For employers, sponsors, unions and agencies
The shift nobody can cover.
Every employer with staff on a clock already pays for after-school care — in late starts, early departures, absence, and the people who do not come back after parental leave. Braid turns that into a line item you can see, at a price that has a tax treatment.
Three ways to work with us
- Buy a block of places for your staff.
- You sponsor places; your employees claim them. You pay only for families actually matched — not a per-head retainer for a benefit most of your staff will never use. That is the difference between this and a backup-care contract, and it is usually the whole argument. Hospitals first: the 2:40-to-6:00 gap is exactly where a nursing roster breaks.
- Sponsor the foundation.
- Fund places for families who qualified for a New York State childcare voucher and are still on a waiting list the funding never caught up with. Those places are staffed by retired volunteers, and those families pay nothing. Named publicly or not, as you prefer, and reported on against outcomes we publish rather than stories we choose.
- Build an agreement at organisation level.
- For unions, chapters, associations and public bodies: an agreement covering access for your members, seats on the Wisdom Council that governs how this works, and participation funding that scales with how many of your members take part — not with what you promise us. We do not ask for member lists, and we do not ask anyone to promote us.
The 2026 tax position, briefly. The employer-provided childcare credit under Internal Revenue Code §45F rose to 40% of qualified childcare expenditures with a $500,000 cap for tax years beginning in 2026, and now expressly contemplates contracting through an intermediary. New York State offers its own employer childcare credit calculated as a multiple of the federal one, also capped. Separately, the dependent care FSA limit rose to $7,500, which is what brings a sponsored family under $1,000 a month.
We will model your actual position with you, and you should have your own tax counsel check it. The eligibility conditions attached to §45F are real and we would rather raise them than let you discover them.
What a partner receives
- A benefit that reaches shift workers.
- Most childcare benefits are structurally aimed at salaried parents with predictable hours. This one is aimed at the 2:40 problem, which is where hourly and rostered staff actually lose their jobs.
- You can cover the overtime, not just the base.
- Hours beyond a family’s plan are billed as hours. You can choose to carry those too — which turns the benefit into something that works on the night a nurse is asked to stay. It is the difference between a childcare benefit your rostering team likes and one they route around.
- Real reporting, not a satisfaction score.
- Places filled, families served, care-days delivered, and the two outcomes the Wisdom Council holds us to: whether the retired people doing this are less isolated and in better health, and whether the children are genuinely well looked after.
- A story that is true.
- Your sponsorship employs retired teachers in your own city and closes the vision, dental and hearing gaps Medicare leaves open for them. That is not a tagline we wrote for you; it is the mechanism.
Start a conversation
Tell us which of the three you are and we will come back with something specific rather than a deck.
This goes to a founder, not a queue. Expect a reply within two working days.
Thank you — we have it.
We will come back within two working days with something specific to your organisation.