The Build Award by Promise Venture Studio’s Promise Fund provides $200,000 in flexible funding plus a full year of capacity-building support, professional development, and leadership development — designed for early-stage and proximate-led organizations addressing systemic barriers for young children (ages 0–5) and their families in the U.S.

If that sounds like you or someone you know, we made this short informational video to walk you through what you need to know — what the award is, who it’s for, what recipients receive, and how to apply.

Still have questions after watching our information video? Join one of our three live Q&A sessions over the next few weeks to hear directly from our team before you apply. Submit your questions in the "Questions & Comments" box when you register — these sessions skip the Award overview and jump straight into questions and answers.

• Session 1: Monday, March 23, 12-1p PT (sign up here)

• Session 2: Thursday, March 26, 5:30-6:30p PT (sign up here)

• Session 3: Wednesday, April 1, 3-4p PT (sign up here)

Can’t make the Q&A session or have a question about your specific (or particular) circumstances?

Check out our Q&A log here to see if your question was already answered and/or email us at fund@promisestudio.org

Other helpful links:

• Full selection criteria here

• Preliminary application questions preview here

• Build Award website here

• Imagine Award website here

  • The Imagine Award, also part of Promise Venture Studio's Promise Fund, offers $20,000 for changemakers with transformative ideas and firsthand experience in early childhood. This application opens in July.

❗UPDATE: The application deadline for the Build Award has been extended by one week. It now closes on Sunday, April 19 — we hope to see you at a Q&A session and in the applicant pool!

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At Promise, we invest in and nurture proximate changemakers and innovators because we believe they have the greatest potential to transform the early childhood field, but face the greatest obstacles, especially at the earliest stages of social entrepreneurship.

But what is a proximate changemaker? And why do we believe they have the greatest potential to transform the early childhood field?

We define this as a leader who has first hand knowledge of the communities they seek to impact or the problem they seek to address and then use that knowledge to develop solutions (specifically in Promise’s context, in order to address the key barriers to equitable outcomes for children ages 0 - 5, caregivers, and their families). Proximity to a community or problem area can manifest in a multitude of ways - interconnected work experiences, shared racial or gender identity, formative childhood or caregiving experiences, or even through the community that you live and work in.

Intuitively, this has always made a lot of sense to me. At a minimum, experiencing a problem first hand often results in unique insights on both the nature of the problem and also how one might go about solving it. As a small (albeit silly) example, this year, my son transitioned from a small, intimate preschool environment to our local public school’s Kindergarten. Suddenly, our family has had to adapt from lazy mornings with relaxed drop off windows to a strict elementary school start time of 8:10AM. To put it mildly, we are late… often. (In my humble opinion, there’s just only so much cajoling you can do to get a head strong 5 year old out the door on time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. ) The irony is that in a former role, I was responsible for developing my school’s practices, policies and incentives to reduce chronic absenteeism and tardiness in order to increase in school time. I know all the research on the impact of absenteeism and tardiness on student outcomes and as an organization, we implemented many of the best practices - text messages, tiered systems of support, simple check-ins, home visits. But on this side, being far more proximate to the morning-in-and-out struggle of getting my child out the door on time, I have a whole new perspective on some of the root causes of tardiness. I see the problem differently, and I also have different insights and ideas on how I might design practices and incentives differently if I was back in my old role now that I have this lived experience.

Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on intuition alone to underscore the value of proximity. Building on a foundation of insights from other thought leaders in social entrepreneurship, Promise’s work to nurture proximate innovators over the last eight plus years gives us a capsule of evidence that showcases the myriad of ways proximity is a superpower and a powerful differentiator in social entrepreneurship, especially given the historical background and context of early childhood.

Some of these superpowers include:

This deep insight results in a powerful understanding of the community’s aspirations, challenges, capacities and power dynamics and unique insights into the opportunity or problem space for their specific target audience.

The Beloved Early Education & Care Collective (BEE Collective), one of our Early Stage Venture Awardees, showcases this superpower in spades. BEE Collective’s co-founders, Dr. Kim Nesta Archung, Richie Simone Lee and Adrienne Troy-Frazier, both have a deep wealth of professional experiences as Black women, mothers, educators and birth workers and live and work in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. As a result, they are neighbors with and share many of the lived experiences and identities of the families they serve.

Initially, BEE Collective’s work focused on addressing exclusion and expulsion in early learning settings that disproportionately affects children of color and children with disabilities. However, their proximity to the community and proactive efforts to center community voice through Community Action Labs resulted in a profound, embodied understanding of the community’s challenges and power dynamics, namely that medical racism, preschool push out, and poverty wages for educators and doulas aren’t isolated problems but an interconnected pipeline of harm that shapes Black and Brown families’ trajectories from womb to classroom. BEE Collective quickly leveraged these insights to expand their work and developed interconnected solutions and programs that centered the convergence of birth justice, educational inclusion, and economic dignity in order to achieve systems change for the families and careforce in their community.

Proximate leaders leverage an asset-based lens to honor assets that are often overlooked or misunderstood when viewed through a dominant culture lens. Because of this, they look beyond surface-level narratives and solutions and tap into community wisdom that addresses the complexities that underlie the problems and opportunities experienced by their communities.

For most of Rob Harris’ career, he’s been a relative unicorn - one of the less than 3% of the early childhood workforce that identify as men and one of the less than 1% that identify as a male of color. This unique vantage point and his lived experience as a male in the EC workforce drives his desire to see a different future for the early childhood workforce that allows young men to see themselves as nurturers and caregivers through The >3 Project. As Rob began to design his pilot, a structured mentorship network that pairs high school juniors and seniors with male ECE professionals, this Fall, Rob readily tapped into a local network, DC Men in ECE, to further refine his pilot hypothesis and even recruit potential mentors for the program. Further, with deep roots in the DC Metro Area, he also was able to more readily build relationships with long-standing community organizations and navigators that have helped recruit young men, that otherwise may have never considered a career in early childhood, to join the pilot. Rob’s lived experience and proximity to community in the DC Metro Area gave him insight into and uplift community assets that have significantly helped him get his pilot off the ground and drive impact around his vision.

A proximate changemaker’s proximity facilitates the ability to equitably and respectfully activate networks of the target population, build partnerships and intentionally co-create with community partners. This increases the feasibility of co-design, pilot testing, and long-term adoption, especially in communities where institutional trust is often low, which is so important at the idea and early stages.

Mother’s Trust Alliance (MTA), a Promise Sandbox Awardee, is a community-rooted initiative co-designed with Black women and birthing people to build new systems of care and economic opportunity that strengthen maternal health, family stability, and collective power. It is founded by Christina Ratleff - a Black woman, public health practitioner, equity designer and daughter of a single mom. She carries the lived experience of moving through systems not built for her and years of work experience leading birth equity efforts locally and nationally in deep collaboration with the people most impacted.

Christina’s proximity to this work has reinforced the belief that Black brilliance should be at the center of what we build and that we must put resources and decision-making where they belong: in the hands of Black women and birthing people who know what it takes to build strong families and healthy communities. As a result, she has grounded the Mother’s Trust Alliance in the leadership and lived experience of Black mothers and centered co-creation and self-determination in every initiative they’ve developed. For example, through a co-design process in partnership with local and state-wide advocacy partners anchored in the voices of Black birthing people, Mother’s Trust Alliance is launching a bold, community-rooted solution: a Cash + Co-Design + Care + Community model. Over 12 months, Black mothers will co-design and test three fellowship pathways—Advocacy, Research, and Community Care—and identify what supports beyond cash drive meaningful outcomes. These efforts will be a learning year to refine, deepen, and demonstrate what becomes possible when Black women and birthing people are not just supported to survive, but resourced to lead and redesign the systems that have long failed them.

Of course, all social entrepreneurs must demonstrate resourcefulness especially at the earliest stages of social entrepreneurship when resources are most limited. However, as a result of the systemic inequities in building generational wealth or accessing capital for many communities of color compounded by the historical context of the early childhood workforce, we believe proximate changemakers in early childhood, out of necessity, are especially adept at demonstrating bricolage or constructing or creating something from a diverse range of available things in order to meet their community’s aspirations.

One of the many incredible leadership qualities Maureen Nicol, the founder of Our House Baltimore and one of our Early Stage Venture Awardees, exudes is a combination of practicality to make do with what she has and the craftsmanship and vision to bring something unique and valued come to life. Our House began as a dream in 2020 to build something that never existed for Maureen and her daughter - a space for healing, resilience, play, community care and connection. Over the years, maximizing the resources available to her and fit within the context of her day to day life, Maureen piloted pop-up events, playgroups, storytelling sessions and other early programming ideas in the different cities she’s lived including New York, New Orleans and Baltimore that all generated new insights about what Our House Baltimore could be. After moving to Baltimore in 2023, she was inspired by the success of her events and the families she met to establish a permanent, brick and mortar home for Our House Baltimore. The road to opening has been rife with challenges. From Go Fund Me campaigns, to capital improvements, to continuing to cultivate and engage family and community support for the space, to navigating city bureaucracy, there have been many challenges on the road to opening, and yet, it’s been inspiring to get to walk alongside Maureen as she deftly navigates these challenges by activating whatever resources she can to achieve her goal in partnership with the many parents in Baltimore that are championing her venture.

If we hope to actualize a more abundant future for children, families, and caregivers across the country, I believe we must unabashedly nurture and invest in proximate changemakers and innovators in early childhood. These leaders possess the superpowers this moment demands - deep contextual insight, community trust, asset-based vision, and resourceful determination. It’s through their leadership and vision that we’ll see more transformative, community-rooted solutions that could meaningfully shift outcomes for young children and families.

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The Learning Orientation

The Promise Fund expands our work at Promise to support high-potential organizations. It brings dedicated focus and resources to leaders at the earliest stages of building. While our flagship programs like the Promising Ventures Fellowship provide a springboard, the Promise Fund invites us to explore new approaches tailored to founders navigating the critical early stages from idea to impact.

From the beginning, we’ve held on to a simple commitment: “We’re embracing experimentation, knowing we’ll learn a lot along the way.” We shared this sentiment with our team, with applicants, and now with our inaugural award recipients. It reflects our shared learning orientation—an acknowledgment that learning what we need to know matters more than getting it right.

That’s why we started with listening.

What Peers Shared

We began by talking with social innovation practitioners experienced in supporting early-stage social entrepreneurs—people like Martin Alexis at Village Capital, Dorenyse Diaz with NewSchools Venture Fund, and Haley Medved Kendrick at gener8tor. We heard a clear throughline: Design support around entrepreneurs’ needs and make it accessible—acknowledging their capacity realities. This creates experiences founders want to engage in.

Reflecting on our own Promising Ventures Fellowship reinforced what we’d heard. The founders we’ve worked with, many at emerging and early-growth stages, consistently benefit most when they set their own goals and learn alongside peers who understand their experience.

These conversations also clarified an important limitation: support models designed for later-stage organizations don’t exactly translate to the earliest stages. We needed an adaptive approach, which meant we needed to hear directly from the people navigating this terrain right now.

What Founders Revealed

So we talked with early-stage founders. In conversation after conversation, we heard about the specific supports that unlocked capacity, clarified priorities, or created “aha” moments. Teryn Thomas, CEO and Co-Founder of Edlight, helped us understand what meaningful support looks like in the early days of building.

Founders at the idea stage reminded us that building from idea to impact isn’t a straight line with a clear endpoint. The journey from testing to full-scale offering requires ongoing support beyond the initial program support.

When we stepped back and reviewed all the insights we’d gathered, a clearer picture emerged of the landscape these founders face. Proximate founders, those building solutions in deep relationship with the communities they seek to support, are creating powerful innovations and need essential support to launch and sustain their work:

• Connected peer networks. Early-stage peer networks are sparse, leaving founders without others who truly understand what they’re facing.

• Funding that matches reality. Financial support rarely includes resources for team formation or internal systems—the infrastructure necessary for sustainability.

• More time on mission work. Constant fundraising demands compete for the time that founders need for mission work.

• True partnership. Opportunities for funders and founders to learn together through ongoing support remain limited.

• Leader sustainability support. There’s little systemic support to address founder burnout.

These challenges aren’t isolated; they’re deeply connected. Our realization: support needed to be holistic, centering the person and not just the innovation. It also needed to be built with founders rather than for them.

Insights in hand, we moved from listening to designing.

Building Together

We sketched out the support we could design across five interconnected domains that would allow us to respond to each founder’s context:

The five domains became our map for offering tailored support. We envisioned scenarios like: a founder launching their first pilot might tap a coach for strategies on identifying metrics to track, while a founder leading a small team and navigating fundraising might connect with peers who’ve successfully built earned revenue streams.

Equally important were the principles that would guide how we showed up:

• More emergence, less prescriptive

• Incorporate choice

• Make connections

• Amplify the founders’ work

With these intentions as our guide, we welcomed six Promise Fund recipients into partnership. Rather than immediately launching programming, we prioritized relationship-building—getting to know each founder beyond their application.

We hosted individual conversations with each award recipient to initiate our partnership with empathy. These calls were about understanding each leader’s values, existing support systems, and what would actually be helpful. Each founder also completed a survey to identify their own learning goals and milestones.

To support ongoing connection, we assigned Resource Mobilizers—dedicated Promise team members who serve as each recipient’s primary partner, helping them access support and stay connected throughout their relationship with us.

A virtual gathering brought everyone together. Our team shared our own learning goals for the Promise Fund, encouraged recipients to connect, and introduced ourselves as partners in this work rather than program administrators.

These foundational activities revealed what our early-stage founders actually needed. With this understanding, we launched several experiments: an in-person convening, mentorship pairings, learning sprints, and coaching engagements.

The Questions Driving Us Forward

Each experiment generates learning, some of which we’ll share as it develops. But more valuable than any single insight are the questions these experiences are surfacing:

• On trust and power: As an intermediary that has historically provided non-financial support, what do we need to let go of to genuinely build trust with award recipients who now receive funding from us? What new responsibilities must we embrace?

• On defining success: How do we define collective success in a way that honors both our aspirations for the Fund and each recipient’s goals for their work?

• On ecosystem building: How can we work with other partners to create a strong network of champions who understand what early childhood founders need and are positioned to offer support?

We don’t have definitive answers yet. That’s intentional. Our definition of “support” continues to evolve, shaped by each conversation, each experiment, each moment of honest feedback. What we’re committed to: learning alongside founders and iterating in the open.

The work ahead requires more than our team alone. If you’re interested in championing Promise Fund recipients, whether through making connections, sharing expertise, offering resources, or exploring partnerships, we want to hear from you.

Reach out here to explore how you can get involved.

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Let me make this clear from the onset; this is a story of proximity leadership, change, and a willingness to invest in hope for an equitable future. Which is why it’s important to talk about unicorns. According to a Google search, unicorns in children’s media… are often magical horses with wise and gentle natures. Unicorns with their long flowing manes of various colors that run along rainbows are champions of the unique. In the book Pink is for Boys, there is a line that says “purple is for unicorns because….unicorns!” which seems to emphasize the message that unicorns are awesome simply because they are unicorns.

This is why I no longer want to be a unicorn.

From the onset of my journey in the field of education and its related services (mental health and behavioral health), I have found myself being likened to that of a unicorn on occasion—intended to be a compliment I presume. My personality traits were praised for their suitability for my work with children, and the applied assumption that they were rare among men. Like microaggressions for the minority, 13 years into the work of developing, education, and encouraging a healthier future for children I have found that I have on too many occasions been one of very few men who engage in the work of nurturing, developing, and caring for children from birth to age five. I was a unicorn.

Ever wonder how unicorns feel?

Maybe to the rest of the world the magic and allure that are associated with the unicorn are rare and awe inspiring. Yet to the rest of the unicorns, it might just be Sean, or J’davius (because in my narrative, unicorns have regular, everyday names…of people of color).

It was time to change the narrative and become one of many I’m sure who want to invest in the future of our children and create opportunities that dissolve stigma and promote equity. According to labor statistics, around less than 3% of the early childhood workforce are men. This is atrocious. So why not be a part of a solution that actively seeks to increase that data point? That was the question I asked myself. The answer is, there’s no reason not to be. So I decided to run. The challenge of running was figuring out where to run, and who would sponsor my entrance fee (hopefully not mixing too many analogies here). That’s where the folks at Promise came in. They looked at this unicorn and believed in its ability to run the race.

In truth, the folks at Promise didn’t just place the bet; they sought to ensure that I would have the training and tools necessary to run a meaningful and successful race as a unicorn. Which, at the time of this writing, is exactly what I’m doing. I’m running and I’m believing that there’s a chance to win, or at least be on the podium, as a unicorn. It is because of Promise that I believe there’s a very real opportunity to make a difference in the field of early childhood education for the better. It’s because of Promise that I believe that maybe someday, there’ll be no more unicorns and instead just a bunch of Seans, J’davius, Steves, Patricks, and Robs.

If you’d like to learn more or get in touch with Robert directly please fill out this interest form.

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Recently I approached a father that was walking with his child who was wearing a backpack with a “I have Autism” tag attached to it. I’d never seen this before and thought it would be a great opportunity to learn more about how another father works with their child. I asked, “can we grab coffee sometime? I also have a neurodivergent child, I am working on a solution to help when they are experiencing big emotions. My goal is to listen and learn about the daily experiences that you have with your child. To learn what you live everyday and understand what real support looks like.”

My name is Javier Maisonet, and I’m not a psychologist, a therapist, or even a certified mental health professional. I’m a father who sat through hours of therapy with his child after he was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome, has a little one who can have emotions larger than life, and a middle child who is navigating the overstimulation of it all. A parent who is now recognizing we needed to change up a lot of what we did as a family, and that technology could potentially help us.

Navigating the Diagnosis

The diagnosis came with the tics—sometimes vocal, sometimes motor. These we understood. It was the co-occurring conditions we weren’t prepared for.

Sure, there was a checklist of Tourette’s characteristics: Vocal tics like noise making were present. Motor tics like persistent eye blinking and head jerking, those were showing up too. But, then came the co-occurring conditions and what can show up within someone who has Tourette’s. Trouble falling asleep? Yes, every night. Non-stop talking? Yup, but I wouldn’t stop talking either. Can always revert to a doomsday scenario through anxious thoughts? Ouch. That one hit a little harder, having just told him weeks prior that I’ll start calling him “Doomsday” with how far he goes with scenarios. I admit, I felt terrible after that one. The realization that many of these things were out of his control was a very hard concept for me to understand.

“Mr. Maisonet, one way to help with his overactive motor is to implement some sensory strategies. We can create a worksheet that provides activities you and your family can do together”. That sounded great! Only, we have 3 kids: so we’re also balancing gymnastics, basketball, Taekwondo, church, car rides, and everything in between. Big emotions happen anywhere and anytime, and that worksheet was never to be found.

I started my Google search to find a solution that could possibly work for us. This included meditation apps, behavior apps, ADHD apps. But nothing that met us where we were. We were looking to intentionally start the skill-building of self-regulation, we knew we had to work together to get our collective selves under control before we could move forward with any other type of solution.

Children with ADHD, Autism, Tourette’s, Sensory Processing Disorder—and many more differences—along with neurotypical children are struggling with self-regulation in one capacity or another. Not to mention, their caregivers may be as well. I continued to think, how can we help our child regulate, if during those stressful times we show up just as dysregulated at times.

Starting to Build Sensory Toolbox

A few wireframes and a working prototype later, I enlisted some friends and other parents to help bring this idea to life. The Sensory Toolbox is meant to be simple, meant to work with you through your daily interactions and not be another barrier to a successful day. The prototype has everything we felt we needed; profiles for our multiple children, strategies that were calming for the times that our motors were running on high, and alerting activities when we felt we needed some extra motivation. We also added a reward system, creating an opportunity for positive reinforcement and for the kids to see this as a benefit to allow them to build their skills. And most importantly, data tracking provides valuable insight on what works for the child and provides ways to share with others like therapists and teachers to ensure everyone knows what works.

Annually, I attend a fundraiser with my family and this year I sat next to a parent who brought her son. However, the son was sitting alone at a side table with his iPad. At one point her son had gotten up and needed some help settling back into the space and I subtly watched the interaction waiting to see how she would guide her child back to focus. It was a perfect example: gently put both hands on his shoulders with a little compression for him to feel safe, refocus his attention to her eyes, ask him to breathe with her, and let him know that he is doing a great job. Thinking to myself that I really needed to learn how to do this, I decided to approach her to find out a bit more, if she was willing to share.

“I am really sorry, and I don’t want to intrude, but I was really wondering how you use sensory strategies with your son after seeing your interaction with him?”

“Not a problem! He has Autism, this helps him and I connect. We’ve been doing it for a while—as he just turned 20.”

The short conversation gave me the confidence to ask for quick feedback and initial advice from someone so willing to share their story. Once reviewed the parent shared that “the rewards in the app are amazing! He ALWAYS responds to being rewarded. Please let me know how else I can help, this is something that would have been really beneficial for us and could be beneficial with him even now.”

More recently, as I was speaking with another parent in the school drop-off line, the parent mentioned that their daughter had been struggling with anxiety and would only want her mother to put her to bed every night. The night usually ended in tears. She asked what I have been doing with my daughter to help with the anxiety that she had been feeling, remembering that my youngest daughter has struggled with anxiety for the last couple of years as well. We walked through the app and spent time on some strategies that could be implemented that night. The relief, response, and appreciation this parent showed the next day was incredible and motivitating. Hearing that after using some of the strategies we talked through, the child slept without tears for the first time in so long.

All conversations with parents and caregivers were starting the same: “We got our diagnosis, and then just didn’t know where to go from there.” I could relate. How do you shift gears in parenting? How can you not feel like the most inadequate parent? How do you not feel frustrated that you’ve been parenting your child in a “wrong” way for maybe too long? In those conversations, it was the breath each caregiver took that turned into a collective breath of everyone I had talked to. Maybe it was Tourette’s, ADHD, Autism, or just generally a child’s behavior, it was apparent we all felt a little lost.

Stories kept me motivated and the belief that we’ve got something here with Sensory Toolbox was becoming real. Parents were responding. Clinicians agreed with the use cases and saw the benefit in data sharing and creating plans together. At this point, we needed a chance to start taking a deeper dive. A chance to keep hearing stories and improving on what families needed. A chance to learn from others and for guidance on how to create a solution that could provide genuine impact.

Becoming a Promise Sandbox Awardee

“Congrats—you’ve been accepted as a Promise Sandbox Awardee!”

Many applications later to various accelerators, our chance finally arrived with a team of people showing they believed in me—and believed in this vision of creating a strong opportunity for family mental health starting at the early ages. Not only did the Promise team show up, but they showed up filled with intention. Intentional support for BIPOC leaders? Check. Intentional about centering mental health and rest? Check. Dynamic leadership and mentors? Check. Passionate about storytelling and centering the people they support? Absolutely.

Promise has a vision to impact the Early Childhood Development space by helping entrepreneurs like me succeed. They carved out a path to join me on this journey; through deep dive conversations getting to the core of how to make a small idea from a frustrated parent, turn into a plan for a successful business. Together we are on a path to identify how to launch successful pilots, capture real family stories, and isolate their pain points to create lasting success.

So, what’s next?

I have been asked numerous times “what made you start this?” I’ve wanted to share this story in full with not just my words but the words of families that have contributed so much to what we are building. I’m also sharing my story in hopes of encouraging others to share theirs. I’m continuing to listen to stories, learning where the gaps are within this community of neurodivergence parent and child support.

I want to encourage others to take these steps to listen and share. Our collective stories need to be told within this community—not just for creating a product, but to recognize that our personal stories are more relatable than we have ever imagined. And yes, through these stories, let’s create something that can change emotional wellness where it matters most.

So I buy the father his black coffee and watch him breathe deeply—grateful that someone is listening to him as he shares his own personal struggles with mental health, while also being grateful that someone has taken the time to build not just for them, but with them—and for all of us.

Next up, more pilots and more listening. If you’re interested in sharing your story or know someone who would like to pilot our app. Please contact us on our website: www.sensorytoolbox.com.

If you’d like to learn more or get in touch with Javier directly please fill out this interest form.

Our convening wasn’t your typical nonprofit gathering with back-to-back presentations and networking sessions. Our team approached it by leading with our values and centering the needs and experiences of our participants—a commitment reflected in every aspect, from the selection of our venue to our vendor partnerships.

Convening Goals

Creating this intentional experience required thoughtful preparation. We leaned on wisdom from previous Promising Ventures Fellowship convenings and conducted empathy interviews and needs assessments with awardees, making it a collaborative effort internally. Our goals were clear: we wanted participants to leave feeling genuinely supported—like their opportunities and challenges had been seen, heard, and meaningfully addressed. We wanted them engaged as co-creators of the experience and their ongoing support. And most importantly, we wanted them grounded in community, with deepened trust and connection among fellow awardees, mentors, and the Promise team.

With that in mind, we designed the three days around a simple progression: from individual reflection to shared work to our collective vision.

Day 1: Getting to Know Each Other

Addressing: Who is here? How can we create a space where each of us can show up in what ways work for us?

Day 1 was about ease and arrival. The aim was to make participants feel welcomed, grounded, and curious. We know that proximate leaders often carry a lot in their communities, so we started slowly in hopes that we would end with a sense of belonging and relational awareness.

We engaged in light bites, welcome circles, and getting-to-know-you activities that gave everyone space to transition from their daily realities into this shared experience. One of the most powerful moments came during our Personal Artifact Sharing session, where awardees, mentors, and the Promise team spent time being vulnerable and open about who we are—the shoulders we rest on and stand on, and why we love this work. We offered different prompts so people could choose their level of vulnerability, and participants were more open than we had imagined.

That evening, we hosted a dinner with DC area partners, intentionally connecting awardees with ecosystem leaders and celebrating this inaugural group. We invited friends of Promise—funders, intermediaries, EC LOC members, and other early childhood champions—creating a low-pressure environment for relationship-building. What resulted were connections rooted in an authentic desire to support this group of awardees.

Day 2: Understanding Each Awardee’s Goals and Needs

Addressing: What are our hopes and needs? How can we support each other’s growth and goals?

Day 2 was centered more on connection and context. We created space for participants to share their humanity before diving deeper into “the work.” Our focus was on providing venture and team context, ensuring all convening participants had foundational knowledge of the ideas and solutions awardees are building. We also dove deeper into individual needs and technical assistance to awardees. We wanted attendees to feel curious, collaborative, and exploratory.

The morning featured our Venture Short Story session, where ventures shared the stories of their work with all attendees. For some awardees, it was their first time communicating what they’re building, what they’ve learned, and what support they need in front of an audience. This deep-dive allowed awardees to present their ventures while mentors shared what resonated with them and initial ideas on how they can support.

Then we split into track-specific sessions where different types of support were needed. Our Early Stage Venture recipients—Dr. Maureen Nicol from Our House Baltimore and Adrienne Troy-Frazier from BEE Collective—participated in a Problem of Practice workshop. They presented real challenges they’re navigating as they scale their existing ventures, and mentors provided actionable insights through a consultancy protocol. The mentors showed up in a special way during these sessions, offering tangible support that felt similar to adaptive leadership approaches but even more powerful.

Meanwhile, our Promise Sandbox Award recipients—Christina Ratleff, Robert Harris, Javier Maisonet, and Cheryl Booker—used their track time in a Prototyping Workshop led by Promise Sandbox Award coach and facilitator, David Fu of Learning By Design, to explore the foundational questions of building something new. They even experimented with vibe coding to build prototypes, moving from concept to tangible next steps.

Day 3: Supporting Each Other

Addressing: What can we build, define, or commit to together?

Day 3 was all about co-creation and commitment. We focused on cohort identity, support commitments from Promise and mentors, and co-creation. We wanted folks to feel energized, aligned, and a sense of shared power.

The morning opened with a Fireside Chat where recipients asked mentors tailored questions about how to build, manage productivity, and stay true to values while navigating the operational realities of turning dreams into sustainable ventures. Topics ranged from operations to marketing to fundraising. Gaining wisdom from mentors emerged as a top highlight for awardees.

We closed with a Reciprocity Ring, where each leader made an ask to all attendees for support—requests for resources, connections, time for thought partnership, templates, and more. Then came final reflections and invitations for participants to make commitments to themselves and each other.

Our Key Takeaway

Meaningful connections emerge when we intentionally create space for fellowship and joy.

We built the convening with spaciousness that gave our awardees (parents, caregivers, and community leaders) a chance to connect, play, and breathe. Each morning began with opening circles facilitated by our Resource Mobilizer, Buckley, creating consistent space for check-ins and connection. On the final day, they led a playful activity called “See! Say! Do!” that had been a hit with previous cohorts—because joy and fun are just as important as strategy sessions. Buckley reflected:

“Seeing team members working together, laughing, getting a little competitive (or maybe a lot!), and then showcasing their images at the end with many insights around asking questions, how leaders communicate about the vision in their head with their teams who implement those visions, from this playful activity was really energizing for me and also reminded me of the magic of being together in-person which absolutely allows for a different kind of connection and togetherness.”

What struck us most was how the formal agenda became just the framework for deeper connection. The real magic happened during meals, hallway conversations, and moments between sessions. We trusted our attendees with vulnerability and offered choices around how much they wanted to share, especially during intimate moments like the Personal Artifact Sharing. This created space for authentic connection without pressure. Christina Ratleff shared that:

“During the Promise Fund convening, I found space to slow down, listen, and reflect while being held in community. As peers, mentors, and coaches shared their insights, I was reminded that rest and connection are not pauses from the work. Instead, they are pathways for leading Mother’s Trust Alliance with greater care and clarity.”

The energy was remarkable. One key learning for next year: we should integrate more movement breaks, un-facilitated time for 1:1 connections, varied spaces, and outdoor time. This is part of our pilot year—learning what we can do more of.

Highlighting Our Values-Driven Partnerships: Venue, Food, & Swag

We were honored to host the convening at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., thanks to our relationship with Ascend at the Aspen Institute. Ascend serves as a catalyst and convener for diverse leaders working across systems and sectors to build intergenerational family prosperity and well-being by intentionally focusing on children and the adults in their lives together. Their belief in the power of co-creation made them ideal partners for this gathering.

Our values-driven approach extended to vendors we included as well. We sourced most of our snacks, beverages, and meals from local, DC-based, and minority-owned businesses, including The Mocktail Club, Benjamin Lin Catering, Pisco y Nazca, and Alà DC. We also partnered with social entrepreneurs making a difference who provided our swag: Water bottles from Didómi (addressing the water crisis), backpacks from Bags by the Ocean, and light bites from Homemade in DC.

What’s Next

As we launch into the program year, the connections forged during this convening will be the foundation for ongoing peer support and collaborative problem-solving. Awardees will continue to get more connected with their mentors and launch their community of practice, beginning an ongoing peer learning and sharing space across cohorts.

We’re excited about what we learned alongside our awardees about what it means to design support that truly serves proximate leaders. Their feedback is already shaping how we approach our next cohort convening and informing our broader approach to supporting community-rooted innovation.

Today, we want you to get to know the six leaders we’ve funded and why we’re excited about them.

They’re parents, practitioners, and community builders who saw gaps in their communities impacting young children, caregivers, and families and decided to fill them. They’re educators who refused to accept the status quo and policy advocates who turned their lived experiences into systemic change. They’re visionaries who are eager to bring their ideas for impact in early childhood to light.

What connects them? They’re all proximate leaders—people with deep roots in the communities they serve and intimate understanding of the challenges families face. They’ve spent their careers building expertise in the space and now they are ready to launch efforts to solve problems they know will be impactful for children and families. We believe that proximate leaders are the ones best positioned to create impactful change.

After months of applications, interviews, and tough decisions, we selected six remarkable leaders to launch our pilot year. Here’s who’s reimagining early childhood—and why we’re excited about them.

After months of applications, interviews, and tough decisions, we selected six remarkable leaders to launch our pilot year. Here’s who’s reimagining early childhood—and why we’re excited about them.

🌟 The Early Stage Venture Award Recipients

The ESV Awardees receive $200,000 in unrestricted funding alongside customized technical support for proximate-led ventures that have already validated field demand. Learn more on our website here.

1. Our House Baltimore | Dr. Maureen Nicol

Our House Baltimore is an intimate sliding-scale play space and cafe offering culturally affirming programming and open play for children and their caregivers. Owned by Maureen Nicol, Ed.D.–a mom who created the space she wanted her own child to enjoy–Our House serves as a safe haven where children engage in play-based learning while caregivers take time for themselves. Through an inclusive, community-rooted model, they create joyful, healing-centered spaces where wellness, support, play, rest, nourishment, and economic opportunity are seamlessly interwoven.

Why we’re excited: Their theory of change is both intuitive and transformative: when caregivers are seen, supported, and healed, children thrive—and cycles of burnout, isolation, and systemic harm are disrupted.

2. The BEE Collective | Adrienne Troy-Frazier

The Beloved Early Education and Care Collective (BEE Collective) operates three interconnected programs in South Carolina that provide free doula services to over 60 Black families annually, run an Afrocentric Saturday school for young children, and support a worker-owned cooperative for BIPOC doulas and educators. Together, these programs create a comprehensive support ecosystem for Black families through culturally responsive care, education, and cooperative economics.

Why we’re excited: What impresses us most about Adrienne’s approach is her unwavering entrepreneurial spirit. Her team consistently asks, “How do we heal our community?” and then takes action—funded or not—to build that support.

✨ The Promise Sandbox Award Recipients

Recipients receive $20,000 in unrestricted funding alongside cohort support for proximate early childhood leaders with transformative ideas. Learn more on our website here.

3. Christina Ratleff | Mother’s Trust Alliance

Christina is Founder & CEO of Mother’s Trust Alliance, a public health leader, and policy strategist with nearly two decades of experience advancing racial and gender equity through systems-level change. Christina will use the award to develop a Guaranteed Basic Income pilot investing in Black mothers to lead birth justice and economic liberation through advocacy, care, and long-term systems change. Christina is reaching a significant milestone with her first-ever funding for the Mother’s Trust Alliance.

Why we’re excited: As a deeply passionate leader in maternal and child mental health, Christina brings both expertise and lived experience to this work, building on partnerships with Zora’s House and the Women+ of Color Equity Design Institute.

4. Robert Harris | The >3 Project

Robert Harris, M.S., LPC, provides training and technical assistance with the National Center on Health, Behavioral Health and Safety related to Head Start, and infant and early childhood education and mental health. During the program year, Robert will be piloting the >3 Project – a program designed to increase male representation in early childhood education through mentorship and networking. Robert brings a bold vision to diversifying the early childhood field by increasing male representation through mentorship and early exposure.

Why we’re excited: Robert’s commitment to building new, community-centered pathways into early childhood work positions this initiative to create lasting change in who enters and shapes the profession.

5. Javier Maisonet | Sensory Toolbox

Javier is the founder and CEO of Sensory Toolbox, bringing a background in education, public policy, and nonprofit leadership, with deep experience in designing programs that drive equitable outcomes for youth. During the program year, Javier will advance Sensory Toolbox—a beta rewards-based app designed to help neurodivergent children and their caregivers co-regulate through guided sensory strategies.

Javier exemplifies scrappy, mission-driven entrepreneurship. As a solo founder, he’s built a strong early version of Sensory Tool Box– with no outside funding—just deep belief in his vision and support from his network. His focus on social-emotional health and neurodivergence stems directly from his lived experience as a parent.

Why we’re excited: Javier’s commitment to co-design, building in close partnership with families and practitioners, ensures authentic responsiveness to real family needs. The fact that his own children already love and benefit from the tool speaks to its immediate value.

6. Cheryl Booker | Kindergarten Ready Pilot

Cheryl is the Director of Professional Advancement for the Family Child Care Alliance of Maryland and an Instructional Coach with the ASPIRE program, bringing nearly four decades of experience in early childhood. During the program year, Cheryl will co-create culturally grounded strategies with family child care providers to ease children’s transitions into kindergarten.

Cheryl brings a powerful dual perspective as both a former elementary school principal and current champion of family childcare small business owners. Through Kindergarten Ready: Tiny Pilots for Big Change, she’s reframing kindergarten readiness around emotional preparation rather than purely academic metrics.

Why we’re excited: Her unique positioning allows her to bridge two critical worlds in early childhood development, offering insights that resonate deeply with educators and families alike.

Learn more about the Promise Fund

The Promise Fund Awardees are reimagining early childhood support from every angle—from culturally affirming play spaces and Afrocentric education to neurodivergent-friendly tools and kindergarten readiness strategies that prioritize emotional preparation over test scores. Each leader is using their award to address critical gaps in early childhood systems while centering the voices of communities who have been historically marginalized, whether that’s Black birthing people seeking birth justice, men educators entering early childhood, or neurodivergent children needing sensory support. Together, they demonstrate how investing in proximate leaders with deep community knowledge unlocks transformative early childhood innovations.

Our work centers on uniting and supporting a network of over 750 nonprofit and for-profit ventures aligned with our mission. These ventures span every stage of development and reach children prenatal to age 5 in the U.S., along with their families and communities who are facing the greatest adversities.

Some highlights of our work include:

• Growing the Early Childhood Leaders of Color (EC LOC) Collaborative to over 400 members across 40 states and supporting the annual R.E.S.T. Conference to strengthen BIPOC leadership in early childhood.

• Launching the 6th cohort of the Promising Ventures Fellowship, coaching 10 ventures working toward more just and equitable outcomes for children and families.

• Accelerating over $25 million in funding to ventures in our network and facilitating hundreds of connections through two Show + Tell events on innovations for equity and preschool assessments reimagined.

As we continued our work to accelerate and connect equity-driven early childhood organizations through our capacity building and community programming, we consistently heard directly from changemakers in our orbit something we had also observed for ourselves: there was a lack of catalytic funding available to proximate innovators at the earliest stages of their venture development journeys. We saw this reflected in our data as well—leaders with deep experience in early childhood and expertise in the communities they hoped to serve were not getting the dollars they needed to drive the impact they envisioned.

We know that the early childhood innovation ecosystem can’t be healthy and thriving if the most promising innovators are frozen out or stalled at the starting line. Many promising social entrepreneurs never get the chance to pilot their ideas, much less grow their operations, build capacity, or demonstrate their full potential for community impact. In turn, the early childhood field misses out on transformative, community-rooted solutions that could meaningfully shift outcomes for young children and families.

This is what we’re working to change.

Enter the Promise Fund —our answer to systemic funding gaps that keep the most impactful innovations from reaching the families who need them most. The Promise Fund uses social entrepreneurship to preserve the best of our early childhood ecosystems while empowering the changemakers we support to point the way toward the abundant future we imagine.

Get to know the Promise Fund

Last year, we built the blueprint to disrupt systemic barriers by placing trust, capital, and support directly in the hands of proximate leaders in early childhood development. After designing and executing our application and nomination system, we reached an exciting milestone last June by selecting the first recipients of the Promise Fund and deploying $480,000 in funding to officially kick off our pilot year.

The Promise Fund launched with two complementary pilot initiatives designed to meet changemakers where they are:

🌟 The Promise Sandbox Award - $20,000 in unrestricted funding alongside cohort support for proximate early childhood leaders with transformative ideas.

🚀 The Early Stage Venture Award - $200,000 in unrestricted funding alongside customized technical support for proximate-led ventures that have already validated field demand.

The result? Six remarkable early childhood leaders are now bringing their community-centered, equity-driven approaches to fruition—and we’re just getting started.

🎈 What We’re Looking Forward To

This pilot year represents Promise trying on new ways to lean into the principles of trust-based philanthropy and community-led change. We’re looking forward to:

• Learning alongside our recipients as they navigate growth, challenges, and breakthroughs

• Documenting what works (and what doesn’t) in supporting proximate leaders

• Building evidence for the power of unrestricted funding combined with responsive support

• Creating models that other funders can adopt and adapt

Each venture represents a different approach to the same fundamental question: How do we create early childhood systems that truly serve all families and communities?

⏭️ Coming Up

This is the start of our monthly blog series where we – Promise Fund Award recipients and Promise team members – share emergent learnings, celebrate wins, discuss challenges, and offer an honest look at what it means to try something new in philanthropy. We’ll take you behind the scenes of this pilot year, sharing insights that we hope will be valuable for other funders, partners, practitioners, and anyone who believes in the power of community-led change in early childhood. If you’d like to get in touch with us directly please fill out this form.