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Ten years. That was the amount of time Rick Davis told Aly Richards they would need to create a permanent child care infrastructure in the state of Vermont back in 2015. At the time, Davis had recently founded Let’s Grow Kids, a statewide advocacy organization focused on improving access to high-quality child care, and his first goal was to bring a leader like Richards on board.

Part of the way he sold it to her, he explained, was by focusing on the time-limited nature of Let’s Grow Kids and the plan to sunset the group in 2025.

Davis, a longtime philanthropist focused on supporting children and families, believed that investing in early interventions geared toward children ages 0 to 5 would make the biggest impact on creating opportunities for kids in his state. Let’s Grow Kids homed in on an ambitious goal to provide quality child care for every child in Vermont, and Davis created an aggressive timeline to get the job done.

Richards wasn’t convinced right away, she explained, but after persuasive calls from former Vermont Govs. Peter Shumlin and Howard Dean, she came aboard and built a team that would drive the state to become the first in the nation to have a near-universal child care system.

Over the last decade, Let’s Grow Kids raised over $70 million in private philanthropy and grew to a team of 40 staffers. Their efforts built momentum around child care issues and drove progress that supported Act 76, the bill that created Vermont’s near-universal child care program, which was signed into law in 2023 after a veto override. In the two years since Act 76 passedmore than 100 new child care programs have opened, creating over 1,000 spaces for children and 230 new early childhood educator jobs — and an additional 4,000 children in Vermont now qualify for tuition assistance. Let’s Grow Kids was heavily involved with implementing these changes.

On Oct. 3, the organization officially sunset its operations, just as Davis and Richards had planned.

The time-limited nature of the organization has been critical to its success supporting and implementing legislation, both leaders said, and the wind-down process signals that the state is ready to sustain the changes.

The Behind-the-Scenes Process of Sunsetting the Organization

In September, Richards addressed a room filled with more than 200 child care advocates in Burlington Vermont to highlight the progress made by Let’s Grow Kids, surface the gaps that remain and to discuss the roll out of the next phase of work, which will be carried out by a group of permanent organizations focused on child care financing, workforce, data and advocacy.

But the organization began planning for this transition years before it was fully dismantled, building partnerships with the organizations that would move implementation forward, and creating a phase-out plan for the staff.

“Nothing works without a deadline, it’s human nature,” said Richards. “It sharpens focus and adds accountability. We would always ask, are we on track to win? There wasn’t enough time to pat ourselves on the back.”

Because Let’s Grow Kids was never intended to be permanent, the team was able to operate at a “faster pace, raise money more effectively, and attract top tier talent” explained Erin Roche, who worked at Let’s Grow Kids for six years before heading up First Children’s Finance, a nonprofit focused on the business development needs of child care centers and providers in Vermont, and one of the organizations picking up the baton from Let’s Grow Kids now. “(Let’s Grow Kids) was inclined to build more infrastructure because they knew they were leaving. They knew they would need support in place for child care businesses they were supporting once they were gone,” said Roche.

The organization’s expiration date also spurred more philanthropic investment. “We never could have sustained the level of philanthropy (as a permanent group),” said Richards. “Part of the reason we were successful is we could ask for a one year capital gift.” And during the COVID-19 pandemic, the timeline helped the team stay focused on their mission, even as they pivoted to working with child care organizations to receive personal protective equipment supplies and American Rescue Plan Act funds, she said. When the state’s legislative session resumed in 2021, Richards explained that they’d gained a stronger network and the trust of elected officials and child care providers alike.

Staff, too, have been part of the sunset strategy. By having a declared end date, the staff, including Roche, were inclined to find new roles at various organizations throughout the state. Some former staffers from Let’s Grow Kids now lead Vermont’s National Association of the Education of Young Children. Others work with Roche at First Children’s Finance. One former staff member, Janet McLaughlin, is now the Deputy Commissioner for Vermont’s Department of Children and Families, leading the Child Development Division, which oversees child care policy and implementation in Vermont.

The final remaining staffers are transitioning to the Let’s Grow Kids Action Network, a 501(c)(4) group tasked with doing the political work necessary to protect the funding provisions in Act 76.

“Right now we don’t really know the lobbying needs,” said Jerusa Contee, managing director at the Let’s Grow Kids Action Network. “Implementation is still new, so we know we are going to need some help, but we could find out that in a couple of years people have accepted that child care is a core part of the budget.”

While Act 76 brought major changes to the state’s child care infrastructure and increased access to subsidies for many families, the state still doesn’t have what would be considered “universal” child care. Between 80% to 90% of Vermont families with children in child care programs are eligible for subsidies, according to an internal analysis conducted by First Children’s Finance using 2024 Census data, said Roche. “The families it doesn’t capture are spending a lot on child care, and that’s a hardship,” said Roche, who is working on figuring out who is left out of the subsidies and why. At a certain point, she said, it takes more effort to run a program that leaves only a handful of people out than it would to make it fully universal and eliminate the paperwork required to prove eligibility — a step New Mexico recently took.

Could This Happen Elsewhere?

Child care remains a widely popular issue among voters across party lines. Polling indicates that younger generations are prioritizing child care that many consider child care a leading workplace benefit. While efforts to improve child care infrastructure at the national level have stalled, advocates are closely watching states that have developed policy and funding solutionsand many are asking what aspects of Vermont’s child care program could be replicated elsewhere.

Richards said she’s been contacted by people who work on child care policy in other states, including Colorado, Nebraska, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Arkansas, looking to hear about what helped the state pass the landmark bill. In these conversations, Richards holds fast to the idea that the sunset provision is key to running an effective campaign and setting up the necessary infrastructure to carry on implementation and protect the bill. She also points to the trove of data Vermont has gathered about how increasing access to child care has impacted the state’s workforce participation and increased tax revenue, and how quality child care has contributed to education factors like kindergarten preparedness.

After the September event in Burlington, the alumni and remaining Let’s Grow Kids staff gathered outside for a group photo, noting the symbolic pun of the sun setting behind them over Lake Champlain. No one is brazen enough to say “mission accomplished” out loud, Richards said, but both she and Davis acknowledge a deep satisfaction with what they have built.

As for the immediate future, Richards is taking a month off, then will stay on as the chair of the board for the Let’s Grow Kids Action Network. “I’m tired,” she said, while smiling. “I’ve been running nonstop for the past ten years.”

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