QUALITYstarsNY and the Cloudsplitter Foundation Celebrate Childcare Exellence Award Milestone

How did you get involved with Cloudsplitter Foundation?

Dan KieferBach: The Foundation itself has been around since 1986, making this our 40th year of celebration. I started with the organization about two years ago. Before I came on board, there was no Executive Director. So this is both a new position and a transition phase for the Foundation.

I got involved because I worked in the nonprofit field for a very long time. Before this position, I was with a nonprofit in the Adirondack Park. It’s a very small environment; huge geographically, but small in the number of people. So there’s a lot of passing back and forth between nonprofits and funders, as they generally work pretty hand in hand on projects and programs. Cloudsplitter has done good work in my community and other communities around me, so it was a natural fit.

Can you tell us briefly about the mission and history of Cloudsplitter Foundation? 

Dan: It’s kind of gone through three phases. Its original foundation in the 80s and 90s was as a family foundation. Then in the late 2010s, they ended up hiring a full-time employee, and since then there have been three of us as full-time employees in the last 12 to 13 years that have come on. By the end of the year, we will have given out probably $21 million since 2014. So in the last 10 to 12 years, we will have given out 1,500 grants and awards since 2014. We did about 300 awards last year, including the CCEA awards.

What made Cloudsplitter Foundation interested in getting involved in early childhood education in the North Country?

Dan: We are approaching $1,000,000 in total award funds given for the Child Care Excellence Awards in the last five years, so it’s a pretty big milestone for this particular program. But the origin of the child care devotion really started with our founders and their understanding that the first 1,000 days of a child’s education are some of the most important hours to spend and that it really predicts later-in-life outcomes. So, they placed a high premium on high-quality child care.

They see child care as part of our infrastructure, as part of our workforce, as part of our economic development, you name it. It’s kind of a root issue. And so that has also led to some funding in the child care area, particularly rural child care, and other ways as well. The awards are part of that. There’s been a broader focus for us on things like advocacy for rural child care. We’ve been involved with a lot of collaboration and convening with rural child care centers in our area to help understand the challenges. And then, of course, direct grant funding for things like buildings. These are business owners who have a really challenging business model. You don’t make a lot of money. These teachers are not in a career where they have many pathways to huge financial success. So, a lot of what we do is focused on helping those businesses stay afloat when things happen that would tank their business. There’s a lot of wraparound to the child care focus beyond just this program.

Why did you decide to partner with QUALITYstarsNY to make this award available to educators and program leaders in the Adirondacks?

Dan: A lot of value is given to high-quality education. Many of the challenges that we face in the sector have to do with access to child care, which is huge, right? There aren’t enough slots, there aren’t enough teachers, and there aren’t enough businesses. People can’t afford what’s already there. There are so many barriers on the access side of things, but we also really wanted to hammer down on the idea of quality. It’s not just that we need babysitters, and it’s not just that we keep kids from getting into harm’s way, but there’s also an education component to this type of work, and there’s the right way to have a two-year-old’s day spent to expand their mind and their experience. QUALITYstarsNY is already doing this work in this space.

We are not child care experts. We’re not going to come up with a curriculum for best practices on how to raise children, but QUALITYstarsNY has already developed a pretty great program with established successes; you’re a known quantity across the state, and the state itself obviously values what you do because they’re funding that work. So you all were the best partner to hitch on to without needing to create something from scratch.

What other partners have been involved in making this initiative a success?

Dan: The Child Care Coordinating Council of the North Country has been a fabulous partner in this work, connecting with the businesses and nonprofit healthcare centers that they serve, and they’ve also helped with distribution. I mean, technically, Cloudsplitter isn’t the ones who get these funds out, so it’s our local Quality Improvement Specialist, Ann Fraser, who also deserves a lot of kudos for introducing this program, expanding it, making people aware of it, and using it as a tool to get them interested. So they’ve worked as a team to expand this to our different counties.

I would also say that the Adirondack Community Foundation and the Birth to Three Alliance have also done a lot of work in this area and have helped to establish the program, as vetted and established organizations in North Country. But yeah, definitely Ann Fraser and Jamie Bassaleri of Child Care Coordinating Council of the North Country have been the biggest players in that.

What impact do you think this initiative has had on these educators? And what have you seen on how it creates a better early child care system for the North Country?

Dan: We did a study in 2023 to understand the psychological impact that this has, and people perceive QUALITYstarsNY as a viable option for them. Overwhelmingly, the data showed that the business owners and providers thought that their participation in QUALITYstarsNY was a great retention tool for their teachers, that it gave them incentive to continue in the child care space, which ultimately gave them the tools to be better teachers, made them feel more comfortable in their position, and led to increased retention. That retention leads to continuity for the people that they take care of; the families and the children that are being served by these providers.

So, I think overall, QUALITYstarsNY provides a level of stability, which is a good thing. The providers themselves have stated that they think this is a great recruitment tool, not just a retention tool, but knowing that this program and the opportunities it provides are out there, they can hire teachers that maybe would be on the fence or wouldn’t otherwise be able to make this happen. Providers spend time working on their Quality Improvement Plan, which is not compensated. It does require time, energy, and effort from the providers and from the teachers.

And I’m sure Ann Fraser will tell you that this is a big incentive for programs to start up in QUALITYstarsNY that would have otherwise not done so. If there’s not a financial incentive, sometimes it’s hard to get people to do professional development or to pay attention to these voluntary initiatives, and I think this caught a lot of notice that it otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

What is your hope for the future of the Child Care Excellence Awards?

Dan: Our hope is that the data being collected from this award is valued highly by the state and by QUALITYstarsNY, and that it leads to the creation of a professional development incentive program for QUALITYstarsNY that could be more widely available beyond the three counties we’ve handpicked as part of our pilot. If it shows recruitment and retention capacity, positive impacts on families and children, and the providers, there’s something to this.

We don’t want to hog that for ourselves. But as a small philanthropic entity, we obviously can’t take that on for the state. So the hope is that as QUALITYstarsNY grows and more and more teachers and programs are engaged in it, that there may be another program that can be developed to incentivize professional development at some point in the future to increase access for those who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access it.

What’s something you’ve learned during your work on this project?

Dan: We work in a sector that’s largely built on the backs of women who are volunteering their time or giving up their time for little to no money. An entire industry is being held together with spit and duct tape, and our strategy is that we have to pay people adequately for the good work that they’re doing to keep them doing that good work. And so this is a small effort in that direction, but I think it should be much wider. It’s taught me how tenuous all of this is. And that was really surprising to me as somebody who didn’t come from this industry, just how much of it hangs in the balance that these places could get shut down tomorrow. One burst pipe, and that’s it. Your kids don’t have child care. I have so much more appreciation for the women that are doing this work and just want to put out the word that we should compensate them fairly for the work that they do.

What is your favorite part about living in the North Country?

Dan: I love that I can walk out my back door at any time and hug a tree. I love that I don’t need to drive to a hike; I can just hike to my hike. I’m afforded time to reflect and unplug, and I think that’s really important and unique in 2026, when not a lot of other people have that opportunity to do so.