The federal government meant well with its new regulations governing crib safety. After all, what could be more important than keeping young children safe? But the expense of complying with the new rules, which fully take effect at the end of 2012, has put many child care providers in a bind.
Some are looking for help from the people they serve, by holding fund-raisers. “You give parents a cause for why you're raising the money, and they tend to be very supportive,” said Denise Myatt, director of the New Beginnings child care center in Hanover, Penn.
A previous fund-raiser allowed the church-based school to purchase a security system with cameras in all the classrooms.
Myatt pointed out that typically, tuition income goes back to the children in the form of food, staff salaries, etc. There’s not a lot left over for items such as new cribs, which cost hundreds of dollars apiece with shipping charges.
Her school did a “Joe Corbi fund-raiser” to help pay for cribs. Maryland-based Joe Corbi’s helps organizations raise money through the sale of pizza kits, cookie dough and other items.
Looking for outside sources to pay for improvements such as new cribs is a must, as Myatt sees it. “The fund-raiser is the only way -- outside of our own pocketbooks.”
A church-based child enrichment center in South Carolina is taking a different approach. To raise money for the 23 cribs it needs to buy, the center will ask the Sunday School classes in The Baptist Church of Beaufort to commit to purchasing one or two or three cribs. Then a small plaque with the name of the donating class will be affixed to each crib.
Director Debbie Marcil said the preschool has not really gone to the church for financial help in the past, except occasionally to meet the needs of a struggling family. She noted a potential benefit from the new approach. “We thought maybe it would help give them some ownership in the preschool.”
As in many churches, the child care center has been a means of evangelism in the community. “We just had two families join in the past month,” Marcil said.
Whether by cookie dough or donations or other creative means, an enterprising child care center can get help navigating the cribs funding challenge.
