The David and Laura Merage Foundation

The David and Laura Merage Foundation is working to incubate an innovative shared services model for the child care industry known as Early Learning Ventures (ELV). The ELV technology platform supports the infrastructure of early education facilities and maximizes the reach and impact of a shared services model. It provides a comprehensive, fully integrated bridge between small, market-based child care providers and the often-siloed child care regulatory, quality improvement and subsidy systems. The David and Laura Merage Foundation’s commitment to Invest in US is an additional $15 million to support the national scaling of this model and the advancing of the early learning movement. ELV is currently serving more than 580 child care businesses, impacting over 40,000 children, and returning up to $8 for each dollar invested. The Foundation is entering the third year of scaling the ELV Alliance network in Colorado and, today, is making a ten-year commitment to bring this model to providers across the nation. In the past year, ELV has increased membership in the Colorado network sevenfold. In fact, the State of Colorado Office of Early Childhood issued a grant to ELV in 2014 to expand services to more Colorado child care providers as they recognized the value of licensing compliance and early care quality improvements.