More Questions and Answers about the Children's Investment Fund:

3. Who's eligible for assistance from the FUND?

To be eligible to participate in the FUND, providers must:

• be a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization
  
  
• be licensed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services (OCCS), or be in the process of securing a license
  
  
• serve low-income children: typically, we require that at least 25% of children be receiving some sort of subsidy or financial assistance

Providers may be child care centers, multi service centers, family day care networks, school-age programs and/or Head Start programs.

The FUND can also provide assistance for capital projects undertaken by non-profit programs which support the child care infrastructure, even if these organizations do not provide direct services.  Examples of such organizations include: resource and referral organizations, provider organizations, and parent advocacy groups.

4. What are the FUND's requirements with regard to targeting low-income children?

Providers must propose a project which reaches out to and serves the low-income members of the surrounding community. Generally, we require that 25% of the children to be served be receiving some form of financial assistance, whether it be a subsidy from the Office of Child Care Services or The Department of Education's Community Partnerships for Children program, an internal scholarship fund, or some other mechanism to assist families who cannot pay the full cost of child care alone. Exceptions to this policy may be made under certain circumstances for providers who are actively reaching out to low-income families but still cannot achieve the 25% level.

More Questions and Answers about the Children's Investment Fund:

1. What is the Children's Investment Fund?

2.  What kinds of projects does the FUND support?

3. Who's eligible for assistance from the FUND?

4. What are the FUND's requirements with regard to targeting low-income children?

5. Are centers which rent rather than own their space eligible for assistance?

6. What are the FUND's priorities in reviewing applications for support?

7. What kind of assistance can my organization get from the FUND?

8. What are the loan terms which the FUND offers?

9. If I borrow from the FUND, how much will my monthly payments be?

10. My center has a project in mind, but we haven't yet figured out all the details.  Where do we go from here?

11. How long does it take to process my loan application?