About Constellation Philanthropy
“…Providing stable, responsive, nurturing relationships in the earliest years of life can prevent or even reverse the damaging effects of early life stress, with lifelong benefits for learning, behavior, and health.”
- Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University
Constellation Philanthropy focuses its time and investments on these earliest years of a child’s life, specifically prenatal to five years old. Geographically, we focus on programs and organizations working in Colorado.
From a financial, scientific and societal standpoint, investments in a child’s first years reap lifelong benefits for not only the child, but the broader community. Research confirms that it is far more cost-effective to make sure young children get the right start, versus the high cost of providing remediation and support at a later stage in life.
“If society intervenes early enough, it can raise cognitive and socioemotional abilities and the health of disadvantaged children. … The longer society waits to intervene in the life cycle of a disadvantaged child, the more costly it is to remediate disadvantage.”
– James Heckman, Nobel prize winning professor
of economics at the University of Chicago
Through Constellation Philanthropy, members learn about issues affecting early childhood in Colorado, discover organizations creating change, and explore opportunities to co-invest. The interactions that members have with each other, questioning and challenging, learning from diverse perspectives, is one of the most valuable features of the model, differentiating Constellation Philanthropy from other groups of donors.
With the added value of staff support and by sharing analysis with each other we are able to perform deeper due diligence, shifting the burden of research and data collection from each individual member.
Through relationships, research and reporting, Constellation Philanthropy helps donors invest more wisely in Colorado’s early childhood programs so all of Colorado’s children can have a great start in life.