Before the funding push: How Colorado’s childcare case is being built

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project

The building of the childcare narrative, ahead of a taxpayer funding push

This is a lengthy story, so I want to start with a quick introduction/overview.

There is a push to get government to pay for (and/or perhaps operate?) childcare in Colorado. I am sure that the policy moves will be in the legislature and/or on the ballot soon enough, but you and I are lucky enough to be witness to it in its infancy.

We are lucky enough to see the narrative being built from the ground up.

What I have for you today is a couple of posts falling loosely into the categories of “how do the media work in concert with market research and evaluation consultants to help drive your opinions?” and then “how are the high ups in Colorado childcare/ECE signaling support for government childcare?”

The posts today are an update to an older story. I wrote a summary op ed a bit back listing how the lefty media is preparing the ground via grants from a friendly nonprofit group. A group which, conveniently enough, is also leading an effort to put some form or another of government funding for (and/or operation of) childcare in Colorado into law. That op ed is linked first below.

If you are brand new to this story, I’d highly recommend reading the op ed. It will give you some background on some of the players: Gary Community Ventures (GCV) which wanted to (their words) “start a conversation” about childcare in Colorado. The Colorado Sun, one of the lefty outfits getting a grant to put up stories about how “the market can’t fix childcare.”

In the second post today, we’ll see how CPR (another grantee) took the money and ran full tilt toward government run childcare, touching on several themes which we’ll see are right there front and center in the market research.

Coincidentally of course.

Lastly, in the third post today I want to share some of the Colorado Department of Early Childhood director’s, Dr. Lisa Roy’s, comments at a panel discussion on childcare put on by the Sun. She too echoes much the same. Her position forbids direct advocacy, but she comes right up to that line and her background (prior to Polis appointing her to be the sole decider on early childhood rulemaking in this entire state) makes it clear she’s a fan of government money paying for childcare.

https://completecolorado.com/2026/03/14/foundation-money-influence-colorado-childcare-news/

How does the media work in concert with market research to help change your mind?

Before anything else, stop and look at steps 1 and 2 in the image heading this post, the one titled “The 5 Steps of Strategic Narrative”. Keep them somewhere handy while you continue.

Whether you were aware or not, you are the subject of study by advocacy groups. They are most eager to understand what you believe along with what might change that so you come ‘round to their way of thinking.

There are lots of ways that advocates persuade. The most obvious is to openly advocate, knocking on the front door say your piece and move on, but you can also take the approach that I believe Gary Community Ventures, GCV, and others are taking. They are approaching government-funded childcare via some variant of a strategic narrative approach.

Whatever you think about childcare and public money used to fund it (or the government running it), you should familiarize yourself with the ways in which groups are trying to influence you. You should be a fully informed decision-maker, something that I believe market research combined with press coverage don’t always allow for.

GCV, since about February, has been funding a series of pay for play media grants to, using their words, “start a conversation” about childcare in Colorado. More recently, GCV has partnered up with others (some of them their grantees) to form a coalition called Child Care Works.*

This group, whose page is linked first below, is made up of all the various entities you see in screenshot 1 attached. You will note at least one familiar name if you took the time to read my earlier op ed in today’s introduction–The Colorado Sun.**

I have kept my eyes open for more on this topic of course, recently noting that CPR joined the list of GCV grantees. Their childcare series, “Raising Colorado” is linked second below for your perusal.

These organizations, and likely others though I focus on CPR and the Sun, form one part of the “market research becomes media coverage becomes policy” chain that I’m writing about. Let’s go back a link and see about the kind of market research on childcare in Colorado that helped GCV articulate what they wanted in their pay for play coverage. It turns out the market survey work was done by one of the Child Care Works members.

Corona Insights, according to their LinkedIn profile linked third below, provides, as part of its mission, “… market research, evaluation, and strategic consulting for organizations both small and large.” They do the kind of research that companies and nonprofits want to better understand their customers.

Corona, in support of GCV, did a study titled “Childcare Narrative Message Testing and Evaluation” which I link to fourth below.

I will leave it to you to paw through the study in full, but, to help make my point, I want to share some broad ideas. Start with me on p 5 with “Baseline Findings.” This is where Corona does a series of broad questions to gauge what you and others already know about believe about childcare.

Does it have an impact on you?

Is it a top three issue for you?

Did you know how much it costs?

Did you know it doesn’t work well?

Do you agree or disagree that it’s a “parents only” issue?

Should the government help pay for it?

Corona even went so far as to test various images to see how one or the other out of a pair affected people’s beliefs. If you want a sample, see screenshot 2 for a couple pairs. The results of the image testing (if you’re curious) are on p 24 of the report.

After a snapshot of where the electorate stands currently, Corona wrapped up those findings and then offered some potential avenues for influence. Screenshots 3a and 3b are the toplines from the survey proper along with toplines from the executive summary one-sheeter. I highlighted some parts which dovetail with other parts of other screenshots coming up.

If you sit and look at a timeline, the pattern clears up. Reading from the survey itself, you see that the data was all collected by mid-February. Not processed and massaged perhaps, but collected. At the end of February, a reader sent me the GCV request for proposals, offering (among other things) grant money to media organizations to cover childcare, to “start a conversation” in their words. Screenshot 4 shows what GCV wanted from their media grantees and comes from the fifth link below. As above, note the highlighting. I will ask you to compare across screenshots later.

At about the same time, mid-February, the Colorado Sun starts their coverage. I link to their series sixth below. CPR’s was much later, starting in early May. To help bolster the pattern here, I want to give you a sense of the topics those outlets chose to cover. Headlines are, of course, only a part of the story, but they do offer a quick look at the direction of things. Screenshot 5 has a collage of Sun headlines from their child care series next to the listing of CPR’s stories.

We have finally arrived at the point where the pieces we’ve gathered can be laid out and compared. Go and look at the list of things on the market survey done by Corona. Look at what Gary wants from their grantees. Look at the themes in the Sun and the CPR series. It doesn’t take a genius to see the alignment.

It is fair to note, and this is a repeated refrain from GCV, that GCV did not ask for editorial control from their grantees. I believe them without having to have it proved that they didn’t call up the Sun and/or CPR to tell them what to do. No one peeked over a writer’s shoulder and changed stories.

They didn’t have to. They didn’t need editorial control to get this done. They just wound the music box up and let it play: find out what will sway people to pay attention and then consider public money for childcare; put out grants to lefty, nonprofit media groups (the kind that are always at the table for grant money) telling them the broad things you want covered, things which just happen to align with what you know influences readers; then let them produce the kind of progressive-values coverage you know they’ll produce.

One final thing to note. Screenshot 6 shows a picture of Child Care Works site. The part I highlight shows you a link where interested parties can go get involved in shaping policy (this would be opposed to “starting a conversation” I suppose).

It just so happens, that GCV has a policy arm, a policy arm which is working on public funding for childcare.

Since the link in the Child Care Works site now takes you to a page which says it’s “under construction”, link 7 below is to an earlier newsletter of mine where I examined the role Move Colorado Forward had in advocating for public funding of childcare.

Screenshot 7 is from that newsletter and spells out what Move Colorado Forward said about themselves in the past.

When I asked GCV’s spokesperson Will Holden about why they, when they’re not involved in policy, would put a link to how to get involved in policy right on their “conversation” page, he told me the following (quoted from my email):

“The Child Care Works CO website and Gary Philanthropy grantees are limited to supporting public awareness, storytelling and community understanding related to challenges facing Colorado’s child care system. Gary Philanthropy does not support or direct advocacy for specific legislation, candidates or electoral activity. Due to this limitation, Child Care Works CO informs individuals who are interested in exploring solutions to visit Move Colorado Forward, which is exploring a wide range of child care solutions, including potential policy approaches. Move Colorado Forward sits outside of Gary Philanthropy. We provided an initial grant to help create this fund for the purposes of exploring long-term child care solutions and advancing research about the issues facing the system.”

Thanks for coming for stories about childcare folks, feel free to look around all you’d like.

Exit through the gift shop.

*If you had a desire to be part of the larger conversation on child care, if you wanted there to be more than just advocates’ voices in the public square, call this group’s bluff and add your story to their page via the “Your Stories” tab at the top of their site. You will join such august writers as yours truly who submitted his comment about the same time as writing this.

**One of my unanswered questions after researching and writing my earlier op ed related to just who all GCV was giving grants to as part of their program. I thought perhaps, after a reader sent the Child Care Works grant and I saw the list in the screenshot that I had my answer. No, I didn’t.

GCV’s spokesperson, Will Holden, told me the following (quoting from my email): “…not all of the organizations listed on the webpage you mention are Gary Philanthropy grantees. Some organizations listed have received philanthropic support from Gary Philanthropy, while others are participating in the Child Care Works CO storytelling initiative independently because of their interest in issues affecting Colorado’s child care system. The website does invite others who want to bring awareness to Colorado’s child care issues to submit their stories, and as a result, there are stories and information displayed on the site from individuals and organizations who are not grantees and are not receiving funding from Gary Philanthropy.”

READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT 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.