Goal
Saturate advocacy spaces with messaging about the importance of affordable, reliable childcare in Virginia.
Our client, the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation (VECF), approached us ahead of the 2024 Virginia General Assembly session to support a campaign called Gotta Have Childcare—a joint initiative by VECF, the Virginia Business Roundtable for Early Education and the Virginia Promise Partnership. This coalition of organizations shares a common belief: all children deserve a strong start and a promising future, beginning with access to quality childcare.
The bulk of new childcare funding in Virginia has come from temporary federal sources, which at the time of this project were at risk of disappearing without increased investment from the General Assembly. Public funding makes quality childcare more accessible, enabling greater workforce participation and, in turn, generates more tax revenue for the Commonwealth.
Unlike K–12 education, early childhood education is not guaranteed for all eligible children. In most regions of Virginia, it now costs more to send a child to childcare than to attend a public university. At the end of 2024, without state intervention, Virginia was facing a $300 million federal funding shortfall—placing 35,600 childcare spots at risk and threatening job stability for more than 37,000 parents.
To help make the case to policymakers, Hodges was tasked with developing a comprehensive toolkit, a unified “song sheet” of messaging and assets, to ensure the Gotta Have Childcare campaign reached stakeholders where they were. We conducted and recorded several interviews to create authentic testimonial content that supported the campaign’s graphic materials.
Results
- A unified toolkit for advocates and organizations, ensuring a consistent look, feel, and message
- A downloadable one-pager to support conversations with policymakers
- Six testimonial videos shared by coalition members such as FirstSpark
- Campaign copywriting used on the initiative’s landing page
Why’d it work?
High-quality childcare is essential to child development, family stability and Virginia’s long-term economic growth. Shortly after the campaign launched, Governor Youngkin announced a platform commitment to fund a suite of early childhood education budget items. While the coalition welcomed this promise, it remained critical to keep Gotta Have Childcare front and center—to safeguard the proposed funding during the session and advocate for expanded investment.
By showcasing real stories and voices from parents across Virginia, the campaign created authentic, emotionally resonant content that elevated the advocacy work on the policy side. Many interviewees were coalition members, which helped drive ongoing engagement and amplified the campaign’s presence at press conferences, advocacy days and other in-person events.