Action 8 · Funding orchestration

Making the Money Work Together

South Africa is already investing in early learning. But the investments are fragmented and don’t work together for common goals. Funding orchestration asks how those different sources can work together to reach every child.

4 min read

Parents, philanthropy and the state are the biggest funders of early learning. Recently government has put serious money behind universal access to quality early learning, with NGOs and private funders investing alongside it. But a bigger subsidy allocation will not, on its own, reach every child. It only reaches programmes registered at Silver or Gold, and many of the costs of getting there fall between budgets: fixing toilets and kitchens, completing the paperwork and keeping going until the first payment arrives. The risk is that public money goes unspent while children wait.

Funding orchestration looks across that whole landscape, helping different sources of capital reinforce one another and identifying where additional, flexible funding could remove the bottlenecks holding progress back. It does not tell funders what to support or redirect existing funding. Nobody is told what to fund, and nothing that already exists is pooled or redirected.

“Organisations are coming to the table and they’re really willing to collaborate and start thinking about this collectively.”
Jesal Kika-Mistry, Bana Pele Secretariat and Action 8 Lead

Existing Funding

ECD SubsidyPermanent public funding for eligible programmes
ECD Maintenance GrantInfrastructure support to help programmes meet registration requirements
ECCE Outcomes FundGovernment and donor funding tied to measured child-development outcomes
Philanthropy / Corporate / Other FundersExisting investments across the early learning sector

Action 8 · Funding Orchestration

Understand the gaps · Connect the pieces · Match capital to need · Build the field

Emerging Blueprint Funding Actions

Action 5Make the subsidy work harder
Action 6Catalytic acceleration
Action 7Enterprise support

Universal access to quality early learning

Funding orchestration is the connective tissue that runs through every source of money for early learning, existing and new. It connects the subsidy, grants, outcomes funding, philanthropy, corporate investment and the Blueprint’s new funding actions to each other and to the wider funding landscape, so they work as one system rather than as separate streams.

Funding follows function.

Early learning has been funded funder by funder, project by project. Bana Pele starts from what success looks like at scale. Large, steady funding flows are one of the last things to achieve, not the first.

“Orchestration is a form of facilitative leadership. It’s not command and control.”
Jordan Fabyanske, CEO, Integral

Practitioner Zoleka Mkhize with a young child at a day care centre. — Practitioner Zoleka Mkhize with a child at Kiddies Love Day Care in Motherwell, Gqeberha.