Richmond, VA – The Virginia Early Childhood Foundation (VECF) announced $37,594,084 in Mixed Delivery grants of state general funds through the Virginia Department of Education to support quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) services for 2,687 children (ages birth to age five) across the Commonwealth.

Virginia’s Mixed Delivery program, which is administered by VECF, enables eligible families with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers to gain access to high quality, full-day, year-round ECCE services in private, community-based settings of their choice so that they can work and their children can enter kindergarten ready to learn.

“Investments in early education that empower parents to choose the best learning environments for their children help families thrive and are key to Virginia’s prosperity,” said VECF’s board chair Gary Thomson, managing partner of Thomson Consulting. “With a focus on innovation and public-private partnerships, the Mixed Delivery program continues to be an important part of Virginia’s early childhood care and education system.”

Funding was awarded through a competitive process to the following Ready Region lead agencies to administer the Mixed Delivery grants in their respective service areas:

• Ready Region Blue Ridge (United Way of Greater Charlottesville) – $7,449,478
• Ready Region Capital Area (Fairfax County Department of Neighborhood and Community Services, Early Childhood Programs and Services) – $2,020,493
• Ready Region Central (Thrive Birth to Five) – $7,995,452
• Ready Region Chesapeake Bay (FirstSpark) – $3,310,732
• Ready Region North Central (Foundation First) – $1,774,202
• Ready Region Southeastern (Minus 9 to 5, Virginia Health Sciences at ODU) – $5,788,640
• Ready Region Southside (Center for Early Success) – $3,271,932
• Ready Region Southwest (EO) – $5,826,463
• Ready Region West (United Way of Virginia’s Blue Ridge) – $2,235,790

The Mixed Delivery program began in 2016 as an innovative pilot envisioned by the Virginia General Assembly and the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation and has continued to evolve each year since, expanding to serve infants, toddlers, and two-year-olds in FY23. In addition to increased access to affordable, quality ECCE services in settings that work for eligible families in Virginia, the Mixed Delivery program tests innovative, problem-solving strategies, including use of a cost-of-quality methodology for setting service rates. Payment of these rates to ECCE sites makes possible the high-quality environments and experiences that young children need to build school readiness skills. In addition, Mixed Delivery’s contract-based model provides more predictable and sustained funding for participating sites to incentivize competitive compensation and improve early educator retention so that children benefit from consistent, capable educators and caregivers.