OpenCubby

10 minutes. One family. 2–5 years of tuition revenue. Most providers haven't done this yet. 👇

Here's the math no one talks about:

Take your monthly tuition rate. Multiply it by how long a family typically stays enrolled — infants through school age, that's often 2 to 5 years.

That's the lifetime value of one family who chooses you.

Now think about the families who found your center online, liked what they saw — and hit a wall.

No clear availability. An incomplete profile. No obvious next step.

And moved on.

In 2026, your first impression isn't made at the front door. It's made online — before a family ever calls or visits. And the providers earning that first impression aren't necessarily running the best programs.

They're the ones who made it easiest to go from "found you" to "ready to enroll."

What a complete OpenCubby profile does in 10 minutes:

✅ Shows real availability — families stop guessing
✅ Tells your story in a way that builds trust before the tour
✅ Gives families a clear next step the moment they find you
✅ Does the first impression work so the tour can do the relationship work

And it's completely free.

10 minutes. One family. Do the math for your own center.

Then ask yourself what an incomplete profile has already cost you this year.

💙 Claim your free OpenCubby profile → link in bio
app.opencubbyspot.com

Your center is listed on three directories. You're still sitting on empty spots. Sound familiar? 👇

Directories were built to help families find you. They were never built to enroll them.

And in 2026, finding you isn't enough.

Families today browse, compare, and take the next step all in one place. That's how they book everything else in their lives. Child care is the last category where they're still expected to find a name on a list and figure out the rest on their own.

What providers keep telling us:

❌ "We get inquiries from directories but they never convert."
❌ "Families find us online and we never hear from them again."
❌ "We're paying for visibility. What we need is enrollment."

The centers filling spots fastest right now aren't the ones with the most listings. They're the ones that made it easiest to go from interested to enrolled — in one place, without the back-and-forth.

✅ Real availability families can actually see
✅ A clear next step the moment they find you
✅ One guided path from browsing to booked

75% of child care professionals report occupancy at 70% or lower. The demand is there. The friction is the problem.

OpenCubby isn't a directory. It's an enrollment engine — built to turn the families already looking for care into families who actually show up.

💙 Link in bio → app.opencubbyspot.com

Back-to-school season is the single biggest enrollment window of the year. Most child care providers aren't ready for it.

Not because they don't care. Because they're running their centers, managing their teams, and dealing with the day-to-day — and marketing is the thing that keeps getting pushed to next week.

We hear this constantly. And right now, next week is too late.

Here's what the data tells us:

Child care centers see an average 23% enrollment decline during summer months. Back-to-school is when that demand surges back — families are actively searching, schedules are changing, and decisions are being made right now. The providers who show up clearly and consistently during this window fill spots faster. The ones who don't are still chasing inquiries in October.

What we're hearing from providers heading into this season:

"Our website hasn't been updated in two years."
"We're still relying on word of mouth and a Facebook post here and there."
"We got a bunch of inquiries last August and didn't have a system to follow up on all of them."

These aren't small centers without resources. These are good programs with real availability — losing enrollment opportunities to providers who simply made it easier to take the next step.

Here's what actually moves the needle right now:

→ Make your availability visible. Families aren't calling to ask if you have spots. If they can't see it, they move on.
→ Update your profile and presence. First impressions happen online before anyone picks up the phone.
→ Have a follow-up system. Every inquiry that goes unanswered this month is a spot that stays empty.
→ Make the next step obvious. Families shouldn't have to figure out what to do after they find you.

Back-to-school isn't just a season. It's a window — and it closes faster than most providers expect.

If your marketing strategy isn't ready for the next 6 weeks, now is the time to fix that.

At OpenCubby, we're helping providers show up for this moment — with real families, not just leads.

You filled out the same packet five times. At five different centers.👇

If you've searched for child care recently, you know exactly what this feels like.

And if you run a center, you know the other side — chasing missing signatures, re-sending forms, manually tracking who submitted what before a child can even start.

The paperwork problem in child care isn't that documentation exists. It should. Health records, emergency contacts, authorization forms — that's all necessary.

The problem is how disconnected the process is.

Families start from scratch at every provider. Providers track submissions manually. Documents collected in one place don't carry over to the next. Everyone is spending time on administration that has nothing to do with actually finding the right fit.

What should happen instead:

✅ Families fill out core documents once — and reuse across providers
✅ Providers see exactly what's submitted, what's pending, what's next
✅ Paperwork moves with the enrollment, not separate from it

Enrollment documentation shouldn't be a barrier to care. It should be part of a clear path toward it.

That's what we're building at OpenCubby — for families and providers alike.

💙 Free to sign up.
👉 Link in bio → app.opencubbyspot.com

Nearly half of child care centers have open spots. Nearly three quarters of parents can't find one.

Both sides are frustrated. Neither is getting what they need.

After hundreds of conversations with providers and families while building OpenCubby, the insight that keeps surfacing isn't what most people expect.

The problem isn't supply. It isn't awareness. It's the path between them.

—

What providers kept telling us:

Most weren't struggling to get inquiries. They were struggling to convert them. A family would reach out, express interest, go quiet — and the provider would never find out why.

The follow-up was manual. The paperwork was disconnected. Tour coordination happened over phone tag and email. By the time a provider had everything they needed, the family had moved on — usually to whoever responded faster and made the next step clearest.

What families kept telling us:

Parents described the search for child care as one of the most stressful decisions they'd made — not because the stakes weren't worth it, but because the process made it harder than it needed to be.

Bouncing between websites. Calling centers that didn't call back. Filling out the same form five times. The average family spends 13 hours on this. Many spend far more.

What families wanted wasn't a better search engine. They wanted a clearer path forward.

—

Here's where the industry often gets it wrong:

The frustration on both sides isn't about the decision itself. Providers want to choose who they accept. Families want to feel seen and considered. That final moment — the tour, the relationship, the enrollment decision — should be human, hands-on, and unhurried.

The problem is everything before that moment.

The search, the inquiry, the paperwork, the scheduling, the follow-up — none of that needs to be manual. None of it benefits from friction.

Automate this → inquiry routing, availability visibility, document collection, follow-up
Keep this human → the tour, the enrollment conversation, the acceptance decision, the relationship

The best providers we've worked with understand this intuitively. They don't want to automate the relationship. They want to protect it — by removing the noise that gets in the way of it.

Efficiency doesn't replace the relationship. It creates the conditions for it.

—

That's what we're building at OpenCubby.

If you're a provider or parent who's lived this — drop a comment. And if you want to see how we're changing the path from search to enrollment: app.opencubbyspot.com

OpenCubby launched in Arizona last month, just in time for providers to claim their profiles before the back-to-school rush!

Fill your open spots with OpenCubby HOW TO FILL YOUR OPEN SPOTS — WHAT'S ACTUALLY WORKING IN 2026 Enrollment doesn't have to be a guessing game. Here are four reads worth your time — practical, specific, and grounded in what real centers are doing right now to stay full.

🔍 For parents looking for child care
🎓 For providers looking to fill open spots

https://app.opencubbyspot.com/

⏱️ TIME ⏱️
Throughout our many conversations with parents & providers, time spent on securing child care was a shared pain point.

For families, this means time spent on centers that don’t have availability or fit their needs.
For providers, this means time spent on following up with leads that don’t turn into enrollments.

💙 Solution: OpenCubby
Connecting real families looking for care with real providers that have what families need.

✨ Parents that have:
Paperwork done
Decision made
Ready to enroll

✨ Providers that have:
Availability
Amenities
Access

Lack of child care should not be the reason a parent or caregiver cannot work. Help show Arizona lawmakers how important child care is to families!

We're in the home stretch! Lawmakers are close to finalizing a state budget and we need to remind them one last time how they can help Arizona's children and families. Use the QR code on the message to send an email to the Governor and your legislators letting them know you want them to prioritize child care funding in the final state budget.

As providers head to OpenCubby to claim & customize their profiles, here are a few tips on what parents are looking for!

💙 How to Make the Most of Your OpenCubby Profile 💙 Your profile on OpenCubby is how families decide whether to reach out. Here's how to make sure it's working as hard as you are.