ABOVE: Patrick Moore, a member of the Rotary Club of Alexandria, Louisiana, USA, found a novel way to raise funds for early childhood education in his community. A business case for childcare Moore and other members of his Rotary club had been looking for ways to support early childhood education for some time. When they heard about the matching grant, sponsored by the local Rapides Foundation, they were shocked to learn the deadline was only four months away. But Moore thought a sense of urgency might motivate exhausted local donors to give. Knowing many were business owners like himself, he decided to make a business case for donating. “I put together a kind of investment plan. I went to different entities and said, ‘I’m going to give you an opportunity to invest,’” he says. “When you ask these businesses, ‘What do you need?’ they say, ‘Oh my gosh, we need workers.’ Well, by paying for early childhood education, we’re basically planting seeds. This money will help our community have a stronger workforce in the future.” Once Moore got people to think that far ahead, his pitch proved irresistible. “One person, when I told them that, said, ‘Wait a minute, this is like a recruitment and retention program,’” Moore says. “I said, ‘Bingo, baby! You’ve got it.’” The Alexandria club members also contributed substantially. Led by 2023-24 President Katie Vanderlick, the club agreed to donate $20,000 from its own small foundation. Individual members contributed around $20,000 more. Several of them had already been working with local organizations and the state government to bring more funding into the community. “Early childhood is a foundation for all the learning that takes place later,” says club member and former District Governor Cindy Cespiva. “And it makes a huge difference to families when parents have that opportunity to put their child in a quality setting. They can go to work and not have to worry about childcare.” Including Moore’s efforts, Rotary members raised close to $500,000 by the deadline. The Rapides Foundation matched that sum, and then the state government matched the total. Ultimately, the $500,000 that Moore and his club helped raise became $2 million for early childhood education scholarships in Rapides Parish. ‘She’s going to do big things. I can feel it.’ Moore met one of the recipients of those scholarships through the director of a childcare center in his neighborhood. Angel Sands has her three-year-old daughter Ryatt enrolled at the center. “I was so relieved when I found out about the scholarship program. I was calling around to different day cares, trying to figure out how much I would be looking at paying, and I couldn’t afford it,” Sands says. “The program has done a world of good for me.” Once she could afford childcare, Sands was able to take classes to obtain her general high school equivalency diploma. She’s currently training to become a medical assistant, a profession she’s chosen because of a tragedy in her own life. In 2018 she lost her nine-day-old son to sepsis. She believes he died because of errors made by medical staff and hopes she can learn to do better for other mothers. While she’s in class, she’s glad to know Ryatt is receiving top-notch care. “They have a great curriculum for the kids,” she says. “My kid comes home telling me the days of the month, and I’m like, ‘OK, wait, you’re three!’ She’s going to do big things. I can feel it.” That depends partly on the more immediate future. The Rapides Foundation, the Rotary Club of Alexandria, and around 50 community partners have committed to raise funds for three more years’ worth of scholarships. Beyond that, the fate of early childhood education in Rapides is less certain. Rushing hopes increased awareness will translate into support for more funding at the state level. Moore continues to let donors know their money is working for them. Recently he created a Return On Investment report about the grant, just to keep things businesslike. “Often, if you fund a park or something, there’s a ribbon cutting and a picture in the newspaper. And then six months later the park’s overgrown, and it’s like, ‘What happened?’” he says. “So I sent out an ROI report to say, ‘Here’s what we did with your money,’ just to show that longer term impact. That’s how they think at the corporate level. They’re always thinking about the bigger picture.” Learn more about Rotary’s commitment to basic education and literacy. — September 2025 | 
