The right programmes, at the right time, at the right scale.

Taking a lifecourse approach means targeting different skills at the stage of childhood development when they are most impactful. Examples of lifecourse skills and developmental stages are shown in the grid below (developed by Prof Richie Poulton former Director, Dunedin Study, and Jimmy McLauchlan).

ENGAGE is an example of a programme that has successfully ‘lit up’ one square on this grid by delivering an evidence-based self-regulation programme to over 2,200 ECEs, with government funding. Aotearoa Lifecourse Fund aims to support more programmes to light up more squares on this grid.

Source: Prof Richie Poulton & Jimmy McLauchlan, 2023

Some programmes will be suited to universal impacts across the population, while others will be targeted towards smaller groups of children and young people with complex challenges and systemic barriers.

The Fund will support a range of programmes with different scaling targets, with a common focus on supporting evidence-based programmes to reach the optimum scale for their work.

Find, fund and scale.

The Aotearoa Lifecourse Fund combines three distinctive elements:

  • Finding programmes that successfully develop lifecourse skills,

  • Funding those programmes using a venture philanthropy model, and

  • Scaling those programmes by providing capability building, to achieve an exit to long-term government funding.

Click the three headings below to read more about each element:

  • Lifecourse research has uncovered many of the ingredients that help people live happier, healthier, more fulfilling lives.

    These lifecourse skills are well understood through research, but are seldom supported at large scale to improve people’s lives.

    One of these lifecourse skills is self-regulation. Famously, the Dunedin Longitudinal Study demonstrated that self-regulation skills in childhood accurately predicted the adult outcomes in areas such as health, education, income, criminal offending, relationship success and life satisfaction.

    Aotearoa Lifecourse Fund supports organisations that use evidence-based approaches to support key lifecourse elements and skills, including;

    • avoiding toxic exposures in utero,

    • providing warm parenting, attachment and language environments in first thousand days,

    • developing self-regulation and language skills in the pre-school and early primary school years,

    • providing mental health skills support in middle childhood and adolescence.

  • Venture philanthropy is a proven method for finding, funding and scaling high-potential programmes.

    The Aotearoa Lifecourse Fund applies an internationally-tested model of venture philanthropy.

    • Find high-potential programmes: there are thousands of programmes working with children and young people in New Zealand, and finding the highest-potential programmes is difficult. Aotearoa Lifecourse Fund will use rigorous scoping and due diligence to select 5-6 programmes that have an impact on lifecourse skills and can deliver these impacts at scale.

    • Provide long-term funding for growth: Aotearoa Lifecourse Fund will provide unrestricted grants through several phases of growth for each programme, with clear strategic goals and measures of progress.

    • Pooled resources and exits to government funding: Most programmes struggle to find co-funding to grow and sustain their impact. The Fund is a way to pool from a group of strategic philanthropists (spreading financial risk from the start) and the Fund will work closely with government, to increase the chances of programmes successfully exiting to long-term government funding.

  • Using implementation science methods for taking evidence of what works from research to reality.

    The ‘know-do gap’ is the average time between discovering what works in research, and applying it in the real world. The know-do gap is currently 17 years, and when this evidence is finally implemented, it often fails to scale, or work for those who need it most.

    In recent years, the field of implementation science has made improvements in understanding how to close the know-do gap, and ENGAGE is an example of a New Zealand progamme that has successfully used implementation science methods, to deliver an evidence-based programme at large scale.

    Aotearoa Lifecourse Fund will provide a day a week of hands-on capability building support to each programme. We will use best practice implementation science to help organisations close the ‘know-do gap’ and implement evidence-based programmes at scale.