What is a fiscal map?
A fiscal map is a tool communities use to gain understanding of their ‘funding landscape’, i.e. the grants and other budget items that are used across agencies to support programming. For our purposes, fiscal maps also offer a ‘child-centered’ view of the budget since they highlight what outcomes, services and populations those funds directly support (and not a ‘siloed’ view of merely how much funding comes from what departments). Also, a fiscal map contains detailed information on how the funds that comprise your ‘landscape’ may be leveraged flexibly. Used in this way, fiscal maps help communities move towards more efficient use of existing funding, identify priorities for funding use, and better inform the pursuit of new funding.
What is the KY EC Fiscal Map Tool?
This is a tool to help Kentucky Community Early Childhood Councils (CECCs) build a customized fiscal map of existing federal and state funding that support early childhood programs and services in their community. The tool itself is a searchable, sortable, fillable, and downloadable data set containing information on all of the state and federal funding streams for early childhood services/supports that are used in Kentucky. The tool is designed to encourage CECCs to create a fiscal map in order to be able to better align their current funding landscape for maximize efficiency and also encourage CECCs to advocate for or seek new funding from sources that they may not be currently leveraging.
You will see multiple pages of information on this tool.
- This ‘Home’ page
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An ‘Instructions’ page
- Includes detailed instructions for a.) how to fill out the tool for your CECC; and b.) how to use the fiscal map you create in order to better utilize your current funds and also advocate for new funding. Also includes definitions of each of the variables used in the fiscal map and examples of how other communities have used fiscal map data.
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The ‘Tool’ page
- This is the data set you will complete in order to create a customized fiscal map.
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An ‘Analysis’ page
- Generates customized graphics of your fiscal map data.
Where did we get this data?
The data behind this tool came from a statewide fiscal map that was created for the Governor’s Office of Early Childhood & Early Childhood Advisory Council, a project supported by the 2019 Preschool Development Grant. The statewide map is the template that this local tool was created from. For the statewide tool, partners from GOEC and the ECAC worked together to identify what state and federal funding streams in Kentucky directly serve infants and children 0-5 years old, pregnant women and families on the basis of having children 0-5 years old, and early childhood service providers. Then, individual state agencies were interviewed and asked to provide their budget data for those particular funding streams. The state fiscal map was created using budget data from the ’18-’19 biennium. We ask that CECCs who fill out this tool include data from both the ’18-’19 and ’19-’20 budgets for the most relevant information and to be able to see trends over two budget cycles.