Who We Are & What We Do
The National Law Enforcement Foundation: Impacting Recruiting and Retaining While Restoring the Nobility of Policing
The National Law Enforcement Foundation (NLEF) is the leading implementor of tangible, measurable solutions that directly impact recruiting and retaining officers while strengthening the profession. Our mission is to restore the nobility of policing—making it a sought-after career once again—while ensuring officers and their families receive the very best early childhood education and support.
NLEF directly delivers custom childcare and early education solutions designed specifically for law enforcement. We work at all levels—securing public grants, engaging private philanthropy, and cutting through the red tape of funding bureaucracy—to ensure officers have the support they need to serve their communities confidently.
We mobilize law enforcement leaders, elected officials, and philanthropists to drive policy change addressing the critical recruiting and retention crisis impacting agencies nationwide.
But NLEF doesn’t just educate and gather —we implement. We are responsible for funding, building, managing, licensing, and operating each center, ensuring officers have access to top-tier childcare and early education to focus on their mission: protecting and serving their communities.
By removing barriers, providing real solutions, and prioritizing law enforcement families, NLEF is committed to making policing a profession of honor, strength, and stability once again.
Law enforcement in America is in crisis.
Law enforcement agencies nationwide are caught in a vicious cycle of retirements, resignations, and declining interest in the profession—despite millions being invested in recruitment efforts. The past few years have been deeply demoralizing for officers, and now departments are facing a second wave: mandatory retirements that are accelerating across the country. Agencies must replace experienced officers with a new generation—one that will only enter and remain in law enforcement if supported by tangible, family-friendly workforce tools.
This is no longer just a recruitment challenge—it’s a full-blown workforce crisis. Departments are investing millions in hiring, only to lose 25–30%, with some studies indicating up to 50% leave within five years. bjs.ojp.gov+7speakwrite.com+7theiacp.org+7.
At the same time, agencies are struggling to keep up with day-to-day operations. With fewer qualified applicants and slower promotions, overtime budgets are bursting, and existing officers are being stretched dangerously thin—covering shifts, units, and responsibilities once shared across a more stable workforce.
One of the most overlooked but deeply consequential contributors to this crisis is childcare. In a recent survey of a major metropolitan police department, 59% of officers reported missing work or leaving shifts due to unmet childcare needs, and one in five had seriously considered leaving the profession altogether because of childcare-related pressures.NLEF exists to stop this cycle. We deliver a tested, scalable solution: tailored childcare and early education centers designed specifically for law enforcement families. With extended hours, subsidized tuition, and wraparound support, these centers are built around the realities of the profession—and have already proven to help departments recruit smarter, retain longer, and stabilize a stretched workforce.
Without structural change, we will continue to lose officers—not just to retirement but to exhaustion, burnout, and preventable stress. The future of law enforcement depends on rebuilding from the inside out—and that starts with supporting the people behind the badge.
Our Plan and What We Need
Law enforcement needs a trusted group to represent them and educate our elected leaders that there is a model to help achieve their goals of reversing the recruiting and retaining crisis every agency faces.
We are not simply providing childcare or tax credits. We are overhauling the accessibility with round-the-clock care, the affordability by giving half of market-rate tuition, and the lack of childcare teachers by increasing their pay.
We've designed this model with the mission to make the everyday life of a cop more habitable and the profession attractive to recruits, especially women. While many critical workforces need customized childcare, none impact our communities quality of life as law enforcement does.
Ideally, we fund our mission with private philanthropic dollars and avoid public funding. Still, public safety is the government's responsibility, and there are ways to use public dollars to improve public safety innovatively.
Our team is working on outreach for FY2026 and live our mission daily to help as many agencies as possible navigate tangible solutions to improve their department. Agencies have to be stakeholders, not implementers.
Our Solution and Approach
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Create and operate a childcare facility exclusively for law enforcement with extended hours that supports shift work. Provide childcare and education coverage for 17 hours per day, 7 days a week, including holidays, with an emergency call-out option for officers on call.
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Provide 50% discount off market-rate of tuition. Tackle the teacher shortage by increasing pay by 20%.
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Organize a coalition of philanthropic, corporate, and public leaders aligned to provide a community-based, fiscally responsible approach to improve policing and support law enforcement.
We implement lessons learned.
Archaic service of childcare
Changing the archaic service of childcare is revolutionary. Altering traditional operating hours and tuition is the cornerstone of our foundation. The accessibility and affordability components we developed are the mainstay to reform policing.
Licensed childcare facility
Law enforcement agencies and associations are understaffed and unable to dedicate full-time personnel to construct and operate a licensed facility to provide child care for cops. Our men and women in law enforcement do a phenomenal job serving and protecting our communities. However, constructing, coordinating, and implementing a center providing child care for police is not in their repertoire, nor should it be.
Customized childcare facilities
The government's traditional avenues to supplement and support childcare services do not apply to law enforcement. Most law enforcement does not qualify for vouchers, and tax credits do not relieve the day-to-day financial burden or accessibility. Customized childcare facilities that complement daily life are vital to addressing the barrier that keeps law enforcement from being an attractive career.
Recruitment unique demands
Law enforcement and benefactors need a trusted group to understand the unique demands to recruit and retain the best to serve our communities. We built our board around experienced law enforcement and philanthropic advisors to ensure balance and accountability. We need child care for police to recruit the best and brightest.
Estimated Cost
National Law Enforcement Foundation is the implementer and conduit responsible for funding, building, managing, licensing, and operating each center.
We provide legal, sign liability insurance, lease, and provider management agreements. We directly deliver the services at the direction of the agency and association without them being responsible.
NLEF's public/private partnership model partners with a nationally licensed childcare provider who will also invest in the child care center for police.
Each center has an average operating cost of $3 million per year. Project budgets are built for at least three years plus construction costs to measure the effectiveness and provide consistency for families.
YOU can help!
Childcare for law enforcement doesn't exist. NLEF is working to change that by educating law enforcement leaders, elected officials, and philanthropists to push to change the allocation of funds to help address the national recruiting and retention crisis impacting every city and state in the country.
You can help NLEF provide this critical need by donating to our cause.