Make it Fair
The point system Since you won’t be using money (yay!), you’ll need to devise another way to keep track of services rendered. Most co-ops use a point system: Parents earn points by watching another family’s kids and spend them those points when they need a sitter. Point scales range from the simple (one point per child per hour) to the elaborate (extra points for weekends and evenings, for picking up another mom's child and so on), but to avoid future squabbles, the terms should always be decided when the co-op is created.
Keeping track While some co-ops appoint managers to record members’ point histories, others are less formal. Bay Area dad (founder of childcare-locating website tipplebox.com) Tolulope Akinola and his wife belonged to a co-op based entirely on trust when he was a grad student at Stanford. “We just relied on memory,” Akinola says of how his co-op tallied credits. “We kept it among friends, so there was a lot more room for trust and flexibility.”
Regular shifts Daycare co-ops, which are for regularly scheduled child care rather than flexible and occasional babysitting, arrange a rotation of regular shifts for parents. Daycare co-ops are often small, made up of about five or six families who switch off using their homes as a location; because of infants’ unpredictable natures, DIY daycares seems to work better with children over the age of 1.

Next: Lay down the by-laws

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