Photograph By Shane Van Boxtel/Image Studios
Lynn Coriano isn’t afraid of tackling big issues, from race relations for the Seattle Chamber of Commerce to at-risk student support for the national nonprofit Communities In Schools.
Today the New York-born, Colorado-raised nonprofit leader is organizing around one of the New North’s greatest economic challenges — a lack of affordable child care — through her work as executive director with the Basic Needs Giving Partnership.
Coriano sat down with Insight to discuss her journey to Green Bay, what child care challenges our community is facing and how business leaders can effect change.
Insight: What brought you to the New North and the Basic Needs Giving Partnership?
Coriano: My husband and I were looking for a change. I hadn’t lived near my family since high school, so we were looking at either Denver or Green Bay and thought if we’re gonna move, like, let’s really change it up. My sister lives in Green Bay, and we are really close so I wanted to be near her. That was 2016. I was looking for work in the nonprofit sector and I saw this job posted on the Green Bay Community Foundation website, which was for this regional poverty initiative through U.S. Venture. It was a part-time job that had an 18-month timeframe. I thought this would be a good way to get in the community, understand who the players are and understand the issues. So I applied and got the job and then six months later, it became full time. It’s evolved into its own independent nonprofit. Right now we’re focusing on foundations to thrive — issues in early care and education, mental health, affordable housing and substance use. We fund organizations in a 10-county region that are working to address those areas both in direct service and systems change. The Basic Needs Giving Partnership has always wanted to address the root cause, the upstream issues. You have to support people who need services now, while also creating investment in how we can do things differently. We focus on investing in both of those things.
What is appealing to you about nonprofit work and addressing really nuanced social issues?
I’ve always been interested in engaging people in issues. Even as a young kid, my mom said that I always just asked tons of questions and was very justice-minded. I don’t know where that comes from. I’m a curious person and I like information. I know for myself when I have more information, I might be inspired to make different decisions. You grow up thinking and believing a certain way, and then you go away to college and learn different things and are exposed to different things. I’ve always been [inspired] to draw that out in other people. How can I engage people in a way that excites them and energizes them to become involved in something?
Child care access and affordability has been a big focus for some time. Can you talk about your work in this area and the formation of the Greater Fox Valley Child Care Alliance?
We know women with children are disproportionately represented in our poverty numbers, so we had an action group focused on the barriers they’re facing and how we might address those barriers. One of the things that kept coming up was access to child care and the affordability of it because we know that no one — women or men — can work unless they have child care. This group has been meeting since August 2020 and has expanded. We’ve been able to really educate ourselves about what some of the issues are really underlying that. People have been talking about this issue for years. When we talk about systems change and we talk about policy change, this is a long game. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and we have the baton right now. The Greater Fox Valley Child Care Alliance is helping to carry the baton to the next place. It’s our turn to keep the conversation going and shine a light on the issue. We have more people interested and engaged in this conversation than I have seen in the time that I’ve been here. Businesses are feeling the impact of not having enough child care, whether that’s retaining current employees who are deciding to stay home or attracting new employees. It’s great that some employers can give their employees stipends to help reduce the cost of care, but if the care isn’t there in the first place because you don’t have that workforce, it’s not as effective as it could be.
The Wisconsin Child Care Summit being hosted by the Green Bay Chamber this September is going to take a business approach to solving the child care crisis. Why is this important?
We know business needs to be part of the conversation and part of the solution, but they can’t be the only player — we need business, we need philanthropy, we need the public sector all coming together to address this issue, but people listen to the business sector. Having the Green Bay Chamber organize that community is really important to our overall efforts. I think it’s helpful that the business community understands the dynamics because people think child care is so expensive that these centers have to be making bank when really their margins of profit are like 1 to 2%. It’s not that people don’t know how to run these businesses. It’s actually a true market failure happening in the child care sector. The real issue here is wages. We’ve all seen how much housing and health care costs have risen, and you’ve got folks in this sector earning $7.50 to $12 an hour. It’s just not going to cut it. Staffing is a huge issue.
How do you think the business community can create the most positive change when it comes to child care?
Talk to your employees to get a better understanding of how [child care] is impacting them. Think about flexibility with schedules, so if child care is an issue, is there a way that they can work with their employees to be more flexible and adjust with them? We talk about child care as critical infrastructure for people to get to work. Just like we invest in roads for people to get to work, we have to be investing in child care. We need an organized effort from the business community to be at those tables, arm-in-arm with child care providers, the public sector and parents to advocate for that kind of investment and change. There are some amazing programs that provide great services to kids and families. I don’t want that to get lost. There are so many dedicated high-quality programs that are out there — we just need more of them.
