Child Care and Early Education Providers Are in Crisis. How Are Funders Responding?

NEW YORK, NY -- There is near-universal consensus that early-childhood education programs can break cycles of poverty and lead to lasting upward mobility. But funders say they have always been fragile, and have only become more so due to COVID-19. Early care and education do not receive much public investment compared to K-12 public education. The result is a patchworked system—if you can call it a system—kept afloat by various sources of revenue. Most early care and education providers teetered at the financial edge, with a month or two of reserves on hand even before the crisis. Weeks of closure have likely led to permanent closures for thousands of child care centers.