You know that anxious feeling. You fill out all the applications, submit them with the hefty application fee and then nervously wait to see whether or not your child gets in.
To college? Nope. Parents of young children know that there’s a very similar process in place for day care.
“I moved to [the DC region] when I was seven months pregnant and I had no idea what it would be like to apply to day care,” recalls Anna Levin. “I just assumed I would pick one near me, send in a check and they’d have a spot for me. I had no idea how difficult it would be.”
But parents here quickly find out that the day care application process can be filled with time-consuming applications, seemingly endless waiting lists and plenty of time spent on the phone following up as parents compete for limited slots in Northern Virginia day care facilities.
Levin, who has a background in website project management and design, knew there had to be a better way.
“My niece can apply to as many schools as possible as she wants for college. How come I can’t do that for day care?” Levin asked herself.
So she decided to take her tech skills and create a company that could.
Munchkin Mailbox officially launched in December 2018, and offers a streamlined day care application process. Like the online college application process, parents can apply to multiple day cares and pay all the application fees at one time.
“We want to save parents time,” says Levin, who lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, but is building the website to include day cares in Maryland, DC and Northern Virginia—with the goal of going nationwide.
Parents can search for day cares on Munchkin Mailbox by name or zip code. Once they’ve decided which ones they’re going to apply to, there’s a streamlined, four-step process: you enter your profile information, your child’s information and then fill out each online application. While each school may have different application questions, the website puts all of them on one page so that parents can cut and paste common information. Finally, you submit your applications and pay the fees online. Munchkin Mailbox charges a 10 percent fee for each application submitted.
The startup is still growing and, at press time, had 15 day cares in Northern Virginia on the site. But Levin’s goal is to grow the company into a “one-stop shop” for child care. That means ultimately parents will be able to apply, check their status on the waitlist (goodbye follow-up phone calls!), be notified when a spot opens up for their child and fill out the also-lengthy enrollment forms on Munchkin Mailbox. Eventually, Levin aims to also make other application processes available (“for all the things you have to apply to for your kids that are a pain in the butt”), such as extracurricular classes and summer camps.
For parents, the idea seems like a, “Why didn’t I think of that?” one. Levin agrees and says she’s been asked by investors why no one has done this before.
She tells them, “There aren’t a lot of women in tech and it’s usually moms who are filling out these applications. I’m a mom in tech and I have the solutions.”
Levin’s daughter, who is now 3, is happy at a local day care, but “getting her into that day care was like a marathon.”
That’s something she hopes to eliminate for her fellow parents. Munchkin Mailbox, she says, is “about giving time. It’s a one-stop shop for child care applications so you can apply to child care in one sitting. The point of it is to save time and frustration.”
Know a mom who has created a family-focus business? Submit her to [email protected] for her chance to be featured in an upcoming issue of the magazine.
