Foster America Fiscal Leadership Circle Fellowship Cohort 3

January 29, 2027 – December 2027

How Do We Unlock, Align, and Sustain Funding for Families?

About Foster America

Since 2016, Foster America has worked alongside bold government leaders, community advocates, and those with lived expertise to reimagine and reshape the child welfare system. We work to strengthen the conditions and resource pathways that help every family thrive.

Resources that support children and families sit across multiple systems and funding streams, each with its own designated purposes and requirements, making coordinated investment in prevention initiatives dependent on systems aligning their resources and priorities.The Fiscal Leadership Circle (FLC) is a yearlong fellowship designed to help leaders make existing funding across child- and family-serving systems work more responsively for families. FLC combines fiscal knowledge, leadership development, expert guidance, peer learning, and applied project work so participants can identify opportunities, navigate complex funding environments, and develop strategies that move resources toward prevention and family well-being.

We have already seen what is possible. FLC’s first cohort brought together 14 fiscal leaders from 10 jurisdictions, leaders responsible for making decisions about millions of dollars in child welfare funding and how those resources are used to support children and families.  Through  applied fellowship projects, participants identified opportunities to strengthen federal claiming, expand prevention services, improve cross-agency financing, and sustain family support. Five projects alone identified the potential to unlock approximately $125 million in additional or better-aligned resources for prevention and family well-being.

In 2027, FLC Cohort 3 will bring together a cohort of fellows from across the country, including a mix of individual fellows and site teams. Participants may come from public agencies and private sector organizations, providers, or other organizations working with children and families.

Fellowship Experience

Over the course of the year, FLC fellows will participate in a learning experience that combines fiscal knowledge, leadership development, applied project work, expert support, and learning with peers from across the country. 

Fellows will:

• Participate in monthly fellowship learning sessions
• Participate in one in-person convening
• Strengthen their understanding of the child- and family-serving funding landscape, including federal, state, local, and philanthropic resources.
• Build technical knowledge related to funding streams and fiscal strategies such as Family First, TANF, Medicaid, SSBG, Title IV-B, administrative claiming, cost allocation, braided funding, and cross-agency financing.
• Gain premium member access to Child Welfare Wonk’s member sessions
• Explore the historical assumptions, mental models, policies, and system conditions that influence how resources are allocated.
• Examine how to measure what matters for families, connecting fiscal decisions to family experience and outcomes rather than relying only on compliance and utilization measures.
• Strengthen skills in relational practice, adaptive leadership, strategic storytelling, collaboration, and sustaining  change across organizational and system boundaries.
• Learn with and from national fiscal experts, practitioners, FLC alumni, and peers working through similar challenges.
• Apply fellowship learning directly to a fiscal project or challenge they want to develop, advance, or sustain.
• Receive project development and implementation support to move ideas and strategies toward action and sustained practice.
• Share learning, progress, and emerging solutions with the FLC community.

Projects may include, but are not limited to:

• Maximize existing public funding across federal, state, and local sources, including Family First and allowable administrative claiming.
• Braid, coordinate, and sequence funding streams such as TANF, Medicaid, SSBG, Title IV-B, housing, and behavioral health.
• Build sustainable prevention financing pathways for Family Resource Centers, evidence-based services, community-designed supports, housing, and economic supports.
• Strengthen fiscal governance and infrastructure across agencies to align roles, investments, claiming, and implementation.
• Make the fiscal case for prevention using family-centered measures, forecasting, and return-on-investment approaches.
• Shift resources and budget priorities upstream by moving promising strategies from pilot to sustained implementation.

Eligibility Criteria

FLC  is designed for individual fellows and site/jurisdiction capacity teams positioned to influence how resources are accessed, aligned, invested, or sustained for children and families.

Individual and lead applicants should  have experience informing, developing, managing, implementing, or working with budgets, fiscal policy, funding streams, claiming, program financing, prevention services, or related child- and family-serving systems.

Individual Applicants

Individual fellows should:

• Be positioned to lead or substantially influence a fiscal project or initiative.
• Identify a specific project, challenge, or opportunity they want to develop, advance, or sustain during the fellowship.
• Have access to the colleagues, decision-makers, partners, and fiscal expertise necessary to move the work forward.

Team Applicants

FLC welcomes cross-functional teams that bring together the expertise and authority needed to address complex fiscal challenges.

At the time of application, only the fiscal lead applicant is required to complete the application.

The lead applicant will identify the proposed members of the team and provide each person's:

• Name
• Title
• Organization
• Connection to the project the team would like to develop, advance, or sustain through the fellowship

Team members may bring complementary expertise in fiscal management, claiming and billing, prevention services and services delivery, policy, data and evaluation, or be a philanthropic partner interested in collaborating on fiscal strategy. 

Teams should be organized around one shared fiscal project or challenge that they intend to advance together through the fellowship.

Fiscal Lead Requirement

Every application must have a fiscal lead applicant who is in proximate relationship to the funding stream or streams central to the proposed project.

This may include responsibility for, direct access to, or a working relationship with the people and processes responsible for:

• Budgeting and resource allocation
• Federal or state claiming
• Revenue strategy
• Cost allocation
• Fiscal policy
• Contracts and reimbursement
• Billing or invoicing
• Funding-stream administration
• Fiscal decision-making

The fiscal lead does not need to perform every fiscal function personally. However, the lead should be sufficiently connected to the relevant funding structure and decision-makers to help move the proposed project forward.

Strong Individual and Team Applications will:

• Demonstrate a commitment to align funding toward prevention for children and families.
• Bring a meaningful and actionable fiscal challenge or opportunity.
• Be willing to examine established fiscal practices, assumptions, and funding structures.
• Have sufficient organizational access, sponsorship, relationships, or influence to move the work forward.
• Value collaboration and learning across sectors and jurisdictions.
• Commit the time necessary to participate actively throughout the fellowship.

Program Costs and Financial Support

The Fiscal Leadership Circle represents a shared investment in building the fiscal knowledge, leadership capacity, partnerships, and implementation strategies needed to align and sustain prevention funding for children and families.

Foster America believes applicants should understand the financial commitment before applying. The cost to participate in the 2027 Fiscal Leadership Circle is $15,000 for an individual fellow or $50,000 for a team of three to four participants. Teams must include at least one partner from an organization outside the public child welfare agency — such as a family resource center, a nonprofit family-service organization, or sister governmental agency that manages early childhood or mental health support— who will collaborate with the team in advancing its fiscal strategy.

Program fees support the full fellowship experience, including expert faculty and subject-matter expertise, monthly learning sessions, an in-person convening, project development support, coaching, learning resources, peer consultation, and full program administration.

The team rate is structured as a bundled fee rather than a per-person calculation, allowing teams of up to four to participate under one program fee.

Support and Opportunities

For public-sector fellows and teams working on Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) implementation, allowable training and administrative activities related to implementation may be eligible for 50% federal reimbursement through Title IV-E.

Eligibility depends on the activity, the jurisdiction's approved Title IV-E prevention program and cost-allocation requirements, and its claiming process. Foster America will provide program descriptions, invoices, and other supporting documentation to help participating agencies assess and pursue available reimbursement. Federal law provides 50% federal financial participation for qualifying Title IV-E prevention-program administration and training expenditures. 

We do not want cost alone to prevent strong applicants from exploring the Fiscal Leadership Circle. Applicants with questions about program costs, potential Title IV-E reimbursement, or financial support are encouraged to contact us during the application process. A limited number of scholarships are available and our team can also assist with collaborative outreach to local philanthropic partners, where applicable.

Why Join the Fiscal Leadership Circle?

FLC is more than a fellowship about budgets or financing. It is an opportunity for leaders to work on a real fiscal challenge while building the knowledge, relationships, and leadership capacity needed to make resources work better for families.

Align and Sustain Funding for Families - Understand how resources currently flow through your system, identify opportunities that may be going unused, and develop strategies for directing more resources toward prevention and family well-being.

Shift From Learning to Application - Bring a real fiscal challenge into the fellowship and use faculty expertise, coaching, peer feedback, and structured project development to move the work forward.

Build Fiscal Leadership Capacity - Develop both the technical and relational skills necessary to navigate funding structures, influence decisions, work across organizational boundaries, and lead fiscal change.

Create Collaborative Relationships to Expand Resources- Build relationships across fiscal, programmatic, policy, implementation, provider, community, and family perspectives—recognizing that no single organization, agency, or funding stream can meet families' needs alone.

Learn With a National Community - Connect with peers, faculty, advisors, and alumni who are confronting similar questions and testing new approaches to financing supports for families.

Build for Sustainability - Move beyond securing one grant or maximizing one funding stream toward developing fiscal strategies, infrastructure, partnerships, and practices that can endure.

Why Now?

Child welfare financing is increasingly complex, fragmented, and difficult to navigate. The system was largely built to respond after families reached crisis, and its financing structure has historically made funding for placement more established than funding for prevention. Recent federal policy changes, however, are creating pathways to invest in families upstream.

Family First illustrates both the opportunity and the challenge. It created new ways to use Title IV-E for prevention, but implementation requires far more than understanding the statute. Jurisdictions must navigate service arrays, evidence requirements, claiming structures, cost allocation, data, contracts, provider capacity, and coordination across systems. Fiscal leaders therefore need more than technical expertise: they need the ability to build relationships, influence decisions, connect resources across sectors, and lead adaptive change. 

FLC gives leaders the opportunity to learn through application, work on real fiscal challenges, and learn with peers confronting many of the same issues under different conditions.

How to Apply

Applications for the 2027 Fiscal Leadership Circle can be found here and will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Applicants may apply as an individual fellow or as the fiscal lead for a team.

Individual applicants should describe the fiscal project, challenge, or opportunity they hope to develop, advance, or sustain through FLC.

For team applications, only the fiscal lead applicant is required to submit an application at this stage. The application should identify the proposed team members and include each person's:

• Name
• Title
• Organization
• Connection to the project the team would like to develop, advance, or sustain through the fellowship

Applicants do not need to have solved the fiscal challenge before applying. FLC is designed to provide the learning, relationships, technical expertise, coaching, and structured space needed to help fellows move promising fiscal strategies forward.

What to Expect After You Apply

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis as they are received.

Individual applicants selected to advance will participate in one interview.

Team applicants selected to advance will participate in two interviews:

• The first interview will be with the fiscal lead applicant.
• The second interview will bring together the proposed team to explore the project, team roles, readiness, and how participation in FLC can support the work.

Key Dates

September 21, 2026 — Applications open

September 29, 2026 — FLC 3.0 Information Session

November 13, 2026 — Priority application deadline

December 11, 2026 — Invitations to join FLC 3.0 extended

January 29, 2027 — First fellowship session

December 2027 — Fellowship concludes