A mother in Brownsville, Brooklyn, pays for another load in the washer and sorts socks with her young son, slowly counting each pair, engaging him in simple math ideas. A laundromat as a learning laboratory? It turns out it can be an ideal place for parents to introduce early-math concepts and increase a child’s school readiness. Too Small to Fail, the early childhood learning initiative and Heising-Simons Foundation (HSF) grantee, partnered with more than 400 laundromats across the country to turn those idle hours into opportunities for preschool learning, making field-level progress toward systems change. In 2019, three New York City coin-operated laundromats, including one in Brownsville, carved out small, dedicated learning spaces with colorful rugs, bookshelves, and even a few puppets.1

HSF sees improvement in early math as a critical pathway to achieving its long-term education goal of a nation where all young children thrive, demonstrating the need to measure field-level progress toward systems change. To help realize that population-level goal, the foundation invests in building the field of early math learning. Learning in laundromats was just one of the innovative and pioneering projects HSF supported. Others included a multi-institution research collaborative, curriculum development, and professional development for teachers and administrators. From 2011 to 2023, HSF made 194 grants to 84 organizations, totaling roughly $107 million. Many grantees received multiple grants over those years, reflecting HSF’s commitment to long-term partnership.

“It’s been really interesting to think about systems-level change,” says Patti Miller, CEO of Too Small to Fail, regarding measuring field-level progress toward systems change.

Long-Term Measurement Is Needed to Better Understand Field-Level Systems Change Progress

But achieving systems change through field building does not happen within a typical grant cycle. It can take decades, even a generation. With such a long-term approach, funders face a tough challenge: How do you know if you’re making progress? How do you know that, say, a $100 million investment was worth it, and how can you tell whether another $100 million is the way to go to bring about field-level progress toward systems change?

Indeed, measurement remains a primary area of inquiry that we hear from funders curious about investing in field building. Rigorous measurement of field-building, systems-change work will always prove complex and challenging. At its essence, it reframes a core question asked by funders about field-level progress toward systems change: Did we solve this? Instead, measurement through a field-building lens asks: Are we helping build the conditions for many actors to solve this together?

Read the full article about evaluating field-level systems change progress by Emma Nothmann, Lija McHugh Farnham, Kevin Crouch, Wadia Mahzabeen, and Zach Slobig at The Bridgespan Group.