Eight national foundations have announced the launch of a five-year, $50 million fund aimed at building a comprehensive, publicly supported care infrastructure.

Housed at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Care for All with Respect and Equity (CARE) Fund will support a broad-based movement for care that includes paid leave, child care and early education, long-term services and supports for older adults and people with disabilities, and high-quality jobs for all care workers. With commitments from the Ford, Heising-Simons, Open Society, Robert Wood Johnson, and W.K. Kellogg foundations, as well as the Perigee Fund, Pivotal Ventures, and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, the funder collaborative will invest in efforts to amplify the voices of care providers and consumers; advocacy and organizing aimed at ensuring access to high-quality, universally affordable care and services; the implementation of new policies and investments at the community level, with a focus on low-income families and people of color; efforts to secure a living wage and benefits for immigrant and women of color care workers; and efforts to redefine care work and services as a permanent public good worthy of public and private financing and long-term investments.

To date, the fund has awarded $2.5 million in rapid response grants in support of advocates who are working to hone their strategies and build a broader, more powerful movement for care. Grant recipients include the Care Can't Wait campaign, Paid Leave for All, and the Childcare for Every Family Network.

"At the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, children are at the heart of everything we do," said WKKF president and CEO La June Montgomery Tabron. "Comprehensive, bold investments in what children and families of color need to be healthy and economically secure are necessary for lasting, transformational change to happen. The CARE Fund is uniquely positioned to do just that, bringing together a breadth of funders focused across issues of health, racial and gender equity, early childhood, and worker justice to secure an economy that honors and values care."