What Do Childcare Co-Ops Have to Do with Economic Power?
Building Civic Infrastructure for Democratic Governance
Over the last few years, I’ve been working alongside organizers, providers, and researchers in New York City, Minnesota, Ohio, and New Mexico to explore shared services cooperatives for childcare workers. Through the Movement Politics Accelerator, our thesis has been simple: if we want true, small “d” democratic governance, we need civic infrastructure. And if we want civic infrastructure, we need economic vehicles that working people own and control. Civic infrastructure is the missing bridge between policy and people.
NYU Urban Democracy Lab recently released a working paper titled “A Shared Services Cooperative for Childcare Workers: Building Civic Infrastructure for Mass Governance.” It lays out a timely proposal: as New York City moves toward universal childcare under the leadership of Zohran Mamdani and state partners, we have a rare opening to build not just a bigger childcare system, but a more democratic one.
For me, this isn’t just abstract policy. It’s a theory of economic power in practice. Childcare is an essential part of most people’s lives. If we reinvent it in the most populous US city, we can create a massive scale model for civic infrastructure that can ripple out geographically through childcare and inspire new democratic models for meeting many everyday needs beyond childcare.
Civic infrastructure is the missing bridge between policy and people.
The Structural Problem
Community-based childcare providers, especially family childcare providers, are disproportionately women of color. They are underpaid, administratively burdened, and often isolated from each other. Public dollars flow into the system, but the infrastructure to help small providers access those dollars, comply with regulations, and build sustainable operations is weak.
At the same time, private equity is circling the sector, drawn by predictable public funding streams. Consolidation is pitched as “efficiency.” But we know how this story goes: extractive ownership models undermine job quality, weaken accountability, and centralize power.
So the question becomes: when public investment expands, who captures the value?
That is not just a childcare question. That is a political economy question.
The Shared Services Cooperative as Civic Infrastructure
A shared services cooperative (SSC) flips the script.
Instead of small providers competing against one another while large firms scale, a cooperative allows them to pool back-office functions: payroll, licensing support, insurance, marketing, professional development, data systems, and even access to capital.
Think of how Ace Hardware allows independent stores to compete with national chains, or how Land O’Lakes aggregates producers. The cooperative does not erase independence. It enhances it through shared scale.
But in childcare, the implications go deeper.
An SSC is not just a cost-saving tool. It is a platform for voice. It becomes a structured channel for providers to shape how universal childcare is implemented, to surface collective needs, and to participate in co-governance with city and state agencies.
That’s what the working paper gets right. Civic infrastructure is the missing bridge between policy and people.
A shared services cooperative (SSC) flips the script.
Our Theory of the Case
Through the Movement Politics Accelerator, we’ve been developing what I call an economic power plan.
Traditional organizing builds people power.
Policy advocacy builds governing power.
But economic vehicles build staying power.
In state after state, we’ve seen movement organizations win policy victories, but their institutional muscle is often insufficient to shape implementation or sustain gains. The childcare sector reveals this clearly. Without shared operational capacity, public expansion can unintentionally destabilize small providers, as happened in parts of the universal pre-K rollout under the de Blasio administration.
Our theory is that movements must build their own economic infrastructure: cooperatives, funds, shared services entities, real estate vehicles, and more that anchor public investment in community-controlled institutions.
In NYC, the shared services co-op is one pillar. In Minnesota, similar conversations are emerging alongside childcare worker organizing. In Ohio and New Mexico, we are exploring how shared services and capital access can stabilize providers in childcare deserts.
This is not about privatizing a public good. It is about democratizing its foundation.
Economic Power Is About Governance
When I talk about economic power, I am not just talking about revenue. I am talking about who sets standards, who aggregates data, who shapes workforce pipelines, and who negotiates with the state.
An SSC can:
Reduce administrative burdens that disproportionately harm small, BIPOC-led providers.
Create economies of scale without corporate consolidation.
Serve as a partner in workforce development and career ladders.
Provide structured touchpoints with government agencies.
Deepen union engagement where unions exist and create venues for organizing where it doesn’t.
Offer an alternative to low-road, profit-maximizing actors.
That is civic infrastructure for democratic governance. It organizes the sector not only around survival, but around collective leverage.
When I talk about economic power, I am not just talking about revenue. I am talking about who sets standards, who aggregates data, who shapes workforce pipelines, and who negotiates with the state.
The Broader Democratic Horizon
The working paper frames this moment as a “real utopian” opportunity for feasible, transformative design rooted in equality and durability.
I agree.
If universal childcare simply expands contracts and reimbursements, we may improve access but leave power untouched. If, instead, we build sectoral institutions owned by providers and potentially connected to parents in multi-stakeholder models we create a care commons that is accountable to the people who sustain it.
Through the Movement Politics Accelerator, we have learned that democracy dividends require economic architecture. You cannot govern what you do not structurally participate in.
Can we design public systems where working-class women of color are not just implementers of policy, but co-architects of governance? Can we build scale without extraction? Can we translate organizing into institutional form?
If we can do it in childcare, one of the most gendered, racialized, and essential sectors of our economy, we can model it elsewhere.
That is why this work in NYC, and in Minnesota, Ohio, and New Mexico, matters.
Childcare co-ops are about economic power because economic power is the infrastructure of democracy.
Childcare co-ops are not a side project. They are a test case. And this moment gives us a chance to build it right.
…democracy dividends require economic architecture. You cannot govern what you do not structurally participate in.
