PDG Newsletter April 5, 2023 Partner Up! Cohort 3 Applications Open Next Week The Partner Up! grant program, a part of Project Growth, will be open for another round of applications April 12-May 12, 2023. This program provides funding to support partnerships between businesses who purchase slots at existing regulated child care providers. The funding from this program can be used to increase staff compensation, reserve child care slots for local business employees, improve the quality of a child care program, and more. This round of applications will once again be administered by our partner Supporting Families Together Association (SFTA) and Wisconsin’s nine Child Care Resource & Referral agencies (CCR&Rs). There were two previous cohorts of Partner Up! awardees. This application round will be for our third cohort. There are a few differences between this round and the previous one. Cohort 3 changes include: Employer pay portion – Newly contracting businesses will need to contribute at least 25% of the true cost of care and businesses looking to extend their contracts will need to contribute at least 35%. However, businesses may not decrease their contribution amount from their original contract. Parent pay portion – Parents will need to contribute up to 10% of the true cost of care if they are part of a newly contracting business. Who should apply? Businesses Regulated child care providers who want to help sponsor the cost of their employees’ child care Note: Governmental entities are not eligible for Partner Up! grants. Partner Up! Kick-Off Webinar Wednesday, April 12 | 12-1 p.m. Join the Zoom webinar Passcode: 109144 Meeting ID: 828 7855 1988 Telephone: +1 470-250-9358 No pre-registration required. Just join the Zoom meeting at the time of the event. The Project Growth Kick-Off Webinar will have Spanish translation services available. You must join to the meeting through the link above (not by calling in by phone) in order to: Hear Spanish interpretation View the PowerPoint Enter questions in the chat Tip – you can download the Zoom app on your smartphone. This will allow all features to be available, including Spanish interpretation, viewing the PPT, and adding questions in the chat. The competitive applications period will run April 12-May 12, 2023 at 5 p.m. CST. We encourage interested parties to review all information on the Partner Up! webpage and start determining the need for child care among your employees. You can also preview the application questions for newly contracting applicants and renewing applicants now. The application preview documents are for informational purposes only, to help you prepare for when the application is posted on April 12. We will share more information in the coming weeks. Subscribe to receive Project Growth emails for more updates. Dream Up! Applications Closed Applications for the third cohort of Dream Up! closed recently. In this round, we received 29 applications. Our grant administrator, First Children’s Finance, will spend the coming weeks reviewing applications and nine communities will be awarded during this round of funding. Intent to award letters will go out in May. Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit an application for their community! Reminder: Submit Your Community’s Innovative Solutions for Child Care DCF has started to capture the many ways in which Wisconsin communities are working together and innovating to solve the child care crisis. What do we mean by innovate? innovate (verb) 1 make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products; could include applying new processes, introducing new techniques, or establishing successful ideas to create new value. 2 introduce (something new). DCF wants to hear how new partnerships, business models, and/or investments have allowed communities to significantly enhance one or more of the following: Access to affordable child care in the community, and thus, more parents joining the workforce Quality of local child care to meet the needs of all children and families Fair compensation and job satisfaction for the early care and education workforce Equitable opportunity to a higher quality of life among community members Share your innovation by filling out our new innovative communities form. You can also view examples of other communities around Wisconsin on the DCF website.
