Status Report #2 on Non-Profit Child Care

Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/status-report-2-on-non-profit-child-care/5007816/

"This is a period of high anxiety for centers in our community. The Persian Gulf war, the recession, new federal legislation, the staffing crisis, the encroachment of the public schools - all these factors will impact us, but who knows how." - a non profit center director

This director has good reason to be anxious. Trying to predict how non profit child care centers will fare in 1991 is a tricky business. Too many major factors are impossible to call.

All we can do with certainty is to draw some comparisons between the states' non profit and for profit centers and take a look at center administrators' views of what's ahead. Here are some trends worth watching:

Non profit centers growing slower than for profit centers until 1990. As you can see in Table A, the for profit sector grew more rapidly from the mid '70s through the mid '80s. Although we do not have any up-to-date statistics to guide us (until the results of an NAEYC/Urban Institute study are released in April), most industry watchers agree that for profit center growth has continued to outpace non profit center growth in recent years.

However, in our ...