Husband/wife team create app to connect parents to baby sitters
Finding a baby sitter can be difficult. That’s why Mountain Brook husband and wife team Tommy and Ginger Mayfield created Wyndy.
Named for the character Wendy in “Peter Pan,” Wyndy is an app designed to connect families in need of a sitter with qualified local college students who are looking for part-time work.
“Wyndy is a mobile app that we built with the aim of transforming how parents and college baby sitters meet and interact,” Tommy Mayfield said.
“We’ve been parents for six years, and pretty consistent over those six years was the pain of finding, booking and paying a baby sitter,” Ginger Mayfield said.
And those three elements are what Wyndy targets: finding, booking and paying.
The app is free to download for both parents and sitters, once accepted. There are no subscription fees, but the app charges parents a service fee based on the hourly rate they set for the job for their sitters, or “Wyndys.” Sitters use an in-app timer to track the length of the job, and parents can securely pay their sitter through the app after viewing the amount they owe.
When parents are in need of a sitter, they can create a job and post it directly to a job board for an available sitter to express interest, or they can send a request to their customized list of “My Wyndys,” or sitters saved based on reviews, connections, qualifications or past experiences.
A notification will go out to the first baby sitter on their list, and if the job is not accepted within the designated time frame, the notification continues to other individuals on their list until the job is accepted.
Parents also are able to review their baby sitters, which their friends or connections on Wyndy can see.
“That’s a great way to broaden their [the Wyndys’] network, because that [communication] is what happens in real life,” Tommy Mayfield said.
All sitters are required to go through an application process where they list their experiences, preferences, GPA, major and verify their “.edu” email address. Then they submit a 30-second video to introduce themselves and answer a couple questions, and if accepted, must pass a background check. The app is available only in the Birmingham area, and it employs students from Samford, UAB and Birmingham Southern. As of the third week in April, Wyndy had 275 fully-accepted sitters.
“I don’t even worry about finding a baby sitter anymore,” said Ginger Mayfield after using her own app a few times. Because the app specifically targets families and college students, it connects a sitter’s flexible schedules with the busy schedules of parents to find a suitable match.
“Our hope with Wyndy is it gives students who need a viable part-time job a way to have one, that’s also fairly flexible enough to deal with their schedule,” Tommy Mayfield said.
Wyndy also is offering sitters one digital raffle ticket for every hour worked on Wyndy, which is entered for a scholarship drawing at the end of the semester. The first scholarship will be $2,500, and the raffle will hopefully continue.
The Mayfields said they plan on expanding the app to include college students who will be home in the Birmingham area for the summer. Those sitters can sign up before summer, but they will not be added into the system until summertime.
“It’s [finding baby sitters] been a very difficult problem for a lot of parents,” Tommy Mayfield said. “There are all these great college students … who are just as eager to connect with these families.”
For more information or to sign up as a baby sitter, email support@wyndy.com with a college email address or go to wyndy.com.