nationally.
• Help synthesize findings into clear, accessible written materials (e.g., memos, presentations).
• Participate in relevant meetings, convenings, and learning opportunities.

The ideal fellow is:

• Highly self-directed and comfortable working with ambiguity.
• Curious, reflective, and eager to learn from data, practice, and lived experience.
• Able to analyze complex policy or systems issues and communicate insights clearly.
• Comfortable working independently while collaborating closely with a small team.

Relevant backgrounds may include (but are not limited to): early childhood, public policy, education, public administration, advocacy, research, philanthropy, or lived-experience within early childhood systems. No prior philanthropy experience is required.

• Time…