By Rachel Schumacher, Director of the Raising Child Care Fund
We are in a rare moment of opportunity to solve the child care crisis. States are experimenting. Voters are engaged. The narrative is shifting. If philanthropy wants lasting change, it must invest in the people building power to keep child care on the front pages and government accountable, not just the programs that temporarily relieve the symptoms of a broken system.
Parents of young children across the country are facing the same crisis, whether they live in New York City or rural New Mexico: they can’t find or afford child care. According to a 2025 analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, infant child care now costs more than in-state public college tuition in 38 states and Washington, D.C. And despite their essential role, child-care workers earn a median wage of just $15.41 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. One-third of center staff and one-fifth of home-based providers have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Families have long been told this crisis is theirs alone to solve. But no amount of budgeting can overcome the basic economics: high-quality child care costs more to provide than most families can pay, and without public investment, the market cannot correct itself.
That’s why the recent progress in New Mexico and New York—two states taking meaningful steps toward universal child care—is so important. These wins did not emerge from sudden political inspiration. They came from organizing. Parents, providers, and early educators built civic power over many years, often long before national attention turned their way.
Investment in building civic engagement in communities also accounts for the swift response of child care programs and parents most impacted by federal Administration proposals to freeze $10 Billion already appropriated for use in Minnesota and four other states that flooded the news in the first week of January 2026.
Until policy leaders act, parents and providers will keep showing up. From coast to coast, they demand a different vision of government—one in which child care and other systems work for everyone. Philanthropy can help.
Changing the Narrative via Organizing
For decades, child care has been framed as a private responsibility—something families, especially mothers, should figure out on their own. But today, more than 60% of children under six live in households where all available adults work, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The American economy runs on child care, yet the system supporting it is more fragile than ever.
Across the country, parents are discovering that their struggles are not personal failures but shared experiences rooted in political choices. Providers—predominantly women of color—are organizing to demand wages and benefits that reflect the value of their work and the expertise required to do it. They are building coalitions with other stakeholders, including business and faith-based leaders, to build power. Their collective efforts are keeping child care and family policies on state lawmakers’ agendas.
And, child care is not an isolated policy concern. It sits at the intersection of economic security, gender equity, racial justice, and democratic participation.
When families cannot rely on safe, affordable care, parents cannot work, organize, or engage civically. When providers are destabilized, entire communities absorb the impact. Investing in child care organizing is therefore not only about improving a system. It is about strengthening the conditions that allow communities and democracy to function.
Organizing is the foundation of movement that creates system change. The wins in New Mexico and New York demonstrate what becomes possible when communities have resources to build power. The response to the New Year’s freeze on funding in five states, which followed unproven accusations of widespread child care provider fraud in one immigrant community in one state, was underwritten by philanthropic investment in building power in child care. Collective organizing weaves networks among community leaders in populations typically left out, like immigrants and communities of color. It builds constituencies that matter to government leaders. Voters respond. Leaders take risks. Policy moves.
What Philanthropy Must Recognize
In this moment, philanthropy has a choice. This is not a time for signaling support for grantees who are working to build a better and more just use of government power. It is time to assess what changes your foundation could make to support the work to do so.
As Director of the Raising Child Care Fund (RCCF), I have the privilege of witnessing this work firsthand. Since 2019, RCCF has pooled private dollars to support parent- and provider-led organizing in 19 states and Washington, D.C., including the coalitions behind progress in New Mexico and New York. Along the way, RCCF shifted grant-making practices that kept community groups from accessing philanthropy. We use participatory practices, award multi-year general operating funds, and minimize reporting requirements. Most importantly, we trust community partners led by people who truly represent the culture, language, and racial diversity of that community.
Recent events in which states face a collective freeze of $10 billion for child care and other social services underscore why this kind of flexible investment matters. As child care providers and families face intimidation, misinformation, and sudden threats to funding, only organizations with sustained capacity, including communications staff, organizing infrastructure, trusted messengers, and strong community relationships, can respond quickly and effectively. Ask your community-based organization grantees if they have the capacity to meet a moment such as this. It does not appear overnight. It can exist when philanthropy invests early, consistently, and with trust.
Organizing is long-term work. Without consistent resources for leadership development, coalition-building, public education, and local mobilization, the progress we see today can quickly stall. Political attention is fleeting; budget cycles shift; elections reshape priorities. Systems change only when communities have sustained capacity to push for it. That requires patient, multi-year investment.
When philanthropy prioritizes short-term programs over long-term civic power, it inadvertently reinforces the systems it hopes to change. And without organizing, families return to the belief that the crisis is theirs alone to shoulder.
History shows that every major advance in social policy has been preceded by grassroots pressure—not because leaders acted spontaneously, but because parents, providers, and other individuals made themselves impossible to ignore.
A Path Forward
The question today is no longer whether the child care crisis and what families need to thrive merits national attention. The question is whether we will listen to the people closest to the problem, and whether philanthropy will resource their solutions at the scale this moment demands.
There is no path to transforming child care and family issues that bypasses parents’ and providers’ voices. And those voices are strongest when funders choose courage over caution committing flexible, long-term resources to organizing, standing with communities facing political backlash, and recognizing that lasting solutions come from those living the child care crisis every day.
Rachel Schumacher, Director of the Raising Child Care Fund. Formerly, she served as the Director of the Office of Child Care in the Administration for Children and Families.