NEW! Better Life Lab's Child Care Innovation Reporting Grants

The Better Life Lab is commissioning a series of reported, data and character-driven written, video and/or graphic stories and illustrations that highlight innovations within the child care field. We will help pitch the stories to a wide variety of media outlets to reach broad audiences. Specifically, we are interested in uncovering examples of ways in which local governments, organizations, movements and others are attempting to improve our current broken, patchwork child care system to increase families' access to affordable, quality care and improve wages, benefits and working conditions for the care workforce. This can include anything from nontraditional care systems, family, community and neighborhood efforts, to improvements in day-to-day activities to local and state governmental changes in funding, subsidies and regulations.

We are also keenly aware that creating a truly equitable universal child care system will require robust public investment. So we would ask that these stories also highlight the advantages as well as the shortcomings of such innovations, with the goal of better understanding what is needed to create a better child care system that meets the needs of all families. As Congress continues to contemplate more funding for child care and early education, such stories will help draw attention to what works, what can scale, and what falls short.

The Better Life Lab will pay reporters and writers and work with you to place the story in an ideal publication. Please send pitches to Rebecca Gale at gale@newamerica.org or Brigid Schulte at schulte@newamerica.org. Pitches will be considered and stories commissioned on a rolling basis through spring of 2023, with a payment of between $500 to $1000 per piece.