Aug. 14, 2026
Investing in America Child Care Partnership
In the past few years, the federal government made historic investments in physical infrastructure, domestic manufacturing, and clean energy through federal legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. As communities sought to leverage these historic investments, there was an opportunity to advance a vision of integrating child care into workforce and economic development planning as part of a broader effort to expand access to high-quality child care so that we could expand labor force participation, extend high-quality care for children and families, and ensure inclusive benefits from these new investments.
Philanthropy played an important role in advancing this opportunity through the launch of the Investing in America Child Care Partnership, which funded collaborations across the country to integrate child care into workforce and economic development by expanding supply, reshaping financing models, and changing how employers and workforce intermediaries think about care.
Three findings emerged from the Partnership’s first phase, which include the importance of building relationships, harnessing local capacity, and driving conversations around the deployment of capital in child care. Grantees leading work on the ground found that:
- Federal leverage served as an important catalyst, and durable progress was maintained where relationships and plans established shared value: The child care requirement attached to CHIPS funding brought semiconductor manufacturers, chambers of commerce, and county economic development officials into conversations about child care and provider capacity that would likely not have happened otherwise. When the requirement lost political momentum, much of the engagement built on compliance went with it. However, the relationships built on something else continued. Employers who had come to understand child care as a recruitment and retention question, and counties that saw value in writing care into their economic development plans, continued to center child care in their work. Grantees describe that shift as a move from compliance-driven demand to a more authentic, needs-driven engagement.
- Counties and cities served as a stabilizing anchor: After the CHIPS child care requirement was no longer enforced, local governments carried the work forward, because their authority over planning, zoning, permitting, and public funds did not turn on a change in presidential administration. For example, through work led by the grantees: In Lebanon, New Hampshire, the city created a fund to cover health care costs for early educators and provided seed funding to encourage employers to offer child care as a workforce benefit. Pima County, Arizona, working with participating cities, school districts, and philanthropic partners, funded scholarships at more than one hundred sites, including elementary school classrooms that had been sitting empty and were converted to child care space, and adopted long-term early care and education policies in Pima Prospers, the county comprehensive plan. Multnomah County, Oregon drew on locally controlled revenue to fund its Preschool for All program, raise educator wages, and support the development of new facilities. None of these efforts would have moved without a local government willing to use its authority and capacity.
- Expanding supply is in part a facilities and financing problem, and the capital expertise has to be present from the start: Child care operators, the overwhelming majority of whom are small businesses running on thin margins, have limited access to public capital and facilities or financing expertise. The Partnership's CDFI partners helped local leaders test which facility models were feasible, understand what capital an expansion may require, and integrate child care into long-term community development plans. For example: Cuyahoga County, Ohio, now treats CDFIs as standing partners on facilities and finance rather than as a source of one-time technical assistance.
As the partnership’s work moves forward, we will continue to lift up and build on key lessons. Grantees and communities have shared more detailed insights for peer use and continuous improvement and agreed to make those available to other interested parties as well, which can be found here.
