The early childhood care and education sector is characterized by a number of economic inefficiencies. The industry is fragmented into many small providers, each one of which is required to have fairly specialized business skills. One potential benefit of a community fund combining multiple resources to help families afford quality care is its power to streamline and rationalize the administration of child care businesses. If all child care funding were channeled through a "single-payer system" that determined parents’ co-payment, accepted payment, and reimbursed providers, the system might relieve providers of many onerous business responsibilities. These two documents describe potential payment and service models, both within child care and from other policy fields, that fund designers may draw on in whole or in part in designing a child care single payer system.

• Five provider systems: Franchises, cooperatives, business support services, health maintenance organizations, and national corporation child care.
• College financial aid. This can be a useful model for fund design because it is extremely developed and uniformly used across the country, integrating government, private, and charitable funding sources.