My four-year old daughter is a big crafter. I would say, without any mum-bias at all, that she is a creative visionary. She spots that seemingly separate objects – leaves, an old bill, a straw, a screw, paints and pom-poms – can be brought together into works of artistic masterpiece. Over time, and trial and error, she has got very particular about the glue and cello-tape that holds these pieces together. She sees that big ambitious craft pieces quickly fall apart with a basic Pritt-Stick. Strange shapes and textures sometimes require creative placement and sticking solutions. The glitter glue often reigns supreme for bringing not just adhesive power but also additional ‘pzazz’ to an entire creation.
Those of us working on social change missions can often get so busy with the hard work of our part of the picture that we forget about the other sections. Or we only consider as organisational allies those who are the same ‘type’ of craft material as ourselves. Or we might well recognise that we are part of a complex piece but struggle to pay attention to whether there is any glue, and/or whether that adhesive is robust enough, to bring us together for greater impact on the change that we hope to see in the world.
At Ethos Foundation, we are quite obsessed with the glue. Also, on what exactly philanthropy’s role is in sustaining it.
This passion comes from our founding history and practice to date. The work of Ethos and its founder, since our establishment in 2017, has been focused on supporting the set-up of three organisations, who in different ways, act as connecting infrastructure for positive societal impact: The Childhood Trust, Thrive at Five and The Cabrach Trust.
When planning for the last ten years of our endowment’s spend down, these three organisations influenced the key feature of our current strategy: we want to help grow practical implementation models that bring together diverse assets in an area that we think is crucial to tackling child poverty – early childhood.
The reasons we have taken this approach is three-fold:
The glue brings huge value. We mapped the systems shaping early childhood and tried to understand why inequalities of outcome seemingly persist. The problem, we believe, isn’t a lack of evidence – there is a wealth of data that highlights why early childhood matters, for both individuals and for society. There is plenty of evidence about what shapes those outcomes. The problem isn’t a lack of resource. There is a wealth of money and activity actively seeking positive child outcomes – from Government and philanthropic funds and institutional powers; to the scale, data and behaviour-shaping power of industry; to the knowledge, attention and LOVE of millions of parents.
We think the problem is fragmentation of effort – including within and across sectors. If we strengthen the glue that addresses this fragmentation, we have the potential to mobilise £billions worth of resources towards a more efficient, effective and ultimately transformative impact.
The glue needs intention. Sometimes multi-stakeholder efforts and ‘whole systems’ approaches understand the necessity of diverse efforts, but consider the glue something that will happen naturally, or a secondary consideration to the specific parts.
Effective glue realises that care needs to be taken to create equity. Whilst money is one of several resources that supports systemic work, so are things like expertise, data, relationships, networks. However, without intention, power often skews naturally towards money, or towards big institutions like public policy channels. Effective collaborations take care to bring together the assets and constraints of different stakeholders on an equal basis. One example is Thrive at Five’s place-based work bringing together Local Authorities and parent power.
Effective glue is open minded about who might be a crucial asset or ally for co-working towards impact. This means working to understand the incentives and barriers that exist for those stakeholders – such as in Regenerate’s model l for working towards win-win-win models that make sense for impact, business and policy.
Effective glue works towards something beyond coordination; it creates a genuinely shared agenda that brings diverse materials together for mutually reinforcing impact. It includes sketching out what the whole picture looks like exactly, so that individual materials can see their unique role within.
All this takes a structured approach that is tested and iterated. It also takes relationships and trust to be built. Which ultimately needs time and consistent focus.
The glue needs strategic investment. We put our resources towards the ‘glue’ in systems shaping UK early childhood and help champion it as an equally valuable investment to those supporting the assets directly delivering solutions for early childhood. We stick to supporting a small number of models, across a breath of systems, to give us time and headspace to learn from and connect with other ‘glue’ approaches and allies, rather than add further to fragmentation of connector models. We love efforts like the Collective Impact Forum in the US or Place Matters in the UK that bring specificity and a common language to help codify the ‘invisible’ work(s) of effective glue.
Just like great art has the power to influence great action, we are trying to contribute to a bold national picture for positive early childhood, by paying careful attention to the glue.
Sarah, April 2026
