The Permanent Fund for Vermont's Children

The mission of The Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children is to promote healthy, happy children and families in Vermont through the funding and support of community-based prevention strategies.

The Permanent Fund is a Supporting Organization of The Vermont Community Foundation.

It is dedicated to shaping Vermont’s future in the most positive ways — by providing proactive, strategic leadership and funding for collaborative, targeted projects that make a real difference at the most critical times in a child’s life.

The experts and the research on brain science tell us that close, positive relationships with parents, primary caregivers and other adults are critical to healthy social and emotional development. Children who get off to a solid start are more likely to become lifelong learners, contributing citizens and productive adults. Investing in children today not only saves money down the line; it also builds positive outcomes for generations to come.

Everything the Permanent Fund does incorporates these strategies for leveraging positive results:

1. Collaboration.Bringing together other funders, government agencies, nonprofits and business leaders yields projects that have greater impact than any of us can achieve working independently. Through collaboration, we are able to leverage our funds by about 3:1 — and we can fund strategies rather than individual programs.
2. Leadership. Because engaging the right people makes all the difference, we work with Vermonters who know their communities, who get things done, who have deep experience and are recognized champions in the targeted field.
3. Vermont as a laboratory. A small state can be a testing ground for big ideas. Vermont is an accessible, inclusive, often visionary community; it is seen nationally as a place where innovative approaches to solving society’s challenges can start small, be tested and refined, then taken to scale.
4. Tracking results. We demonstrate the impact of projects by measuring their outcomes. This helps ensure that our strategies will continue to achieve results and merit sustained support, from both the private and public sectors.
5. Patience. It takes years to achieve the lasting outcomes that we all seek. We’re committed to the long-term approach — to building strong relationships and staying at the table.