We can help by focusing on a few key areas that will allow Catholic School leaders to focus on educating students.
Enrollment Management: We'll analyze your data to find out what trends are occurring. We will research where your students historically come from and why they, or their families, choose you. We can explore the demographics of your student population, alumni, and prospective populations. We will develop an enrollment model that serves the needs of your community - now and for the future.
Admissions and Retention: With an overall enrollment model in place, we will review your current recruitment and retention efforts. We can pinpoint bottlenecks impacting how families find and choose your school. We can audit your admissions efforts and examine how retention works at your school. We will review your tuition assistance and financial aid policies, helping you find ways to make your school more affordable. We will look at communications, events, personnel efforts, and more to help find how to best improve your admissions efforts. We'll also work on placing you in context with your competitors - private, public, charter, and more.
Tuition and Revenue: Revenue in schools comes down to three buckets: tuition, philanthropy/giving, and "other fees and income." We can help you optimize those three - and ensure your fiscal health now and for the future. We'll find ways for you to creatively view tuition. How do you currently set tuition? Is it by committee? By fiat? By automatic yearly percentage increase? There are numerous tuition models and we'll help identify the one(s) that work best for you.
Implementation: We know that your resources are limited. You don't always have the time, staff, money, whatever to devote to these questions. So let us help. We can provide you with a staged, incremental plan to implement a new enrollment strategy. We'll give you the step-by-step instructions with an eye towards both short-term and long-term benefit.
Enrollment Models
The chart to the left shows how one school analyzed their historical trends, changed their enrollment model, and thrived.
The change from the 09-10 school year to the 10-11 school year did not involve any additional admissions expenses and utilized the existing pipeline to optimize enrollment and retention.
The west and "south" sides of Greater Cleveland are home to seven Catholic high schools.
Competitive Landscape
The marketing environment is always challenging.
For Catholic schools, the default position of most families in a geography is to attend the local public schools.
The second level of competition, and the one that is the most difficult to manage, is the immediate Catholic school competition. Differentiation without attacking is key.
The third level includes everyone else - charter schools, home school, or independent schools.