Better Future Businesses: Childcare Member Owned Co-op

How often a day do you wish you could stop the genocides, atrocities, and disasters happening across the globe? Do you feel overwhelmed by daily life and your responsibilities? It can all feel a bit hopeless.

I am with you. I can fall into a pit of despair at my limits and capacity compared to the needs in my home, not to mention the broader world.

Yet, I have made a difference. I have started things that have an impact. So even when the to-do list is too long, I can make a little space for the big things and know it will all add up. 

Don’t quit before you even begin. Start with a small action. As my long-time friend and amazing artist, Skylar McGee, says “show up, make marks”.

Do not let the largeness of something you want to do keep you from starting small. Big things are achieved through humble simple beginnings. A conversation, research, writing the idea down, or helping one person.

This series is about starting bit by bit - yet structured - on an area where you want to be part of the solution. Great organizations solve painful problems and they have a systematic impact.

We are often fed individual solutions to systematic problems, so we spend our days avoiding plastic straws and working harder and doing more. It's noble work, good work, but I want to offer another option for those who are so inspired. Entrepreneurship.

Becoming an entrepreneur means applying all that work towards more systematic and long-term solutions that benefit many. 

We think you can start something good.

This is part 2 of a series where we are creating plans for businesses that solve painful problems in our households, communities, and the world at large. 

Businesses that are good for people and the planet.

Read part 1 here.

In part 1 we tested the financial feasibility of an unlicensed home care business and learned it could work.

But, there is another model I want to explore. I want to DREAM BIG and explore early childhood education and the co-op model.

As soon as I heard about private equity buying up Childcare Centers, I knew this was a business model I wanted to deep-dive into.

Model 2: Early Education and Childcare Co-op

To start, I pulled inspiration and ideas from these resources:

• Podcast: No One’s Coming To Save Us
• Elliot Haspel’s work
• The Essential Value of a Worker-Owned Childcare System

Here are a couple of founders this might appeal to:

• The Educator - If you already have the credentials and expertise in early childhood education (think teacher, social worker, child psychologist, or development education or experience), this might be a very attractive business idea for you.
• The Corporate/NGO leader - If you are a do-er and know how to get stuff done in an organization, you could use those skills to become an entrepreneur. Especially if you want to be involved in childcare solutions but the idea of being home with MORE kids drives you to LinkedIn.

This will not be a quick childcare solution that comes with a paycheck. This will need a bit more time, fundraising, and planning.

In part one I outlined my long-term ideal scene, vision, purpose, and mission for a childcare business - these have not changed.

Now let’s look at the financials for this bigger business model.

I played around with the numbers a lot before landing on something promising. That’s what makes the back of the napkin tool great for this stage of thinking - you can play around easily.

So here’s what I’m imagining for this first version of my center:

• Employee and parent-owned cooperative.
• 5 employees including myself
• Renting our building or space
• Capacity for 20 full-time kids

I’ve now done the Back of The Napkin for a few childcare business models and the member-owned Co-op is the one I want to pursue. I will continue the business plan building on that idea. 

Step 4: Product, Marketing, Sales, Operations & Management

Up until now, I’ve done big-picture thinking. I figured out how this business fits into my life, what it does, and the financials.

It’s time to get specific and action-oriented. I’m going to outline the most important aspects of my business:

Ops & Management (how it will be organized), what we'll offer aka the Product, our Marketing (how people will find us) and our Sales (how it will drive revenue).

Ops & Management: Member Owned Co-operative

You become a member through financial investment, being an employee of the co-op, or a customer with children in care.

The Leadership team of the Co-op will be elected and hired by the members through a democratic process.

Decisions will be made by consensus by the leadership team. There will be areas where day-to-day decisions and operations are delegated to employees.

There will be bigger decisions that the leadership team will have to call for a memberwide vote. The details of these will be predetermined by the founding members.

Product: Childcare services.

I know the pain points for my client that my childcare service will address, but I don’t know all the details - and that’s ok. Because I also know that I want it to be a cooperative, with member buy-in and to do that the product will have to be client and member-designed.

We will start co-designing this service with 5 families who are also dedicated to childcare solutions in our community.

Because our model is employee and member-led, we’ll host meetings over several months with interested families, caregivers, and early childhood education experts to understand what families want, best practices, and what the most urgent childcare needs are.

Our goal with these meetings will be to 1) start recruiting purpose and mission-aligned founding members, employees, investors, and leadership team and 2) design a service that solves the community's childcare challenges in a sustainable way.

These community meetings will be guided by the initial vision of what the care center will offer in 3 phases;

Phase 1

• Full-time care for up to 12 children 0 - 6 years old in members’ houses or a temporary space.
• Evening in-house care Childcare for events
• Enrichment activities aligned with the latest and best ECE practices
• Temporary in-home sick/injury care
• All caregivers are licensed or in the process of becoming licensed

Phase 2

• Full-time care for up to 35 children 0 - 6 years old
• Evening in-house care
• Childcare at Events
• Enrichment activities aligned with the latest and best ECE practices
• Temporary in-home sick/injury care
• Meals including take-away family dinners Laundry services
• Assistance applying for childcare subsidies & grants
• On-staff social worker Parenting classes and support

Phase 3

• All of the above
• Full-time (7am - 7pm) Childcare and early childhood education for ages 0 - 6 years old
• After-school care for ages 6 - 10
• Temporary in-home care for sick/injured children
• Child transportation from school

Examples from the real world for inspiration: https://www.epiphanyschool.com/elc-overview

https://beyondcare.coop/

https://childspacedaycarecenters.org/

Deciding The Location

In phase 1 we’ll get creative to use the spaces we already have - our houses or community centers.

What spaces are underutilized during the day when everyone is at work?

For example let’s say the makeup of our initial members childcare needs look something like this:

Family 1 - 6 month and 2 year old

Family 2 - 9 month and 3 year old

Family 3 - 2 year old twins and 4 year old

Family 4 - 1 year and 4 year old

Family 5 - 2-year-old and 6 year old

Space needed: 2 houses

Using our initial member’s houses we can provide care 5 days/week by each family giving their home to care use 2x’s per week.

Added benefits - when your house is used, dinner is prepared, and the home is given a quick clean after each use. The idea is to leave the house in better shape.

We can also look at church buildings, renting a house, or community centers.

If you offer your house you can have a discount for each day your house is used, if you have flexibility in your work you can also give hours to lower your childcare costs.

By phase 3 or in the 10-year ideal scene, we own our buildings. This works well in a co-operative model where the appreciation of the property benefits all the members.

Marketing: Starting Local Phase 1: We will build initial interest through neighbourhood outreach, local parent groups, and word of mouth.

We will run bi-monthly interest meetings, a social media or private chat group, and a mailing list.

Perhaps we will go door-to-door in our target neighbourhoods to hand out a simple flyer and collect email addresses of those interested.

Our target is only 5 families in phase 1 but we want to reach at least 100 people so we have a good pool of potential investors, leaders, employees, and families who need care.

Phase 2 and beyond

Word of mouth of our members will continue to be the primary way we add additional families with targeted newsletters and calls to action when enrollment is open.

We will also have an effort to diversify and represent our neighbourhoods by partnering with public schools, non-profits, and government agencies.

Door-to-door outreach in under-represented areas of our community will also continue. By phase 2, we would like 1000 people to be aware of us.

Sales:

Registering Families From our interest meetings, we will have an application to join the cooperative as founding members, and I will choose the first five families.

We will then implement an application and decision-making process for new members that includes parameters for equity and inclusion.

We will have an open-house and interest meeting quarterly and a waiting list for new members. We will offer spots during enrollment periods and when space become available mid-year.

Conclusion:

Using some simple tools I now have the bones of a business plan, it’s not investor or launch-ready, but it’s something I can keep building on with a bit of confidence because the bones fit together.

This is an idea that has lived in my head for a long time. What small or big problem do you want to solve? What business idea keeps popping into your head?

I view business ideas the same way Elizabeth Gilbert talks about inspiration and creativity in her book Big Magic.

"Inspiration is trying to send me messages in every form it can—through dreams, through portents, through clues, through coincidences, through déjà vu, through kismet, through surprising waves of attraction and reaction, through the chills that run up my arms, through the hair that stands up on the back of my neck, through the pleasure of something new and surprising, through stubborn ideas that keep me awake all night long . . . whatever works. Inspiration is always trying to work with me."

So start saying yes to your business inspiration and in the words of Arthur Ashe:

"Start where you are. Do what you can. Use what you have."

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