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In 1970, Rick Davis was back from serving in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam and managing a shipyard in Burlington, Vermont. In his free time, he’d go sailing on Lake Champlain and wonder why the industrial waterfront of Burlington couldn’t be redeveloped into restaurants and office space that more people could access. On a lark, he began buying properties along the waterfront, benefiting from the site’s proximity to the bicentennial route—which was being honored in 1976—and historic preservation grants. He rehabbed the historic Holloway Block, which had buildings dating back to the late eighteenth century, tore down old factories, and built up restaurants and office space. Kids who lived nearby, in public housing for families with low incomes, would linger near his worksites, but Davis mostly ignored them.¹��

Until one day in 1981: An employee discovered a break-in at the worksite and found that tools were missing. Davis filed a police report, but within a day, the police located the teenage culprits selling those stolen tools on Church Street, the major thoroughfare in downtown Burlington.²��

Before pressing charges, Davis opted to meet with the kids and their families. “I had never thought about low-income people at all. I was really focused on my job, social life, and sports,” he said. He was 30 years old and knew nothing about poverty. He’d grown up in a conservative family; his father was a registered Republican who had served as the state treasurer. Conservative firebrand Barry Goldwater had been to his childhood home for coffee during a stopover during his campaign for president in 1964.³ In 1970, when GOP President Richard Nixon visited the state, it was Davis’s younger sister, Maggie, who greeted him on the tarmac with flowers.⁴ Davis would “never describe [himself] as a super left-wing liberal,” and dismissed the idea of providing “handouts.” Meeting children who lived in poverty became a pivotal moment for him in seeing that some kids “never had an opportunity to thrive.”��

“I will always want to give everyone a fair chance,” he said. “That is different from a handout.”

The “fair chance” initially came in the form of employment, as Davis hired the teens to work at his job site. But he also spent time getting to know their families: sitting on porches and smoking a cigarette (“I did it to be polite,” he explained, “I wasn’t really a smoker”). He went with the families to the county fairs or to the racetrack at Thunder Road Speedbowl for car racing. He would hear stories of hardship and jubilation: someone going to jail, someone getting married, or someone having a baby. He went to graduations and weddings. “I was totally invested in trying to understand the issues of poverty and the issues associated with it,” he said.��

Davis joined the board of the King Street Center, a youth development and family support center in Burlington, Vermont, only a few blocks away from the Holloway Block he had developed. He spearheaded a mentoring program for at-risk teens, but too many kids would complete the mentoring program, then become teenage parents and start the cycle of poverty all over again.��

Through this work, Davis began to realize two salient points that would drive his own philanthropic work for the next three decades: (1) kids needed interventions much earlier than their teenage years, and (2) too many programs geared toward very young children lacked reliable funding sources.��

His own real estate developments had done well. The state had given him every opportunity to grow and thrive—but what was the best way for him to give back?

In 1997, the campaign “I Am Your Child” burst into public consciousness with of a child’s brain developing normally, contrasted with another child’s brain at the same age that was misshapen and smaller. Directed by , who was himself launching his own advocacy for young children and early education, it featured research that showed that the first three years of a child’s life played , setting the foundation for future social, emotional, and cognitive capacity. “I Am Your Child” stories appeared in Time and Newsweek, Katie Couric talked about it on the Today Show, and Good Morning America produced a five-part series on the topic.��

Parents and educators came away with a clear message—the first few years mattered more than people had ever thought.��

Around this time, Davis was in his 50s and considering retirement. He’d spent a few years in New York City, trying his hand at sculpture. But something kept bothering him. Even with all of his work to understand and combat poverty, he still hadn’t been able to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. If he had to do it again, he would zero in on early childhood; that would be the time to reset the playing field for the kids who were born “with three strikes against them,” he said.��

In 2000, he set aside his ideas of being a sculptor and moved back to Vermont to focus on early childhood education. By then, Davis owned land worth $1 million that he was prepared to donate. He convinced another investor, Carl Ferenbach, to match him with another $1 million cash.⁵ With that seed funding, Davis and Ferenbach created the Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children to provide leadership and funding for worthy causes in the early childhood education space. Over the next decade, using money from the Permanent Fund, they created Vermont Birth to Three (that evolved into Vermont Birth to Five), which began offering mentorships and grants to early childhood providers throughout the state to improve quality metrics. The organizations also provided access to capital if child care providers were interested in expanding. As part of each initiative, Davis made sure to hire early childhood providers to work on his team—often in part-time or consulting roles that he ensured were well compensated. These educators had experience in the field and would be able to establish trust and build credibility with other educators. Years later, these deep connections would prove to be a powerful grassroots force advocating for child care in the state.��

Vermont had two national funders that maintained a presence in the state in early childhood education: the Turrell Fund and the A.D. Henderson Foundation. Rather than seeing them as competition, Davis reached out and suggested they join forces. By collaborating and pooling their funds together, they’d have a bigger and better shot at creating meaningful change. It was this funding that launched the Vermont Community Preschool Collaborative, which facilitated a pilot program to allow child care providers to access state funding for pre-K programming.⁶��

Vermont had created a voluntary pre-K program in 1997, under then Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat, but it was largely under the radar.⁷ Few school districts had opted to participate because for the first two years the districts were required to provide their own funding for the program. The state program allowed for a mixed delivery model, providing pre-K funding for child care providers as well as offering pre-K in K–12 schools, but the onus was on each school district to set the program up, find educators to participate, and fund it from their (limited) K–12 budgets. The idea was that after two years of running a successful program, those participating school districts would then be eligible for state funding.��

Davis saw this program for what it was: a chance to bring more state dollars to ensure higher quality child care, albeit with some hurdles to jump over. It just required time, energy, and resources to set programs up, but Davis had access to those, and he had a team of experienced, qualified early educators who could mentor child care providers who might be willing to participate.

Davis turned his energy to make this happen in school districts all over the state. The Vermont Community Preschool Collaborative helped school districts start their own pre-K programs and provided funding for the first two years. They also worked with home-based child care providers to ensure they could access the funding as well. With their efforts, Vermont went from 20 percent of school districts offering some sort of pre-K program in 2008 to in 2013.��

After Dean left office, a Republican governor came in, whom Davis described as “trying to slow down his momentum.” But then, in 2010, Peter Shumlin won the governor’s race. Shumlin was a progressive Democrat; a push for single-payer health care dominated his campaign platform. But he had been open to meeting with Davis and hearing him out about early childhood education.��

This was Davis’ opportunity to push the pre-K momentum forward: He had worked with child care providers all over the state and could show programmatic success, but he knew he needed a legislative component to ensure the progress continued.⁸��

Shumlin assigned an aide to focus on early childhood education, but Davis felt it was going too slowly. So he went back to Shumlin, asking again for a different staff member to focus on the issues.��

This time, Shumlin chose Aly Richards, a young political operative who had worked in fundraising in Washington, DC, but had opted to move back to Vermont and work for Shumlin’s administration when he entered office. “Game changer” is how Davis described their collaboration. The two of them began searching for ways to fund early childhood education in the state. Davis arranged funds to hire a professional grant writer, and he and Richards began to apply for federal funds for early childhood education. In 2013, Vermont was awarded a federal $37 million Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge grant and, a year later, a $33 million Preschool Development grant. These were big wins—and significant amounts of money in a state that spent a year in 2014 on child care subsidies for children from families with low incomes. But in both cases they were one-time infusions of funds to improve quality and access to existing programs.⁹ Neither offered the sustainable systems change that Davis wanted to see for early education.

In 2014, under Shumlin, Vermont passed the state’s Universal Prekindergarten Education Act, which provided funding for 10 hours a week for three- and four-year-olds regardless of family income.¹⁰ Unlike the program that had passed under Dean, this was no longer voluntary with a two-year performance period before state funding kicked in. This time, the entire state had access to these funds from the start.��

A win, yes. Though other states in the country had pre-K programs, few provided truly universal access, and Vermont had included three-year-olds while other states focused only on four-year-olds and the year preceding kindergarten. But Davis and other early childhood experts knew that 10 hours a week of pre-K was insufficient time for a family where all parents work outside of the home. This coverage did not support children under the age of three, and he felt it still didn’t do enough to stabilize the state’s child care industry.��

The problem, Davis realized, was that the public hadn’t bought into the notion of 0–5 being critical years for brain development. By the time the Universal Prekindergarten Act had passed in Vermont, experts and academics were well aware of the Perry Preschool Project, a study conducted in the 1960s by psychologist David Weikart. James Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, revisited the study in 2009. His analysis included the first-ever calculation of the potential rate of return: Every dollar invested in early childhood, he found, had a return of somewhere between $7 and $10.¹¹ And these quantitative studies showed that investments in early childhood provided the highest impact to improve outcomes for kids, particularly those born into poverty.¹²

Davis bought into Heckman’s argument, and he was personally ready to convince everyone in the state of Vermont that universal pre-K was the best use of their dollars. But the public, he knew from firsthand experience, wasn’t there yet. A still felt that children were better off staying home with a parent rather than growing up in a household where both parents worked. He could get one-time grants and incremental legislative wins, but that wouldn’t be enough to create a stable high-quality system—and that was what he needed to create the level playing field he envisioned for the state.

“We had to get public awareness,” he said. “I had a good handle on the amount of philanthropy going into the state of Vermont. I knew it was never going to be enough to do a super high-quality child care system.”��

It was Abraham Lincoln, Davis noted, who coined the adage, “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”¹³��

So in 2015, he created a new organization—this one focused on a public awareness campaign to educate people about the need for children to have high-quality early education.��

This one would be about changing the way people thought about children and education.��

He named it Let’s Grow Kids.��

Davis had a contagious energy and a doggedness about early childhood education that he brought to conversations with friends and colleagues. When he came across people who were willing to engage with him on early education, he’d often recruit them to serve on his board or become a donor. This was an effective tactic for securing money and gathering expertise, but it also meant that his initiatives were often moving in different directions.��

Buzz Schmidt, one of the early board members for Let’s Grow Kids, recalled his own skepticism about Davis’ myriad projects operating independently of one another, without a clear goal in mind.

“The mission is too general,” Schmidt recalled saying at a board meeting when Let’s Grow Kids was just beginning. “We should change it to ‘high-quality child care for all kids’ and make it date certain to put a real sense of urgency on the mission.”

Schmidt came up with a plan: consolidate all of Davis’ early childhood projects and organizations, pick a singular goal of high-quality child care for all kids in the state, and add a concrete timeline. The timeline would give Davis a laser-sharp focus and also make it more attractive to prospective funders, who can grow weary of open-ended asks. (Davis, too, acknowledged his own zeal for fundraising might have its downsides: “When people would see me walking down the street, they’d cross to the other side,” he joked.)��

Schmidt picked 10 years as the timeframe. He felt five was too short, and in 10 years Davis would be approaching 80—possibly ready to slow down, or at least dial the doggedness back a notch.��

And in 10 years, win or lose, Davis would sunset the organization.

Davis was on board with the plan. He pitched the idea to Bob and Christine Stiller, owners of Green Mountain Coffee, in the hope of getting seed funding for the 10-year campaign. The Stillers were known for being philanthropists who’d invested in Vermont, and they’d recently become more interested in neuroscience and why the first few years of a child’s life mattered so much for brain development.

Davis tracked down their contact information and wrote an email, explaining he was trying to raise $20 million for the campaign, and could the Stillers donate $5 million?

At the last minute, he deleted “$5 million.” But he kept the $20 million ask.��

Bold, he knew. But he had so much faith in the return on this investment that he didn’t hesitate before pressing send.��

A response came within the week. The Stillers were in for $20 million.

Davis had the funding he needed to begin this new project and a mission statement to carry him forward. He just had to figure out a way to do it.��

Fortunately for him, his board had an idea of where to start. Find someone to lead this. A campaign would need a champion: someone with political skills, state connections, and a deep understanding of the challenges facing child care and early education. Davis recalled his good working relationship with Aly Richards from Gov. Peter Shumlin’s office. Here was someone who had worked on the state’s most successful child care initiative so far, understood what Davis wanted to do, and was willing to work with him. He reached out to see if she might be interested.��

She wasn’t. Richards liked working for Shumlin, and what Davis was offering her seemed too nebulous—he didn’t even have a proper job description. Plus, she told him, she’d be more advantageous to his mission for early education if she stayed in the governor’s office as an ally. Davis was persistent, but she turned him down. Twice.��

Davis conducted a nationwide search, sharpened the job description, and found a qualified candidate who was ready to relocate to Vermont. Again, he hesitated. He really wanted Richards. He called another early childhood education champion in Vermont he knew might have sway with Richards: Howard Dean.��

Dean asked for a meeting with Richards on the grounds of discussing health care, then pivoted to the real reason he was there—on behalf of Rick Davis. “This is your chance to make a difference in the state of Vermont,” she remembers Dean telling her. “Think about it.”

This time she did.��

Richards committed to stay at least a year and help Davis get this new group off the ground and on track with a larger advocacy mission. Davis hoped she’d stay for at least three years.

Ten years later, she’d be there to sunset the organization, having stayed long past her initial estimate.��

But she didn’t know that yet.��

All she knew was that early childhood seemed like a good issue to tackle. How hard could it be?��