The Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative (ECEFC) is proud to announce our 2026 Early Care and Education (ECE) Grantee Partners This year, ECEFC is investing $305,000 across 11 organizations serving Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia. These funds support advocacy organizations, grassroots partnerships, and coalition models working to strengthen the early childhood ecosystem across our region. Meet Our 2026 Grantee Partners: Together, this cohort reflects a powerful commitment to: Advancing pay equity and professional respect for early childhood educators Strengthening family child care and workforce sustainability Expanding...

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I’m thinking about love in action. At Washington Area Women’s Foundation, love looks like investing in a girl’s idea to make positive change in her community. It looks like ensuring a young woman has access to education and economic opportunity. It looks like supporting a mother through a safe and equitable birthing experience. And it looks like resourcing women leaders to disrupt or change harmful systems. Love is equity that doesn’t begin at one moment in a woman’s life, but requires sustained investment at every stage. From early childhood education to entrepreneurship. From workforce pathways to leadership pipelines. From surviving to thriving. Love, in our work, is not sentimental. It means changing the conditions that have historically limited women and girls, especially women and girls of color in the Washington, DC region, from accessing power and prosperity.Love is philanthropy that moves beyond charity toward transformation. If we truly love...

As we near the close of the first month in the new year, my leadership intention for Washington Area Women’s Foundation is clear: to deepen our impact throughout our continuum of support, from birth to the boardroom, for women and girls in the Washington, DC region. The data continues to confirm what many communities already know. Even in one of the most resourced regions in the country, women, particularly women and girls of color, face persistent gaps in educational opportunity, economic mobility, health outcomes, and leadership representation. Early access to stability, care, and opportunity directly shapes outcomes decades later, including who holds decision-making power in communities, workplaces, and government. This work is made even more urgent by the current national landscape. This administration has blatantly threatened the well-being of women and girls through actions including efforts to eliminate the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor; the loss of more than 300,000...