“The market can’t fix childcare”: Who is shaping Colorado’s narrative

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project

Gary Community Ventures, The Colorado Sun and setting common sense

The Colorado Sun recently launched a series, “Out of Reach”, describing what they term “Colorado’s crumbling child care system”.

The series caught my eye due to a statement appearing in the first installment. William Browning, president and CEO of Clayton Early Learning in Denver, said (among other things, and I quote here from the first link below): “The market can’t fix child care.”

This brought to mind something a friend had told me a while back. Depending on the individual the blame may lay anywhere on the spectrum from intent to a variety of unrelated factors lining up, but the thinking is the same.

If the childcare system is broken–again, due to rules and regulations breaking it intentionally or not–at some point the government will need to step in to “fix” it.

That has to be the solution; the market can’t fix child care after all.

That quote, and its appearance in the Sun led to asking a reader I know involved in childcare policy if they were invited to comment on the story. A second installment of the Sun’s series led to noting that their effort was funded by a grant from Gary Community Ventures, a fairly large cable in the spider web of foundations and nonprofits that operate in Colorado. This was followed by an email from that same reader sharing a request for proposals–an advertisement that there’s grant money to be had–from Gary Community Ventures for reporting, etc. on childcare in Colorado.

I can’t offer you a list of things that will fix childcare. I have some ideas that I think would help of course, but the problem is complex. It needs more than one-dimensional soundbites. What I’m hoping to do, what is feasible, is to give you a look behind the curtain at some of the people who will be leading the conversation and how that’s set up.

It’s just as important for you and I to have an awareness of how this issue will be framed along with who will do the framing. We need to have genuine discussions toward solving problems, not discussions guided on our behalf. We need to know the perspectives and interests behind what we see in media.

This will take a few posts to do justice to because the building of common sense about childcare, what’s broken, and how to fix it, is as complicated as the problem itself.

Future posts will look at the Sun as an example of what some of the childcare coverage funded by Gary Community Ventures looks like, as well as the spider web of connections between Gary, The Sun, and a whole host of nonprofits.

https://coloradosun.com/2026/02/15/colorado-child-care-unaffordable-out-of-reach-school-families/

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“The market can’t fix childcare”

Colorado has a childcare problem, and we have for a while now. In September last year, I wrote an op ed about one aspect of the problem: our state puts a huge regulatory burden on preschools and childcare facilities. Even without assuming ill intent anywhere, this unwieldy system makes it harder to run, expand, or start them. I link to that op ed first below.

The states rules are on top of shifting Federal rules about childcare. For an example of that see “Related” below for a look at a Biden era rule that tinkered with how much someone getting government-subsidized childcare had to pay. Biden lowered the limit the families had to pay, but neglected to account for how the missing money would be made up, leading to waitlists and a lack of care when Colorado counties ran out of money.

Gary Community Ventures, GCV, saw this as enough of an issue–a statewide concern due to its potential impact on families, the economy, and even things like National Defense in their view–to want to spur a discussion about it.

I spoke with one of GCV’s spokespeople, Will Holden, and he put it this way:

“Families and child care providers deeply understand how the issues facing our child care system impact their daily lives. But public polling shows many other Coloradans don’t see this as a major issue and often don’t recognize how it affects them personally, which is fair. Publicly available research is increasingly highlighting the statewide economic consequences tied to the strains facing our child care system. This grant funding is designed to raise awareness about those strains and highlight how Colorado’s increasingly unaffordable child care system affects all of us.”

One of the ways they chose to start that was to put money out there to get the public talking. If you have a construction project, you want to fix a road say, you put out bids and various road contractors will estimate the job, prepare a bid, and send it in. When foundations and nonprofits have money to put out there to do what they have a mind to do, they will do similar. Instead of bidding on a job, however, you answer a “request for proposals”.

GCV’s site announcing this is linked second below.

GCV put out the word that there’s money to be had to (quoting that site): “…explore the impact that child care has on all Coloradans through innovative story & data collection, journalism, content creation and evaluation.”

The list of who could apply is attached as screenshot 1. Note: each of the bullet points is a clickable link. I won’t copy all below, but be aware that if you’re curious to look at each, you’ll find them by clicking the second link below.

Storytelling and community listening are great things, but in this series of posts I want to focus more on what interests me and what I think likely to have the most impact on the greatest number of people, so I will focus in on the “Journalists and Newsrooms” that GCV would like to engage. When I click on the link for that group, it takes me to the webpage I link to third below for convenience.

GCV lists its reporting themes, objectives, and proposal requirements on this page. I attach them as screenshots 2, 3, and 4 respectively.

GCV’s short list of who they’ll give priority to and their list of things that would disqualify a proposal are attached as screenshots 5a and 5b.

It’s important to note a few things. First, if you’ve never seen something like this (and I’m relatively new myself), the temptation is to automatically assume some sort of influence peddling is going on. What I mean, is that it’s easy to assume that GCV wants to do more than just “start a conversation”. I don’t read minds, and so if you expect me to weigh in on what their real intent is (if there is any), you’ll be disappointed.

Going strictly off the text on GCV’s request for proposal site, you will note repeated, explicit mention of things like maintaining the editorial independence of any news organization that applies/gets a grant, as well as specific mention of conservatives.

GCV’s Holden, in speaking broadly about the intent of their whole grant program, put it this way in an email:

“We are not using this grant funding to advance a specific policy agenda. Child care affordability affects kids, families and Colorado’s economy, and addressing these issues will require a range of solutions. Our goal is to support content creators and journalists in helping more Coloradans understand the scope and impact of the problem and engage in informed conversations about potential solutions.”

Still, talk is cheap. It’s easy to make emphatic statements about intent. Actions are what matter. I think it’s also worth mentioning that outcomes can vary from intent, whether you want them to or not. You might set out to engage everyone across the entire state, across every bit of the ideological divide, and still not do it.

This becomes all the clearer when you note that Colorado Media Project (their site linked third below), along with some of their associates like journalism professor Corey Hutchins, were among what I was told were 60 groups involved in drafting the request for proposals. Colorado Media Project also had a seat on the committee deciding who got grants.

Colorado Media Project also helps fund the Colorado Sun, the news org whose reporting spurred this whole series.

Following what I remember hearing while learning Spanish was an old saying, “dime con quien andas y te digo como eres”**, I will follow up this post with a look at GCV, their source of funding, who they give their money and time to, who they partner with, and the connection to Colorado Media Project.

After that, let’s look at the kind of reporting their money is buying so far from the Colorado Sun, and how the answer to that question shows how merely advertising grant money can lead to storytelling that only tells half the story.

**Tell me who you run with and I’ll tell you what you’re like

https://completecolorado.com/2025/09/04/regulatory-burden-colorado-childcare-providers/

https://garycommunity.org/rfp

https://coloradomediaproject.com/

https://garycommunity.org/rfp/child-care-narrative-rfp-journalism-reporting

Related:

In the body of the post above, I mentioned a Biden era rule change which required a much higher outlay of state money for the Colorado Childcare Assistance Program (CCCAP). This was an outlay which left many who might otherwise qualify for help paying for childcare on waitlists since many local governments froze programs due to being unable to fund it.

The RM Voice article below gives some numbers and context on that based on a Common Sense Institute study.

For comparison’s sake, see the Sun article on the same topic below which details the impact this has on famlies, etc. all the while neglecting to mention who set this policy up. Search the article for yourself. You will not find mention one of Joe Biden’s order causing this.

https://rockymountainvoice.com/2025/11/13/child-care-costs-surge-under-biden-era-rule-and-state-law-forcing-counties-to-freeze-cccap/

https://coloradosun.com/2025/01/21/child-care-assistance-freeze/

READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT THE COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.