Early childhood development nonprofit Brilliant Detroit set to expand nationally

Brilliant Detroit, the early childhood education nonprofit that supports children in underserved communities “from belly to 8,” plans to expand its unique neighborhood-based holistic model beyond The Motor City.

Cindy Eggleton, Brilliant Detroit CEO, told The Associated Press that her group will branch out to three additional cities – Philadelphia, Chicago and Cleveland – starting next year and will change the group’s name to Brilliant Cities. The announcement is expected to be made Thursday night at the nonprofit’s annual benefit in Detroit.

“We currently have 31 cities in seven countries on a waiting list, which we actually didn’t try for,” said Eggleton, who co-founded the group in 2016. “We are literally trying to figure out how to keep up with demand.”

The demand grows as word of Brilliant Detroit’s success spreads. The group currently operates 24 neighborhood hubs in Detroit that help underserved families get their children ready for kindergarten and make sure that the children read at grade level through the third grade. Each hub is located in a formerly abandoned house that is renovated and staffed with tutors and volunteers who support the education, health and social needs of the children, as well as assisting the child's family. Brilliant Detroit says it now serves about 24,000 people at these hubs across the city and that recent studies show that children in the program have improved by three reading levels and that 92% maintained their progress during the summer break.

Eggleton attributes that progress to the community support that all the Brilliant Detroit hubs enjoy and the group’s work to maintain that support.

“There is a way to show up in a community that shows you are listening,” said Eggleton, who added that Brilliant Detroit only expands into neighborhoods where they are invited. “And we hire from the neighborhood – 33% of our people on the ground come from the neighborhoods we are in.”

The combination has brought plenty of attention and support to Brilliant Detroit, whose work was honored by The Elevate Prize Foundation last year and the AARP Purpose Prize in 2021.

Vance Lewis, associate partner at nonprofit Promise Venture Studio, a nonprofit focused on promoting and developing innovations in early childhood development, said that Brilliant Detroit has succeeded because it is “community-led and community-driven.”

“It works because it’s not fragmented and, in many ways, a lot of early childhood programs can feel that way,” said Lewis, whose California-based group offered Eggleton a fellowship in 2020. “You can come to a Brilliant hub and you are going to get coordinated, high quality programming starting from when you are pregnant through that third-grade reading level.”

At a time when major donors are scaling back support for education programs, Lewis said donors should look for smaller, successful models like Brilliant Cities as ways to make an impact.

“We know early childhood development still doesn’t have the public investment that it requires and should have,” he said. “I would say that a model like this is a way for funders to get back into it.”

Brilliant Cities chose Philadelphia as its first expansion city because the City of Brotherly Love’s communities organized themselves and showed why they would be welcoming to the program, said Eggleton.

“Philly is different than Detroit,” she said. “What is not different is a desire for more connectedness… I would almost say that there’s a hunger for this idea of place, of families being at the center of the work.”

Brilliant Cities is also looking to expand by offering what it has learned about mobilizing neighborhoods to other organizations at no cost.

“It may be used for efforts outside of things like early childhood and families,” she said. “We’ve been asked, ‘How would you do this for seniors? How might you do this in medical?’ And the answer is we’re going to teach people how to do it and they can do it themselves.”

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