NEW: New Round of Child Care Innovation Reporting Grants Now Available!

Following on the success of the first round of child care innovation reporting grants, the Better Life Lab is offering another round. We are looking for stories that are specifically tied to innovations and improvements in the child care sector connected to spending under the American Rescue Plan, including obstacles faced by the upcoming cliff in which federal spending ceases. Stories should be solutions-oriented, with an emphasis on where additional investment or improvement should be made for better overall outcomes in child care.

We are looking for stories across all mediums, including print and online stories, photojournalism, graphic stories, podcasts, audio stories and videography. We will help pitch the stories to a wide variety of media outlets to reach broad audiences. Our previous grantees produced stories across a variety of mediums, including a graphic story, radio story and documentary short, and we are open to new and creative ways to tell the stories to help the general public understand the need for public investment, innovation and universal child care.

Interested in the grants but not sure what to write about? The Better Life Lab and New America’s Early Ed program will be hosting a virtual informational Reporter Roundtable with previous grantees, state-level advocates and policymakers and experts who’ve been tracking state-level childcare investments in September or October of 2023. More details to come.

If you already have an idea, please send pitches to Rebecca Gale at gale@newamerica.org. Pitches will be considered and stories commissioned on a rolling basis starting in the summer of 2023.

For a list of previous stories and grantees for Better Life Lab’s Child Care Innovation Reporting Project can be found here.