Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donates $2 million to Neighborhood Villages for quality affordable child care

Originally Appeared in The Boston Globe
By: Ashley Soebroto

June 16, 2023

Neighborhood Villages, an organization pushing for structural transformative change in the early education and care system, has received a $2 million donation from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott to help make child care more affordable and higher quality.

The donation was awarded through Scott’s charity foundation, Yield Giving, which has donated more than $14 billion to more than 1,600 nonprofit organizations across the country, according to a press release.

The general operating grant will go toward Neighborhood Villages’ three-year strategic plan for accessible early childhood education, said co-founders Lauren Kennedy and Sarah Muncey, which aims to create direct service programs, partner with governments to find solutions, and advocate for policies to support early education.

“We are thrilled to be in a position that we can run boldly at those goals, which again, are oriented at how do we innovate solutions to some of the most pressing needs being experienced by the sector right now,” said Kennedy, who is the wife of former Representative Joseph Kennedy III. “This helps to create a very solid foundation for an organization like ours to give us the freedom and the flexibility to think creatively, to establish new partnerships, and to really make sure that what we’re delivering to both our partners in Greater Boston and in Massachusetts.”

Kennedy said the donation will help the group to find solutions for crucial issues, such as getting more behavioral and mental health support into early education and care settings, making robust investments in curriculum for young children, as well as investments in professional development for early education and care educators.

Muncey said the money will also be used to fund research to help “put real numbers behind the true cost of care, inclusive of social workers, counselors, infant mental health consultants, and family navigators.”

Kennedy said the organization first received a call from Bridgespan Group, who said they were representing an anonymous donor who was interesting in learning more about Neighborhood Villages. She later received a phone call from Yields Giving that it would be giving the group a donation.

“It was a wonderful surprise in that [Scott] and her team found us and believed in our work and our mission,” Kennedy said. “I would add that we are also grateful to MacKenzie Scott for playing a leadership role in demonstrating the importance of this level of philanthropic investment in the early education and care sector as a whole.”

Kennedy said the lack of affordable and high-quality early childhood care and education afflicts the whole nation, and not just Boston.

“How it looks nationally is that families are paying an average of $30,000 to $35,000 a year for child care. It’s unsustainable,” Kennedy said. “And at the same time, because the business model is so broken, not only is child care expensive for the family, it’s expensive to provide.”

Muncey said it’s important to provide pathways and support for educators and early childhood care providers as the current lack of support and resources in the industry is pushing many people out of the field.

“What you see in the city of Boston and around the country are lights out or closed classrooms,” Muncey said. “It’s on the verge of collapse, the lights are off, there’s no teachers because the wages aren’t high enough.

According to Child Care Aware of America, nearly 16,000 centers or family-based programs shuttered in 37 states from December 2019 to March 2021, which is about 10 percent of the pre-pandemic supply.

Muncey said she was grateful for the donation, which helps put the spotlight of philanthropy on early childhood care, emphasizing how important it was to invest in early childhood development.

“A brain reaches 90 percent of its brain development in years 0 to 5, and yet we wait until that child is 5, when that window of elasticity is really closing, to start investing in that child,” Muncey said. “[Investing in childhood care] is the best investment we can make on public dollar in a child or their caregivers.”