Report Takeaways for Those Who Care about Care

Despite the vast wealth individuals have accumulated in the United States, no amount of charity money can “fix” the multifaceted care crisis. Newer strategies in philanthropy and political giving can play a tide-turning role in accelerating progressive social change through the care movement. Most philanthropic giving in the United States goes to colleges, hospitals, and arts institutions. Only 1.6 percent goes to women’s and girls’ causes, of which care-related philanthropy is often a small subset.¹ However, as the largest wealth transfer in the history of the world begins between baby boomers and their mostly millennial children, this is a tremendous opportunity to educate and engage a new and younger group of philanthropists.²

There are a few high-profile philanthropic efforts to address the systemic problems of our care system, such as The CARE Fund, which represents a consortium of foundations and donors and aims to raise and give away $50 million in five years, and Pivotal Ventures, which Melinda French Gates has pledged a billion dollars over 10 years via philanthropic grants and company investments that take aim at gender inequality while holding a strong focus on how caregiving specifically impacts women’s equality.³

Care is a gateway to solving many important social challenges. Fixing the care economy is a path to address gender, racial, and economic inequality. Funding care infrastructure will improve educational outcomes, strengthen workers’ rights, and support middle-class families. It also has the cascading effects of helping families escape poverty and supporting women’s workforce participation and leadership capacity. By building care infrastructure, we also change narratives about the value of paid and unpaid care work. Shannon Rudisill, Executive Director of the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, has noticed how more funders are recognizing these intersections by seeing how early childhood education and access to it is a racial and gender justice issue. “A big turning point, in addition to COVID, for our organization, was the racial reckoning of 2020,” said Rudisill. “Those two really went together in terms of more funders coming to us and saying, ‘Wait, we want to learn more about what you’re doing. It seems like you’re addressing this problem in a different way.’’’

Investing in care is a great ROI. Individuals and the private sector can’t fix care problems alone. The best answer is recognizing that care and care infrastructure are public goods requiring public investment. Philanthropists and political donors giving to organizers to unlock state and federal investment in care through legislation and ballot initiatives are like a matching fund on steroids. An example: The Early Childhood Funders Collaborative awarded a grant to Parent Voices California to raise their staff capacity and fuel a campaign to permanently waive child care co-payments for low-income families in California, which were temporarily suspended during the pandemic. The result? In 2023, the state legislature passed a budget making permanent the change that has saved families $195 million and will continue to do so. Political and philanthropic investments in care workers can also produce what Ai-jen Poo terms “triple dignity investments,” where the care workers and their families benefit from high-quality jobs, those receiving care benefit from high-quality care, and the parents and/or unpaid family caregivers can more fully participate in the labor market. “Transforming care jobs will have a ripple effect throughout the economy and culture that’s mindblowing,” said Poo.

Old problems deserve new tactics. Those focused on women’s advancement have often focused on the gender wage gap and women’s leadership participation. As of 2019, the U.S. won’t achieve gender equality for 208 years, according to the World Economic Forum—a statistic that Melinda French Gates has cited as influencing her thinking and strategy around Pivotal.⁴ This is why French Gates and other leaders in the space are beginning to focus more on removing systemic barriers women face around caregiving rather than merely supporting individuals navigating broken systems or providing direct services. Focusing on the dollars and cents issues of helping families, kids, and the workforce through building care infrastructure rather than encouraging women to “girl boss” their way out of their challenges may be the fresh approach we need to build a bigger tent of philanthropic interest. Reshma Saujani, the founder of Moms First, puts it more bluntly: “We’ll never get to gender equality if we don’t finish fixing the problem [of care]. This is the thing that’s standing in the way. All that money, all those resources that have been put into women’s leadership training—it’s in vain. This is the issue.”

Similarly, one donor’s political giving directly to a candidate is a short-term investment in one election cycle. However, investment in political power building through 501(c)(4)s and PACs can create a longer-term political constituency around a care agenda with the staying power needed for transformational change. In New Mexico, organizers like Erica Gallegos worked for over a decade on power building by visiting every child care center in the state and engaging in public education on New Mexico’s Land Grant fund. Advocates also supported candidates to challenge conservative Democrats who opposed their efforts in primaries, so at the right moment, they had built deep support for a very tangible initiative for New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham (D) to champion. This targeted and long-term strategy is very different from making an individual donation to a progressive governor who theoretically supports early childhood investment. The new initiatives around the 2024 elections, such as Care Can’t Wait Action’s $50 million campaign, will be a large-scale case study in attempting to make care issues central to a presidential election cycle.

Start supporting federal and state care policy initiatives, including paid family leave and public investment in universal care infrastructure. The long-term health of businesses requires employers to support public investment in universal care policies and programs that increase productivity, expand and stabilize the workforce, and attract the best workers.⁵ Investing in care infrastructure will unlock more workforce talent and grow the GDP 10 to 15 basis points over 10 years.⁶ For business leaders who rely on contract labor or wish to see more start-ups and entrepreneurial efforts, ensuring that workers have access to universal, portable public benefits is key. In addition to individual corporate support, consider starting independent business coalitions that seek to advance employee-based care benefits and larger care agenda initiatives. A great model for this is the Second Chance Business Coalition, which includes over 40 large private sector companies working on reforming policies related to reintegration and hiring those with criminal records.⁷

Carry on your commitment to care. Creating robust benefits around paid family leave and care for your employees is both the right thing to do and good for business, and there are many great resources, like from the Society of Human Resources Management, that can help advise on this.⁸ There is also a burgeoning family technology or “FamTech” sector with startups aiming to support employees with caregiver needs through employee benefit programs. A few examples include Care.com, Cariloop, Homethrive, Josie, LUMO, MH Worklife , and Villyge, to name a few. However, make your commitment long-lasting and not subject to the latest market trends. Do not reduce care benefits as part of cost-cutting measures. It can weaken local care economies; frame care as a “nice to have” perk rather than addressing a fundamental need; undermine long-term goals around workplace diversity, loyalty, and retention; and break employee trust.

Extend your diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging efforts to caregivers. Caregivers are the fastest-growing workplace identity group, with 73 percent of employees identifying as a caregiver.⁹ For companies to better support their needs, good data is a first start and line of defense against workplace discrimination. Start tracking caregiver status and be clear in your policy manual that you will not discriminate or retaliate against caregivers so that they will feel safe disclosing their status. Encourage systemic changes by encouraging the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to require all companies to do this. It’s important to note that while women make up the majority of those with significant family and elder care responsibilities, a higher share of male caregivers had left a job over their caregiving responsibilities.¹⁰

For those facing immediate care crises like a year-long child care waitlist or losing a string of home care aides because of low pay, know that your personal struggles are not the result of personal failures. Improving our care infrastructure is a long process that won’t likely address immediate needs. This section illustrates how you can support a more robust care economy.

Support worker efforts to unionize, get raises, and improve conditions. Care consumers committed to systemic change will ultimately benefit from staying focused on the big picture: Supporting worker pay is a crucial step towards broad solutions for everyone. If cost increases for families are a downstream effect of improved worker pay, be vocal about it and push for the next step of progress, including major new public investments to help make care affordable for all families while at the same time ensuring all care jobs are good jobs. Staying united with workers will strengthen the overall care movement efforts to get much-needed government funding and subsidies to address the care crisis broadly.

Join local efforts to improve care. Find out what nonprofits and political organizations in your area support care issues, and get involved as a volunteer or member. Some national organizations that you can get involved with from anywhere include MomsRising, Chamber of Mothers, Caring Across Generations, and Moms First.

Support ballot initiatives and issues-based campaigns. If you have the means to make political donations, let politicians know how important care is to you as a voter by supporting care-oriented PACs and 501(c)(4)s like Care in Action, Care Can’t Wait, Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, Family Values at Work Action, and Paid Leave for All Action.

Attend town halls, candidate forums, and elected official meetings; write letters; make noise; and advocate for care. Politicians need to hear your stories and know that paid leave, child care, and care for older and disabled adults are vote-swaying issues for you and that you demand action.

There are many examples of workers being central to legislative and ballot-based care victories in recent years. Examples include New Mexico’s universal child care constitutional amendment, securing $40 million per year for child care for low-income kids in New Orleans, paid leave efforts in Colorado and Minnesota, and securing $1 billion in long-term care funding in Washington State.

Know your rights around caregiving. The Center for WorkLife Law, A Better Balance, and the National Women’s Law Center provide legal support on a range of issues, including gender and caregiver discrimination and harassment, as well as advice on rights under the new Pregnant Worker’s Fairness Act (PWFA) and Providing Urgent Maternal Protection for Nursing Mothers Act (PUMP). Although the National Labor Relations Board lacks the ability to leverage meaningful penalties against companies for violations, it is still a very important independent government organization for protecting worker rights. Workers can file charges and petitions with them directly. The EEOC is also a crucial agency for enforcing all federal discrimination laws. They have the power to investigate claims and file lawsuits, so people who think they’ve experienced discrimination as an employee or a job applicant have recourse to file a charge with the commission.¹¹

Join a care union or worker organization. There’s lots of exciting union and worker organization momentum for care workers in different parts of the country. Find out if there is union or worker-organizing activity in your area to join or support. Some of the major organizations that represent care workers include the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), United Domestic Workers (UDW), and the American Federation of State and County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

Join other influential organizations. For those who live in “right to work” states with little traditional labor union presence, there are still many other options for building collective power. In the South, there’s a new union called the Union of Southern Service Workers and sectoral economic justice organizations, like Fight for 15, that can be great places to organize around care worker concerns. Other organizations like the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Caring Across Generations, We Dream in Black, and Hand in Hand provide various resources, training, education, and organizing for workers outside of a traditional union structure.

We need a transformational change and investment in our care system. Keep listening to constituents, advocates, and those closest to the problem about their challenges and the lives they want to build with work and care—their “north stars.” Help them work towards this hopeful vision rather than saying the goals are unrealistic. Bold policy ideas for care, even when it involves raising taxes, have a strong track record of voter support and have shown strong and long-lasting benefits. Sell the “brownie” of positive outcomes rather than the “recipe” of policy details. Champion the idea that strong care policies support businesses and the economy, address poverty, and help rebuild and stabilize middle-class families. Tell vivid stories about this. Telling the story of inequality, how corporations have benefitted wildly in profits and tax avoidance at the expense of hard-working families, is a potent message. Showcase the children, families, those with disabilities, and elders harmed by this grotesque inequality and greed, and paint a picture of what a different, happier, and more equitable world is possible with a robustly funded care infrastructure.

Use your platform to tell your own care stories and highlight the full broad and diverse spectrum of people in the care economy as spokespeople for care. Normalize caregiving as a part of life for everyone. Learn about and don’t play into harmful stereotypes like “the apprentice dad” who can’t manage basic child care, the “guilty worker” who’s constantly apologizing and hiding their caregiving, or the “harried mom” who can’t handle it all. Commit to creating more nuanced, true-to-life depictions that make care visible and disrupt racial and gender stereotypes, along with reflecting current political realities.