The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) has ongoing partnerships with the six Minnesota Initiative Foundations to support community planning efforts that sustain and increase access to child care in their respective regional service areas. The Minnesota Initiative Foundations are independent entities that are built to respond to regional needs and opportunities by collaborating with community partners to provide early childhood services, and serving their regions with unique grants, business loans, leadership programs and donor services. Each of the Foundations has written a funding plan to serve the needs of their region to build capacity in child care, some proposed solutions being free training, grants to providers, loans and community planning. The six Minnesota Initiative Foundations are: the Initiative Foundation serving central Minnesota; Northland Foundation serving northeast Minnesota; Northwest Foundation serving the northwestern counties; Southern Initiative Foundation serving the southeastern part of the state; Southwest Initiative Foundation serving southwest Minnesota; and the West Central Foundation serving the western central counties. Going forward, these partnerships will be coordinated under the Office of Child Care Community Partnerships.
In the most recent legislative appropriation, each organization will receive approximately $1.1 million dollars in SFY 2024 and SFY 2025 to support the following four objectives: