As we have grown and formalized our services, our ongoing costs are increasing, as does our desire to compensate the work that goes into making the coop run! Supporting Paper Moon through a monthly donation would help us meet the needs of low-end of the spectrum paying clients, compensating our organizing committee, and help us ensure values-based trainings for our members.

At Paper Moon we believe we all are responsible for the nurturing of children, not just parents. If you share that belief and want to see sliding scale, community-rooted childcare thrive in your neighborhood, we’re asking you to join us in supporting Paper Moon with a monthly recurring contribution. Recurring contributions best allow us to predict our yearly income, and sustainably set how low our sliding scale can go for our low-income families. 

So, what does your contribution make possible at Paper Moon? 

• Support affordable childcare: We are proud that our sliding scale goes down to $10/hour for our low-income families! Our workers are paid $20/hr regardless of what our clients can pay. Your donation to Paper Moon helps supplement wages so we can keep our sliding scale as accessible as possible, while paying our members a living-(adjacent)-wage. Right now, we are only able to accept new clients who are able to pay at least our breakeven rate of  $24 an hour. 

• Pay staff for their time organizing the co-op: Organizing committee members currently are not compensated for administrative labor. There would be no co-op without their labor! With your contribution, this work would be stipend supported, making the functioning of our co-op more sustainable. 

• Help us afford business liability insurance: Your donations will help us afford monthly liability insurance so we can be properly protected as a co-op.

• Fund training for caregivers: It matters to us that the care we provide is culturally appropriate, anti-oppressive, joyful. We aim to carefully tends to each child’s health and safety, allowing them to be their full, expansive, and autonomous selves. Regular training helps us integrate knowledge and skills into our caregiving practices. 

Who is Paper Moon Childcare Cooperative anyways?

Paper Moon is a worker-owned co-op in Minneapolis providing sliding-scale, accessible, community-based childcare in the Twin Cities. Formed in 2022, we’ve sought to combine our love for childcare with our desire to mitigate some of its inequities, and to build a joyful project that will sustain us into the world to come. In early 2024, we incorporated as a Section 308A cooperative business. More specifically, we offer…

• Childcare for organizations (mutual aid groups, neighborhood assemblies, unions)

• In-home childcare for families & households

• Practices rooted in anti-racist, anti-sexist, & gender-affirming values

ABOUT OUR MEMBERS

• Our caregivers are diversely skilled, with experience in a variety of care settings, including childcare, education, camp counseling, elder care, & health care.

• The majority of our caregivers are LGBTQ+, many are trans or genderqueer, and several speak Spanish. We also have men in Paper Moon! Several members maintain diligent COVID precautions & specialize in working with COVID-cautious households. 

• All our caregivers go through an intake process, involving a formal interview with two current members; communicating with 2-3 references who can speak on their care work; & agreeing to abide by our Tenets of Care, which you can read on our website.

All our caregivers are trained & certified in First Aid & CPR for children, infants, & adults.