Collective Action & Working Together at Scale: Lessons from Early Matters

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (00:03)

Hi, welcome to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Erin Carlson Rivera.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (00:08)

And I’m Jessica Beckendorf. Today we’re talking about collective impact, what it looks like when a statewide backbone organization and a local coalition work in tandem to move the needle on something as complex as early childhood education and childcare access. It’s a model built on shared goals, shared data, and a lot of relationship building across sectors. We wanted to dig into how it works on the ground, what it takes to sustain over time, and what other communities might learn from it.

 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (00:38)

Our guests today are Eric Hill from Early Matters, Texas, and Tessa Harlan from Early Matters San Antonio, one of the Early Matters local coalitions. Eric serves as the Director of Business Partnerships and Strategy for Early Matters Texas, where he leads business engagement strategies and helps regional coalitions grow support for their work from the business sector.

He’s a lifelong educator with over a decade of classroom experience, having taught in the US, Costa Rica, Italy and South Korea before earning his master’s degree in educational leadership and policy. Eric has worked as a policy aide for both Texas and U.S. House of Representatives and most recently served as manager of education and workforce policy for the Austin Chamber of Commerce, where he connected business to education partnerships and helped launch paid professional high school internship program with Austin ISD.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (01:33)

And Tessa brings over 20 years of experience in early childhood education, program leadership, and project management. Her background spans multiple countries and roles: teacher, director, coach, mentor, head start, and Air Force Child Development Centers. And that range, paired with her passion for families and collaboration, is what makes her partnership with Early Matters click. Through her work, Tessa is focused on improving educational outcomes and ensuring equitable access to high-quality early learning for all children in San Antonio and Bear County.

Hi, Eric and Tessa. Thank you so much for joining us on Practicing Connection.

 

TESSA HARLIN (02:08)

Hi, thanks for having us.

 

ERIC HALE (02:09)

Yeah, thanks. Glad to be here.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (02:11)

So well, to start us off, I’d love to if each of you could answer this question, it would be great. How did you find this work or how did the work find you? Sometimes the story is different.

 

ERIC HALE (02:24)

So I was first introduced to Early Matters locally in our Austin chapter. So Early Matters Greater Austin. I was working for the Austin Chamber of Commerce and ended up joining their local steering committee when they were trying to pass a two and a half cents property tax increase that brought in 75 million dollars a year for childcare. And I mean that was really a 15-year endeavor that had been built up from these coalitions that existed.

And I thankfully just got to be on the tail end of it and celebrate the successes. But then was further brought in to join Employers for Childcare, which is a coalition of about 80 business leaders across the state and was actually started by Early Matters Texas to advocate for policies at the legislature. And so when an opportunity to help business partnerships came across for statewide work, I jumped on it and have been with the group for just under a year now.

 

TESSA HARLIN (03:26)

So I came into this work. I was working in the nearby town New Bromfels, doing some mentoring. And like you said, I’ve been in early education a very long time and heard some rumors that people were trying to address some affordability and access and quality. And I was curious, a little bit skeptical, but like who’s who’s doing this work in this space? This is my heart. These are the people that I work with all the time. Let’s make sure this is something that’s speaking to the needs of the families and educators in the space.

And I started to attend some of those meetings and got to know that the team is doing it, they’re phenomenal and I kept coming and then they let me be on the team. And so here we are doing this work across San Antonio and supporting New Bromfels. But that’s kind of my entry point to into Early Matters San Antonio.

 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (04:12)

Wow. I love hearing how people get started with things. Would you be able to tell us what was the problem or gap that led to Early Matters Texas being created? And why did a backbone statewide model make more sense than a single centralized program?

 

ERIC HALE (04:30)

Yeah, I don’t know if there was definitely opportunity that existed. And so when the decision of what the structure of Early Matters Texas was going to look like, we made sure that it did stay as a separate backbone organization. All of our regions start locally. They come from communities who have buy-in already and who have done that work ahead of time and want to make sure we wanted to make sure that as we grew that

Our regions still formed that way, as opposed to dropping a model onto a locality. We help our communities evaluate if they have all the aspects to sustain the work that’s happening through collective impact, but we are not putting that on them. There’s to be a level of community investment to make this work really happen.

And there needs to be a local backbone organization as well that can support that work to really have the effects that we’ve seen.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (05:35)

And I wonder if we could talk a little bit about the role of backbone organizations, both locally and then how Early Matters Texas kind of operates in that way as well. Because I think, you know, we haven’t done on this podcast anyway, we haven’t done a lot of talk about the importance of backbone organizations, but they are so incredibly important. So would you mind sharing a little bit about that?

 

TESSA HARLIN (05:57)

Sure. Early Matters San Antonio has been around for about five years. And it originated, to Eric’s point, there was an interest in a group of people doing this work before the label was put on it, to those same kinds of concepts of affordability, access and quality. They gathered, you know, a couple of hundred people, did a lot of learning, and then built out an impact plan. And our role to go back to the backbone word is not necessarily to know the answers or to do the work, but to be hopefully in our space the lead convener for the early education ecosystem.

And so can we create spaces, can we do the homework or the back work or bring things to people to decide on or to improve or grow or expand or is it funding? But all of these people working in this space are also doing a whole other job. This is an aspect of their work, but not their full time work. And so we know how important it is to make change and make progress here. And someone needs to wake up and do it.

And so that’s the backbone’s role in that space is to to wake up and make sure all of the things continue to move forward and the people keep coming to the table.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (07:03)

Keep the train on the track. Keep it moving too.

 

ERIC HALE (07:09)

And they need to be able to have the capacity to be able to measure the goals that are being worked towards. Typically that’s why it lives within some form of an established institution, because they have that ability and somewhat of a bandwidth to be able to bring people together, coalesce, and then have access to data for those metrics to be able to say what is our impact, what are we actually doing?

And then as a statewide group, like we’re there in the same way, dedicated space to bring all of our regions together and help them through technical assistance, even though in reality we end up learning from them more than they probably ever learn from us. But having shared values and having the ability to see what’s happening everywhere and then pointing them into, this is a best practice that you might want to utilize and this might be here.

And just providing that extra support that they get to be so focused on what their community needs and then we get to see the cool things that are actually happening and sprinkled across and be like connecting it all together.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (08:16)

That’s awesome. And, you know, Tessa, you were mentioning kind of being that support and kind of keeping that train on the tracks and moving. And I would imagine, and we’ll get a little bit more into this a little bit later, but that takes a lot of relationship development and a lot of connecting the dots. So how do you get people who aren’t thinking much about childcare to see this as a workforce issue, not not just a personal issue that like people need to deal with on their own and figure it out and find some childcare, not just as like that individual, but how do you get them to see it as like a much wider issue? And is it a challenge? Maybe it’s not a challenge.

 

TESSA HARLIN (08:58)

It is definitely a challenge. We have a phenomenal team here that works on this and our executive director, Mark, has had some strategies in place that we use here in San Antonio to help get this word out. We do a thing called First Friday Breakfast, where on the first Friday of every month we do a presentation that’s business centered or civic centered that shares why early education is important, that about brain development, about how it much it costs to run a program, what where are our teachers and how much do they get paid?

And then closer to the end of this presentation, we’re actually showing employers what not supporting childcare actually costs them. Like as they have to rehire because people are leaving the field, those pay rates tend to go up. And as your worker pool gets smaller because childcare is not being addressed, those rates continue to go up. And so we share that on the first Friday of every month. We do things like best place for working parents, which is like a tool that businesses can use to assess their practices and get ideas on how to better support their employees that are also families or parents.

We also try to share it in a way that makes sense. Like we treat childcare like a public good, but it’s actually not funded like that. It’s not structured like that. If childcare doesn’t work, no one works. Even if you don’t have kids, your bus driver does, your coworker does. So we treat it like a public good, but we don’t fund it and support it that way. And I think people can get their head around that.

Just sometimes you’re just not thinking about it because it’s not in your space. So we just try to make sure that we share this message out, that we explain that 90% of a child’s brain is developed before age five. And so if we want our future workforce to be super creative and ready to set our city up for success, then we need to invest in that 90% as much as possible. So it’s just mostly finding space.

But once we get people to come to the table, they’re normally wildly engaged and have a lot of questions, and how do we connect?

 

And Eric helps us with some things like that around the business toolkits and things that maybe he can speak to around sharing this message out more broadly.

 

ERIC HALE (10:55)

I mean, we like to think that childcare is the workforce behind the workforce. And I think that during COVID everyone felt that they saw how the world stood still and didn’t know what to do when that piece was removed. So there is that memory, that piece in everyone’s mind. But once they really see the impact, once they peel back the layers, they quickly understand it’s not hard to sell it, actually.

It’s just once they recognize it, they’re like, What do I do? So a lot of the work that we’ve been doing is trying to provide them with easy next steps and allow them to maybe evaluate their own perspectives of what they could do, because there aren’t clear pathways for this. Like has somebody people have not mapped this out well and it hasn’t been shared.

Business leaders shouldn’t be experts in childcare, but we want to make them realize that they could make an impact. And so guiding them and showing them some of that has always been, they’re usually very receptive to it.

 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (11:57)

Hmm. Tessa, can you walk us through what a local Early Matters coalition looks like on the ground on the day to day? Something like who’s at the table and what autonomy do you have to set their own goals versus following more of like the backbone statewide model?

 

TESSA HARLIN (12:15)

For sure. Early Matters has about a hundred and two partners currently. We’ve slowly grown over the past few years. Our partners are the experts and the doers of this work. They know what our community needs. It’s a robust group from philanthropy to business to nonprofits to child care providers to child safety or our foster care supports to our local design and intervention services.

We spend a lot of time thinking about who, and and who all are the stakeholders in this experience and can we make sure that we have them at the table to help us with these decisions? We’ve broken our work up, like I said, we have an impact plan or a citywide plan that we’re implementing that was built in the community. And it has basically five chunks of work. We have some work around access to quality. So how do we support additional seats across the city? How do we support children with complex needs to get the care that they need?

How do we help providers become military accepting scholarship providers? We also have work around the pipeline, the early educator pipeline. We’ve got support in that space. How do we get, you know, some articulation work throughout our community colleges and state colleges? How do we support professional development in that space? We’ve got a family engagement work group, which basically has two prongs. One is connecting families to early education and care if they want it. And if they don’t, what resources do you need in that space as well?

And then around it, we have an ecosystem, which is basically enabling conditions for this work to get done. And that’s a data work group and a policy work group. And so each of those work groups has 30 to 50 members connected to them. Then we have in-person meetings about once every six weeks where we look at our list of charges, what is our access to quality goals or what are our family engagement goals? And the group is the decision maker.

So they decide which one we want to work on. That normally splits off into a subgroup, and then they build out a proposal and we fund it. And it happens and we test to see if it works, and then we iterate off of that and rinse and repeat across the 55 groups.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (14:18)

Yeah.

 

TESSA HARLIN (14:18)

The action’s in the impact plan. This one is probably about a $20 million investment to get it all done. We’ve raised and we shout out to our community who’s really been super generous and in and wanting this work to come to life. Around $13 million or 12.9, I think is where we’re at now.

This impact plan wraps up at the end of 2027, and we’ll build the next one because conditions have changed and data has changed, and hopefully we’ve made lots of progress and found some successes that we want to duplicate in the next plan.

 

ERIC HALE (14:51)

And when Tessa says that she has 102 stakeholders and partners, she means that there are 102 actively involved people. Like I was just down in San Antonio a few weeks ago and they had their big convening where they put out their impact plan. You can find it on their website. And people were so heavily engaged. Like they felt ownership of this. They were so involved in the process.

And that relationship that early Matters San Antonio has, that trust that has been built, it was just palpable in the room.

 

TESSA HARLIN (15:26)

Thank you, Eric.

 

ERIC HALE (15:27)

That is the only way that this really works. And that you can have so many groups going on at all times is from this groundwork that was built.

 

TESSA HARLIN (15:36)

Yeah. So it’s a hundred and two partner organizations, probably to give credit to the people doing the work, about three hundred and fifty people involved in in one

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (15:45)

Wow.

 

TESSA HARLIN (15:46)

aspect or the other of the work group. So lots of people pouring into this.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (15:51)

Yeah, that is quite the network to weave there. One question that came to mind while you were talking, Tessa, is you mentioned that you have this kind of ecosystem of support. On the front end, did you guys, by you guys, I’m not sure who I mean, but convening the original kind of group who got together and wanted to start making change, did you guys do some intentional sort of defining and development of that ecosystem and building out, what how did you end up with such a great ecosystem of support?

 

TESSA HARLIN (16:27)

Our origin story predates me. So I’m telling someone else’s story, so hopefully I do it justice.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (16:32)

Okay.

 

TESSA HARLIN (16:33)

But there were several people in our community that came together to want to build this out, and then they went and learned from different communities, and then continued to build out that stakeholder map. And we continue to do that to this day. So we for example, we took on a new bucket of work in the family engagement around there’s a better way to say this, but we’ve been saying like unstructured care, like the families who are not participating in Head Start or they’re not going to preschool or public pre-K.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (16:59)

Right.

 

TESSA HARLIN (17:00)

So we wanted to build something tailored for that group. And then we looked at the table and it’s like, everybody here is part of a system. We actually don’t know these families or what they need.

And and so then we stopped and we redid that stakeholder map and reached out and said, Hey, you know, you’re at the diaper bank or the food bank or you’re at the market or or H E B or local, like you guys should come and help us understand the population that you’re working with, and help us get connected so we can create something that’s authentically needed and valuable

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (17:27)

Mmhmm.

 

TESSA HARLIN (17:28)

And created by the community for the community. And so we have to kind of stop and pause and relook at who’s at the table. We are on an open door policy, please keep coming. Everyone is welcome. Every voice is valuable. And then we also as a backbone have an obligation to make sure those spaces are are equitable and they represent community and that they have a variety of voices speaking into what’s created and funded and built.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (17:52)

I also have more questions about that. I’ll just ask one though. I’m curious about, I love how this is set up. And it seems like you guys have done an incredible job of really inviting the community in. If you care about the issue, you’re welcome here. How do you work with some power differentials that could happen when that comes in?

Differential, that’s maybe not the right word to use here, but there’s some differences, right? I just actually had a meeting the other day with someone. We’re trying to plan an effort and the question was, “Hey, I’d like to have some residents come to this event. Are they welcome?” And of course they were. And she’s like, “Well, I’m a little afraid that their voice could get lost because they don’t see themselves as leaders on this particular topic, but they definitely have a perspective to share, and they have lived experience with this and everything.

And so how do you ensure that people’s voices are heard and valued?

 

TESSA HARLIN (18:54)

It’s a great question, and I don’t think you’ll ever be done with that. I don’t think there’s a mastering of that.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (18:59)

Yes.

 

TESSA HARLIN (19:00)

We start our meetings with a set of norms that we’ve all kind of agreed upon, and one of them being ‘take space, make space.’ So you’re everyone’s welcome to speak and also be ready to listen to others. I think having the impact plan and our headline goal, our work group goals helps us center around one idea.

And so we’re not necessarily, you know, chasing down maybe one entity’s passion project or we’re all actually coalescing around some shared values, some shared goals. People in San Antonio are phenomenal. We really don’t seem to buck up against that a lot. And we asked for feedback.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (19:37)

That’s great.

 

TESSA HARLIN (19:38)

And so hopefully someone, if people felt that way, we would get that feedback. But I think also there’s the behind the scenes too of prepping people for these engagements.

Anytime there’s someone new, I always invite them to come to me a little bit early, or I’ll go meet with them a week or two before and say, “Here’s the group, here’s who sits here, you are wonderfully welcome. And yet please take up all the space that you need.”

This is the context of the decisions we’re going to make to just try to set them up for as much success and engagement as they’d like to participate in. So those are some of the things that help. But I don’t think that we should always feel uncomfortable about that and be checking on that, and checking in on that because as we get complacent then we will lose some voices that really should be centered in those conversations.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (20:25)

Yeah. Thank you.

 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (20:27)

Pivoting a bit, what’s the specific role that the statewide layer plays that a local coalition couldn’t do on its own?

 

ERIC HALE (20:36)

Well, I mean, early at Early Matters serving as a backbone. We like to focus on coordination, convening, and amplifying. All of our regions are doing very different work and they have identified and found what their community needs. They’ve done the work, they’ve done, they’ve assessed and coordinated around a goal. Texas is a massive state. We have thirty million people.

All of the needs of communities are very different and the way that they’re going to go about it and the approaches that they have might be different, but we’re all trying to serve children and families in our communities. And as they’re going through these processes, their goals change. Like they have gone through multiple versions of a community impact plan. And it’s always what’s next. So once they’ve started to make that momentum and that change, being able to see and help them learn from each other and find out what they could be doing because keeping that momentum can be so difficult.

Either people feel great success and they’re like, “Okay, we did it. Fantastic. Now what’s the common problem that can be happening, and so how do you keep those local people engaged? How do you define and figure out what is going to be the next impact?”

And they are doing so much work on the ground that they don’t often have time to be able to look up and find and seek out resources and know what’s happening in other states. So it’ll we’re able to kind of provide that perspective and be that resource for them. And then the best part of it, we get to share with the state, at the capitol, all the things that they have figured out that could be replicated in other places. And we get to point to that and be an advocate for them from that perspective.

 

TESSA HARLIN (22:34)

Eric, can I just add one thing? I think you were touching on it there in the capitol. Policy. Early Matters Texas is a huge asset to our coalitions when it comes to policy. So much of this work we can test out and pilot and do it at the local level. We have a lot of say here. And also big systemic change may come from policy changes and different investments at the state and federal level. So having Early Matters Texas help with the policy, shared policy agenda, creating a set of things that we’re all saying so that we can get those ideas captured and in the minds of those who get to make those decisions.

It’s really, really helpful.

 

ERIC HALE (23:11)

Yeah, together all of our regions at this point represent changes all the time. But I mean it’s close to half of the state, like less than that, but close to it when you really look at populations and that has an impact. We have an understanding, a pulse check of what is happening. Appreciate you, Tessa hyping me up and pointing things out. I’ll do the same to you.

So also why I need these people in my corner.

 

TESSA HARLIN (23:38)

That’s teamwork.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (23:40)

One of the things we always say on this podcast in various ways is, “We need each other.” And so I think that’s the perfect example. Like, you guys need each other. And I’m not just talking about Eric and Tessa, but I’m talking about, you know, your efforts need each other. This is a huge, hairy, sticky problem that you guys are addressing, and you’re addressing it very well.

And also, there’s so much work to be done. And so gotta keep the train on the track.

 

ERIC HALE (24:11)

This is at a very interesting point because we are looking at the governance and structure of childcare as a whole. It is spread out across a variety of agencies. It touches the anywhere between six and nine and funnels funding comes from such a variety of sources that when you start peeling back the layers and you get to a problem, we’re able to point to a region or a place or people who have that experience and understand it and be like, this is somebody who’s doing something well, or is this happening everywhere?

We hear it from you, but is this like a local issue or is this something that is a struggle for every community? And it definitely impacts and that that is the way we approach our priorities when we go into the session for when legislation is on the table.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (25:05)

Awesome. So I’m going to pivot us because I would love for people to start to see how they might be able to build something similar in their area.

So Tessa, maybe I’ll start with you on this since you’re with a local coalition. But Eric, please feel free to chime in. So for a service provider or a local leader who wants to build something similar in their own community, and maybe on a different topic even, what are the first sort of one or two moves that you would recommend before you have any funding or formal structure in place?

 

TESSA HARLIN (25:39)

This is a good question. And Eric will probably have some more concrete details as he takes new regions through this process. But some advice I would probably give is just do a lot of learning. There’s a lot of information out there. There are other groups you can learn from. We’re four or five years in and still heavily in the learning phase. I attend a couple different coalitions that are not necessarily early education focused to learn about how they’re doing.

How do they structure things, how do they get to decisions? How do they share credit and move things forward? I’d say find some key decision makers and people who could be big advocates for you. We have a phenomenal board. We have four key partners United Way, Pre-K for SA, Workforce Solutions, Alamo, and Texas A & M San Antonio Institute of School and Community Partnerships. These four key partners of ours help move this work forward and helped influence some of the early decisions in the beginning.

And so I’d say find some key people that can help you on your side and do a lot of learning, and probably stay curious longer than’s comfortable, and then shift into some problem solving and developing a plan. Eric, what did I miss?

 

ERIC HALE (26:50)

I think I think you said it great. I think oftentimes people want to jump into it and just fix the problem. And so taking the time to really assess what’s out there, just having those conversations, like keeping it at the forefront of people’s minds and seeing who might come to the table. It does take one or two of those key stakeholders or people who have some innate power and authority.

This is where some of that change happens more rapidly, but it doesn’t have to come from that place. It takes time and it needs to understand and to really assess what is the landscape that’s out there, who is doing what, how can we work collectively towards the same goal and slowly picking those people up along the way to help with that effort before deciding what is the best solution? How do we move forward?

 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (27:43)

So, Eric, you’ve mobilized over 80 businesses and secured 20-plus legislative testimonies. What does that recruitment conversation sound like? How do you get people on board?

How would you get a CEO to write an op-ed on community care? Like how does that conversation start with a new person?

 

ERIC HALE (28:01)

First off, I haven’t done that. That is the impact of the groups.

 

TESSA HARLIN (28:07)

Mm-hmm.

 

ERIC HALE (28:08)

But bring me back in a year and I will hopefully be able to say that. I would love to be able to say that.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (28:13)

You could give us a master class on sales for this topic!

 

TESSA HARLIN (28:18)

Ha ha.

 

ERIC HALE (28:19)

But that is, I mean, we had the right partners and the right people together. When Employers for Childcare was first formed, it was a partnership between Texas Association of Business, which is our like kind of our statewide Chamber of Commerce, a really smart policy group called Texas 2036, and then the Texas Restaurant Association, because the pandemic really impacted non-traditional hours. and like they were asked to still be there, still working. They have become some of our strongest supporters and advocates for the need for child behavior because the system doesn’t fit the way that they are operating.

So we were able to bring in a lot of voices that recognized and wanted to see this change. And once you have that buy-in, it’s just giving them the right opportunities and coordination.

It’s still building that trust of, “Here’s some steps you could take.” We have a phenomenal partnership with an organization that was built out of Texas called Best Place for Working Parents that Tessa mentioned earlier. It starts with this simple three-minute assessment that just looks at, is your business doing X, Y, and is one of these like 10 best approaches and recognizing and celebrating, yes, you’re you meet the bark, fantastic. You were the best place for working parents, you can put it on your website, hurrah.

But then like it allows us to then say, what do you want to do next? Like there’s more out there. Here’s what you could be doing. Here’s the return on investment on it. There’s so many things that if you’re struggling, like when I talk with CEOs, I always start with, “What is your biggest struggle?” And eventually through that conversation, retention and recruitment of talent always comes up.

Somewhere in there, there are really hard positions to fill. And there’s simple first steps you can take to ensure you’re improving culture, that they know that they can have access to reliable childcare or they can have a more flexible schedule that can increase their retention and their satisfaction with their organization. A recent survey showed that 83% of millennials would leave a job if there was a place with better family-friendly policies.

So it makes it competitive. It’s also an economic development issue. If your community, if you want new businesses to come into your community, you need to be able to show that you have the structure to be able to support all of these new employees that might come with it, or that they can come in and they don’t have to leave children behind. You have the structures already in place for that growth and that ability. And that’s a huge incentive for larger companies that might want to invest locally.

So like I said before, I think a lot of business leaders, when they peel back the layers, they get it and they want to be champions for it. And we have a great ecosystem in Texas for that, which has been the ones coming up with innovative solutions.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (31:27)

So Eric, I don’t mean to put you on the spot here, but do you have any examples of a business? I mean, it sounds like you have lots of examples of businesses who are really into this idea and wanting to make some change and help usher in some change in this space. Are there any specific examples that you have of a success that has occurred? Like some are there any employee surveys that were put out where the employees said, ‘“Yeah, I definitely have stayed here longer because this is a family-friendly business.” I’m not sure if that’s the right question to ask you or you’re welcome to find the question within that. But do you have any examples of that?

 

ERIC HALE (32:09)

Yeah, I think as I said before, a lot of business leaders want to do more. They just don’t always know how. And it does start with surveying your employees because you need to understand what the need and the demand is and then be able to better understand how the approach could be more effective. You may think on-site childcare is the option, but you may find after surveying your employees that they would much rather have their child care closer to their home than have to drive their kids in to be there with them.

You may find that there’s a desert somewhere else out there and that it’s maybe just like the cost of care or just having some flexibility and backup care might make shift work so much easier. And most of these companies are kind of figuring it out on their own.

Texas Mutual is a great example. When they were building a new facility, they found the location and kind of did this work and decided to work with an existing childcare provider and built that into the center of their new facility so that their children are right there and available. But that’s not always the option for everyone. Bigger companies do have some of the resources and pieces for that, but it can be simple things. I was just speaking with a small, I think 40 something person design team called Brit Design Group in Austin. And when they were deciding on their parental leave policy, they decided to actually provide a percentage of the salary, but then extend it to 12 weeks, which is close to double what the national norm is.

And that allowed parents to have the time and ability to stay with their children all the way through, and progress back into work when they were ready. And that came from also surveying and talking with their employees, and knowing what was best fit for them. So I’m really excited because there’s some great new federal tax changes that have happened that will allow for more of these options to occur.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (34:22)

Mm-hmm.

 

ERIC HALE (34:24)

But for most of the time, there’s not a place to easily find what they should be doing. And I mean, San Antonio’s leadership has strong leaders who have really stepped up in this space as well.

 

TESSA HARLIN (34:35)

That’s a good point, Eric. Our board chair, Peter Holt, has done so many things to help the early education community. Part of the origin story of Early Matters San Antonio and a big part of the impact plan, from things like donating land for a new program to supporting pipeline work and and funding educator credentialing. There’s ways he’s plugged into even chairing the government task force on governance and early education governance currently.

So businesses can plug in in different levels. Of course, small business may have different assets than a larger one, but there’s ways for people to plug in. It’s most of the time to Eric’s point, people just don’t know necessarily how to, but they’re open to it and interested in it because they know that will help their employees.

 

ERIC HALE (35:20)

And this is such a complex issue that like this is not gonna fix everything, but it can reduce the cost of care. It can increase and allow families to choose higher quality care and like actually have the capacity to then go out and find care that might fit their needs, which makes them more assured and feel safer and be more present when they’re at their jobs.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (35:49)

Wow. Actually, speaking of, you know, kind of shifting over to community partners, which I know a lot of the businesses are part of that story, Tessa, I really want to ask you: you earlier mentioned that you have 102 community partners and they’re working on 55 concurrent strategies. That’s incredible. I need to take a moment just to recognize how incredible it is. It is really difficult to organize that many partners. And it’s even more difficult to organize 55 strategies being worked on at the same time.

How do you keep the coalition members, those partners, engaged and accountable to the work and to each other?

 

TESSA HARLIN (36:38)

I’ll just say I get the opportunity to speak on behalf of Early Matters San Antonio, but we are a shared work from partners to to colleagues. We are a giant team of seven, I think now. So moving this work forward has taken some really brilliant brilliant people and good planning on behalf of the whole group. Thinking about how you keep the work moving forward, accountability I’m putting to the side just for just for a second.

The group built the work. And so when the group built the work, you don’t have to sell it or remind them about it. There’s shared ownership of it. One thing I think we try to keep front of mind when doing the backbone work here is to move, and I think Collective Impact Forum calls it strategic urgency, where we have to de block this line of making enough space for really quality programming, pilots, projects to be developed, but also moving quickly enough for people to stay engaged and to see impact and results.

And that’s hard and there’s no fine 12 week plan, this is 6 weeks. Like you have to kind of drive with your feet on the gas and the brakes simultaneously. We’re doing this as a community, but we also need to get it done quickly because our kids are here looking for us to make change. And so I think because this group is known for and and not due to me, but due to us, big us, getting stuff done, people stay engaged. They know this work is going to happen, that we are going to make decisions, and so hopefully you’re here and present, that we are actively fundraising for the next big thing, that you can walk around and see the impact.

And so I think because this group, the whole 102 are really effective and really engaged, that it feeds itself. And we get to see the benefits come out of it and that’s a reward or a nice example of what we can do as a collective, and that inspires the next round of work across the community.

 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (38:47)

So what’s a common mistake you see communities make early on when they try to do this kind of collective impact work? And what would you tell someone to avoid?

 

ERIC HALE (38:57)

I think they often want to just get to the solution. They see that a little bit of momentum has happened and they want to jump into the meat of the work that exists without doing the groundwork that needs to happen. There needs to be time spent really identifying the problem, mapping out who’s involved, really understanding where there’s overlap.

Because if you don’t have those norms as Tessa referenced to, if you don’t have those shared values and that clear North Star of like what we’re trying to work towards, then oftentimes people start moving in opposite directions. We’re not rowing together. We’re not actually working towards a measurable piece. And that friction builds over time and there’s not that shared ownership that exists.

So those pieces that seem, especially people who do nonprofit work who care about community, they feel like, “Yeah, we know that already. We don’t need to worry about that.” We trust that, but that has to be built. Like, especially as you’re going into this work, collective impact is not easy. It takes a lot of ownership and development to then be able to get to a place like San Antonio has.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (40:17)

We were talking a little bit about this before we hit record, and one of the things that I see over and over is skipping over some of those really important parts. Tessa, you mentioned earlier that you start every one of your meetings by reminding everyone of those norms that you guys develop together. You do an orientation to help new people really understand and get folded into how you guys operate.

But one of the things that I see over and over is that, you know, people are like, “Well, we’re adults. We can figure out how to work together.” And we can. We really can. We have great capacity for that. And also, Erin, I don’t know if it was you before we hit record, you said, “Well, do we want to find out how we’re going to work together the hard way? Or or do we want to talk that through on the front end?”

 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (41:02)

I think that was me, yeah.

 

TESSA HARLIN (41:02)

Ha ha ha.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (41:04)

So I really appreciate everything you’re saying, Eric. I think that that kind of stuff is more important, but it also feels like you’re not getting anything done, but you are getting so much done by talking through all of those things.

 

TESSA HARLIN (41:19)

Hundred percent agree.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (41:21)

And Tessa, what some of the lessons learned that you’ve experienced in this work?

 

TESSA HARLIN (41:26)

I think we’re still wildly in the learning phase. If we keep reaching out and trying and asking for, you know, who else is doing this work that’s like ours, or who else can we learn from? And I think to those questions, we’ve learned that there’s no one way to do this. There’s not a website we just haven’t visited yet that has the answers to how to do collective impact successfully across time and and scale.

So I’d say, stay flexible. Listen to your community. Don’t try to make things into what it looks like for some other organization or region. Like listen, listen to the folks at the table. That’s why they’re there. They know what your community needs. Don’t be so rigid or try to fit it into some framework that exists. Create boundaries, create check-ins, create what it looks like for success to happen, but plan for ideation.

 

ERIC HALE (42:20)

Yeah. I mean it’s I think leaving the door open for opportunities. Like even as you move through the process, allow for other people to join and move with you. It may take some more backwork to get them adjusted and understand this approach, but solutions may come because you have the right people at the table and doing that work ahead of time. You may find new issues that need to be covered, find experiences that may bring more understanding and yeah, it definitely is an important piece of just seeing who’s at the table and leaving space and leaving a chair for them.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (43:02)

Well, I’m hearing so much of this in your voices, but also I’d love for you to just articulate what’s giving you hope about this work right now.

 

TESSA HARLIN (43:12)

I think the fact that we’re talking about early education and care gives me a lot of hope. Like I said, my family, both my mom and dad owned little tiny childcare programs when I was growing up. This has been a part of my life from jump. And I never heard about it on TV or I didn’t see it in the newspaper, or people weren’t talking about it on a podcast.

So I think that we’re talking about it, that more people that are not directly involved in early education and care are talking about it.

 

I also think that it’s a connector. Even in this climate that we’re in right now where there’s, you know, binary choices for everything. Childcare is something people can coalesce around. Early education and family support, people can all kind of coalesce around and support.

And we’re hearing that. We’re hearing that in lots of different spaces that never really spoke about this before. So I’ve got a lot of hope that people are coming to the table that never have before, and that we’ll have some opportunity to see some really interesting and creative support put in for families in the future.

 

ERIC HALE (44:11)

I think one thing, as I alluded to before, the federal tax code has shifted and it has opened a door and opportunities for employers to have a larger investment where it is financially feasible. Before it was such a small thing. And so this just allows for new approaches that I think can make a huge impact.

But more than anything, like I’m always just inspired by our regions. They are doing such creative work. There’s been work around shared services that has been done, a lot of that has been done in San Antonio. But we have currently four regions who have identified that also this is a problem, found their own approach to the way that they’re going to work on that, and now we have four test examples that we can point to and be like, “This is working for this, and this approach might be working for this.”

So I’m so excited to see how that grows and develops and then be able to really dig into what are the best practices that come out of that. So this model is working and it is making real impact for families and children in Texas. And that’s what really makes me happy.

 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (45:29)

Right. Well, our final question, I think: When we don’t do interviews on this podcast, we teach people skills. And I’m curious if there are any practices that you use, given your work is very complex and highly collaborative.

 

ERIC HALE (45:43)

I would love to say I do this all the time, but my go-to is just finding and carving out time for reflection. This issue is so deeply personal, so complex and sticky that we can be so in the weeds and the urgency of it feels so strong that we often don’t take the time to like step back and look at what we need to be doing long term: strategizing and celebrating and talking about what’s actually working to refill ourselves.

So that’s something that I try to set time aside for, because there’s never enough time. it does not happen. It’s not going to happen on your own. So that has really been a practice that’s been important for me.

 

TESSA HARLIN (46:31)

Awesome. I need to do more of that, Eric. I promise. Maybe that’s what those long car rides are for.

 

ERIC HALE (46:36)

Yes.

 

TESSA HARLIN (46:37)

And so if I was thinking about my role at Early Matters as Director of Partner Engagement, a lot of my work is the peopling aspect of this organization. So I think being transparent and authentically yourself is a must. We’re building trust. We’re asking people to do things differently or try something or be vulnerable or donate, and you have to be trusted to do that and to build trust, you need to authentically be yourself and be transparent about what you’re doing, where you’re at, where the work is.

And then the other one I’d say meet in person as much as possible. Zooms are great. They’re very convenient, but that person to person connection, those groups when we’re all together and the the meeting wraps and everyone kind of pairs into groups and they’re planning other things and the the work is spawning from itself, is is magical, and it helps refill fill your cup.

And so be yourself and be in person as much as possible.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (47:33)

Well, thank you both so much. It makes me very happy to hear you say, Eric, that you recommend self-reflection. So many of our practices on this podcast are based in self-reflection. And Tessa, I would say that when you talk about being authentic, showing up authentically, a huge part of that cycle starts with self-reflection. So knowing yourself so well that you can show up confidently and authentically as yourself, but also maintaining that kind of openness to people so that you can take in other perspectives as well.

So thanks so much for the work you guys do. And thank you so much for joining us, Eric and Tessa.

 

TESSA HARLIN (48:13)

Thanks so much for having us. This is fun. Thank you all.

 

ERIC HALE (48:16)

Yeah, thank you both.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (48:18)

That’s Eric Hale, Director of Business Partnerships and Strategy at Early Matters, Texas, and Tessa Harlan with Early Matters, San Antonio.

 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (48:26)

That’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us. If this conversation got you thinking about how communities can pull together, we hope you’ll share it with a colleague, partner, or neighbor who’s doing that work too. You can find more resources from today’s episode in our show notes, along with links to some of the examples we talked about today.

 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (48:45)

We’d like to thank our announcer, Kaylin Goebel Mathis, Maggie Lucas, and Joyce Fawn for their help with marketing, and Nathan Grimm, who composed and performed all the music you hear on the podcast. We hope you’ll listen again soon. Until then, keep practicing.

 

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.