Raising Child Care Fund

Founding and History

The Raising Child Care Fund was established by the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative in 2019, with an initial allocation of $1.9 million from five different foundations. Since then, as of the end of 2022, the fund has raised $11.5 million and funded 20 organizations in 17 states that are focused on an approach to family and child-care issues that use a left-of-center intersectional race-based framework. ^{2 3}

Finances

The Raising Child Care Fund is a project of the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, which is itself is fiscally sponsored by Third Sector New England. As a fiscally sponsored entity, it does not have its own tax return, and Third Sector New England is not obligated to itemize Raising Child Care Fund separately on its tax return. However, in its report on 2022, the fund reported that its budget was roughly $3 million. ²

The Raising Childcare Fund is listed as being a recipient of funding from Mackenzie Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, however, neither the Fund, nor Early Childhood Funders Collaborative nor its fiscal sponsor, Third Sector New England, are listed with a specific funding amount. ^{4 5}

Other funders include the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Irving Harris Foundation, Pivotal Ventures: A Melinda French Gates Company, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Richard W Goldman Foundation, and Vanguard. ⁶

Programs

The Raising Child Care Fund’s primary goal is to raise funds from donors to then redistribute as grants to smaller community-led organizations that are primarily focused on issues related to childcare, with an intersectional oppression and inequity-focused lens. ¹

As of January 2024, the fund’s website lists 20 partner organizations to which it has contributed funding. The descriptions of many of these organizations are focused on racial and economic issues framed as combatting “systemic oppression” and promoting their conception of “racial, social, and economic justice.” Some descriptions also use the controversial term “Latinx.” ³

Organization Philosophy

The Raising Childcare Fund has a left-of-center philosophical orientation. It describes itself as being a “learning laboratory” focused on “racial equity,” uses the term BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color), talks about “historic race and gender inequalities,” and has an “intersectional” approach. ⁷ The fund claims that its number one value is to work for “systemic equity” and that it takes an “anti-racist” approach to its work. ¹

Leadership

Rachel Schumacher is the director of the Raising Childcare Fund. She was previously the director of children’s initiatives at the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation and worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2014 to 2017. ⁸

Shannon Rudisill is the executive director of the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, a position she has held since 2016. Previously she worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration working in a variety of positions related to children and schooling. ⁹