Mayor Zohran Mamdani, turning to philanthropists for help with a key part of his agenda, will announce a campaign on Thursday to raise $20 million from private donors to support his universal free child care proposal.
The city already has received about $3.5 million in committed donations toward the mayor’s goal, most of that from a foundation. The donations were made to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, a city-run nonprofit.
The money will go toward family outreach, support for child care providers and work force development, the mayor’s office said.
Mr. Mamdani said in a statement that child care should be a public good and not a luxury.
“When our philanthropic partners step up and invest in the child care that working families rely on, they’re investing in the future of New York,” he said.
As the city grapples with significant budget challenges, Mr. Mamdani must figure out how to pay for his proposal of universal child care for children under 5, starting with 2,000 free day-care seats for 2-year-olds this fall.
Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to provide $1.7 billion in state funding to pay for the first two years of the plan. But it could cost billions more in subsequent years.
Since the 1990s, the Mayor’s Fund has been used to raise private donations to address mayors’ top policy concerns. It assisted New Yorkers after Hurricane Sandy and the Sept. 11 attacks.
In recent years, the influential philanthropic class has been wary of giving to causes aimed at addressing the city’s greatest problems. Some donors had concerns about the ethical scandals that engulfed the administration of Mr. Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams.
And Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has a complicated relationship with the city’s elite. Some wealthy New Yorkers opposed his campaign — and his push to tax the rich — and donated to his opponents. Others supported him, including celebrities who attended his star-studded fund-raisers.
Carmen Rojas, the president of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, said that her organization had given $3 million to the fund and that New York’s program could be a model for the nation.
Ms. Rojas said the foundation wanted to “make sure that government works for people when so many people are struggling in our country.”
The initial donations to the new “Child Care Action Fund” also included one from the NYC Forward Fund, a philanthropic group.
Kate Smith, the director of the Mayor’s Fund, who was appointed by Mr. Adams in 2024, will stay in her role, managing the fund in coordination with the mayor’s office of child care. Ms. Smith previously did fund-raising for the American Red Cross and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy.
During the pandemic, money poured into the Mayor’s Fund. More than $77 million in donations came during the fiscal year that included the first half of 2020, the fund’s biggest haul since the last year of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s tenure.
But the management of the fund has raised ethical concerns at times. When Bill de Blasio was mayor, he named his wife, Chirlane McCray, as chairwoman of the nonprofit, which received donations from his campaign contributors.
The fund recently issued a solicitation for a vendor to help with “branding and messaging” for the city’s early education programs, offering a contract of up to $250,000.
Universal child care was the most ambitious and costly promise of Mr. Mamdani’s campaign. He wants to build on the success of prekindergarten for 4-year-olds, created by Mr. de Blasio in 2014; expand 3-K for 3-year-olds; and extend the program to 2-year-olds and eventually to babies as young as 6 weeks old.
Emmy Liss, the executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Child Care, discussed some of the challenges in establishing the program at a City Council hearing on Wednesday. She said that the city wants to raise low wages for child care workers and to recruit thousands more.
“There is no universal child care without the child care work force,” she said.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is a public policy correspondent for The Times, covering New York City.
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