Evaluation Finds 'Funding Plus' Sex Ed Strategy Works

In 2005, the Ms. Foundation launched a sex ed initiative to ensure that all young people will one day have access to fully funded, comprehensive, medically accurate sexuality education. Our Sexuality Education Advocacy Initiative (SEAI) was built to support grantees in achieving concrete policy and organizational wins; provide them with critical capacity building support; and cultivate networking and information-sharing between state and national groups to enhance the alignment of local, state and federal policy.

This multi-tiered, "funding-plus" model was, we believed, the most effective approach to supporting state-level efforts to mandate comprehensive sexuality education. Now, five years after SEAI's launch, an outside evaluation has confirmed that our strategy works.

In their evaluation of SEAI, Tom Novick and Erin Anderson of M+R Strategic Services found that the Ms. Foundation's "funding plus” grant-making strategy added significant value to its financial support of SEAI grantees. From the report:

The "funding plus" training and technical assistance were extremely effective in helping achieve the SEAI objectives.... This support helped grantees become more strategic and precise in targeting and organizing, and helped them see the connections between advocacy efforts at the local, state and national levels.

The evaluators concluded that thanks to the Ms. Foundation's multi-layered support strategy, "all current SEAI grantees have made tangible progress towards their determined policy wins relating to comprehensive sexuality education, despite the policy changes taking longer and being harder to achieve that originally expected."

That's the kind of news we like to hear!
Learn more about how the Ms. Foundation is working to support comprehensive sex ed initiatives across the nation.