Western Colorado Preschool Cooperative

In 2009, The Manaus Fund initiated the Western Colorado Early Childhood Coop (The Coop). The Coop seeks to strengthen the early childhood education (ECE) industry from Aspen to Parachute, Colorado through the development of a self sustaining cooperative.

The Coop is implementing an innovative business model for independent early childhood programs of shared administrative and financial services. Through an initial pilot, The Coop will demonstrate greater efficiencies, financial stability, increased capacity and improved quality in participating programs that align with the needs of the community and demands of their consumers

The rural nature of the western slope demands a creative solution to create an efficient approach to providing the back office services needed to run a successful program. The Coop has developed a unique system of remote administrative and financial services coupled with software through which it will provide the following services:

  • Accounting and bookkeeping
  • Billing and tuition collection
  • Employee benefits management
  • Group purchasing, such as health care
  • Grants development and management
  • Automation
  • Budget development
  • Resource development
  • Substitute staff development

Access to early childhood care and education is essential to working parents in western Colorado and to limited income families who need care for developmental reasons. Success in school is dramatically increased through the provision of quality early childhood education. The research is conclusive on this subject. The high cost of living makes the cost of child care amongst the highest in the country and programs struggle to manage their costs while being able to attract and retain qualified staff. Managing an ECE program is very difficult. In addition to being chronically underfunded, funding streams are many and unpredictable. The industry is highly regulated and balancing the demands of the business functions and program quality would challenge the most sophisticated manager, and the vast majority of Directors have little or no training in business management.

The opportunity for the Coop is to bring a professional level of administrative and financial services to ECE programs to allow a center Director to focus on what s/he does best-provide early childhood education. The Coop will partner with its members to provide the financial planning needed to survive this and other uncertainties. Our communities cannot afford the loss of more ECE capacity.

The Manaus Fund has spent the last two years observing and interviewing members of the ECE industry. It has watched as programs have struggled through a boom and bust economic cycle and strongly believes that the current business model is fragile and unsustainable. The shared services approach, offered to small, independent programs is one that The Manaus fund believes is worthy of trusting before bringing to scale. 

Evaluation
Each program will be evaluated for changes in the following areas:

    • Financial savings
    • Time savings of administrators and contracted services
    • Comparative time studies
    • Enrollment, staff turnover, reduction of bad debt
    • Maintenance of quality ratings

Collaboration
The Coop’s development of a shared services business model has been welcomed by local organizations. In the early months of the projects we have met with the regional council (Eagle, Pitkin, Garfield and Lake Counties), the counties child care divisions and the local resource and referral agency, Kid’s First. We have also worked closely with individual providers and instructors from Colorado Mountain College, the local provider of early childhood courses. The Coop has also received funding from the Aspen Community Foundation and has received technical assistance from the regional office of the USDA. The Coop has an application pending with the Rocky Mountain Farmer’s Union Educational and Educational Foundation for a two region needs assessment.

Inclusiveness
The Coop is open to all licensed early childhood programs. We include for profit and not for profit organizations and faith-based as well. For example, we are in the final stages of research to bring a more affordable group health care policy for all providers and their families and staff. We have been researching this for the past several months after input from providers vis a vis survey. In this region there are only small, independent centers and homes. There are no multi-site for profit companies. Our target area, Garfield, Pitkin and part of Eagle counties is ambitious due to its size, and we have participation from all areas in the pilot study.

For more information on the services and projects of the Co-op please contact Elaine Grossman, Project Director. Phone 970-963-0851, Email info@preschoolcooperative.org