You might think of sitters as teenagers who watch the neighbor's kids and get paid $20 or more at the end of the night. Many people are turning to sitters who are just like themselves: parents. Start your own babysitting cooperative to develop a network of parents who are willing to babysit for free.
1. Understand How Sitters Work in a Babysitting Cooperative
The basic purpose of any babysitting cooperative is for parents to serve as sitters for each other. That's just the beginning. Understand all of the pros and cons of starting your own co-op before you take on the responsibility.2. Decide How You Will Run Your Babysitting Cooperative
There's no cookie-cutter way to run a co-op. You may want to have a coordinator who manages the co-op or you might prefer to let the parents work out babysitting time among themselves. There are many decisions to make before you open your co-op to members.3. Establish Rules for Your Babysitting Cooperative
Co-ops without rules can leave members with a sour experience. Sitters can get abused by other parents who are happy to drop their children off with others but never return the favor for other families in the co-op. Parents could pick up their kids, only to discover their children were disciplined with spanking.Head off any potential problems with solid rules. You can't prevent every miscommunication but you can minimize those issues with well-written co-op rules.
4. Set Up a Points, Tickets or Other Payment System for Sitters
Sitters are paid in a co-op a number of ways. No cash is exchanged, of course, but some co-ops use tickets, points or play money to track the time sitters earn and parents spend.Setting up your co-op's currency system is a two-step process. After you decide how members will trade time earned and spent, you will also need to assign a value to your co-op's new currency system. For example, a co-op using tickets could award 30 minutes of babysitting time to each ticket and allow those tickets to be ripped in half for 15 minute intervals.
