Child Care Start Up & Expansion

Building Tomorrow's Child Care Infrastructure Today

Creating new child care programs or expanding existing ones requires planning careful attention to feasibility and planning for sustainability. Child Care Leadership Lab supports individuals, organization, and communities through comprehensive start-up and expansion services designed to increase access to high-quality early childhood care and education.

Our Services

Start-Up Support

We guide aspiring child care providers of all types from initial interest through licensing and beyond. This structured support process includes connection to training resources, licensing navigation, and ongoing mentorship. Through a variety of programs, we help build sustainable center-based and home-based child care options that strengthen communities and create new opportunities for both providers and families.

Expansion Support

Many communities have existing providers ready to serve more families but are constrained by current space limitations or sustainability concerns. We work one-on-one or with child care providers and their partners to evaluate expansion opportunities within their current facilities. This includes assessing licensing requirements, developing detailed budgets, planning renovations, and creating implementation strategies to bring expansion plans to life.

Collaborative Service Modeling & Planning

The most sustainable child care programs often emerge from strong partnerships. We help communities explore collaborative approaches that bring together employers, philanthropic organizations, child care operators, and other stakeholders. Through research, financial modeling, and facilitated planning sessions, we design pilot models that demonstrate how public-private partnerships can successfully deliver high quality care.

Facility Feasibility Assessment

Finding the right space is often the biggest barrier to creating new child care programs. We partner with architects and engineers to conduct comprehensive feasibility assessments to evaluate potential facilities throughout your community. This includes investigating innovative uses of existing spaces—from church buildings to school district properties to business facilities—and engaging the right experts to determine viability. Our assessments provide the actionable plans and analysis needed for decision-makers to bring these projects to life.

Who We Serve

Aspiring child care providers seeking guidance to get started
Existing providers ready to expand their programs
Communities working to address child care access gaps
Employer and philanthropic partners exploring child care investments
Local intermediaries supporting child care system development

Ready to Explore Your Options?

"Partnering with Katie Rahn at Child Care Leadership Lab brought me hope in an endless cycle of no win situations. I direct an early childhood center, an incredibly rewarding yet unbelievably challenging endeavor. I ran hundreds of different scenarios to try and bring my budget to a "break even" status. I spent countless hours looking at numbers, trying different models, and each endeavor failed with a whopping negative deficit. This is until I met Katie. She came alongside me with understanding, compassion, and partnership. She gave me hope in fresh ideas and options I didn't even know existed. I direct a Catholic early childhood center which comes with its own specifications, Katie customized her approach and found what works best for me and gave me a working business model with flexibility and room to grow that not only breaks even but comes with good potential of making profit! For the first time, I have hope and confidence in the future of my program."

“Katie has been a tremendous resource and support for our community. Her exceptional organizational skills and forward-thinking strategies, combined with her in-depth knowledge of early childhood education and the child care landscape in Missouri, have been invaluable. Katie’s techniques help us take a clear, comprehensive look at our community’s needs, capacity, and barriers within the current child care landscape. Through her guidance, we’ve been able to identify actionable solutions and make significant strides in improving early childhood initiatives in Jefferson City.”

"Katie is dedicated, empathetic, and experienced. As a young professional in the nonprofit space, specifically development, her guidance to me has been invaluable. I feel truly lucky to have her as a consultant and mentor!"