Providing care for young children doesn’t just change their lives, it changes society. A Rotarian in Louisiana, USA, found a way to make donors see that.
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When Patrick Moore set out to raise money for early childhood education in his small community in central Louisiana, USA, he faced one big problem: exhaustion. Potential donors in the area were weary of being asked to give.
“Going out and asking for money just doesn’t work right now,” says Moore, a member of the Rotary Club of Alexandria, Louisiana, USA. “As a business owner and a person who’s served on foundation boards, I’ve seen how you get asked every day, twice a day, for donations to different causes. After a while, people are just tired.”
But in late 2023 Moore found a compelling reason to knock on donors’ doors no matter how tired they might be. A foundation serving his local area, the parish of Rapides, Louisiana, was offering a matching grant that could bring millions into the community for desperately needed childcare. The foundation said it would match the amount donated by the community. Moore decided to show local business leaders that supporting early childhood education would build a better workforce in the long term.
He knew just how important the cause was.
“I saw a presentation about early childhood education at our Rotary club. It stunned me,” he says. “We saw pictures of the brain of a child that had gotten attention and care, and one that had not. The difference was really striking.”
Children’s brains form more than a million new neural connections every second from birth through age five, according to the First Five Years Fund. A stimulating, attentive environment produces better cognitive development and improves kids’ ability to manage their emotions. Because this is the only time when children’s brains grow and change at such an intense rate, there’s no way to repair the damage in a child who is neglected during these years.
“People truly don’t understand that most of a child’s brain is developed by the time they get to kindergarten, first grade,” says Cindy Rushing, the director of early childhood for the Rapides Parish school district and liaison to the Rapides Early Childhood Network. “If we don’t do it in the early years, it’s not going to get done. Waiting until they’re in high school is too late.”
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