Trustees are invaluable for schools, because, without them, schools would have a difficult time achieving their missions. Trustees offer schools both financial and professional resources. They provide the leadership needed to keep the school focused on pursuing excellence.
Although trustees are invaluable to schools, they don’t have time to fully understand what enrollment management is all about. Because of its importance in the operation of the school, it is essential for someone to teach the trustees what they need to know. There are a number of ideas that would be helpful in the trustees’ orientation pertaining to effective enrollment management.
I have listed my dozen that could be helpful with the next orientation of the new members, or bringing current trustees up to speed.
Please feel free to add to my list in the comment section.
- Understand the need for an enrollment committee of the board – I wasn’t always in favor of an enrollment committee of the board, but after having one and also seeing how the finance and advancement/development committees can support the functions of these two offices, I am a believer in the benefits of this group.
How to help: The head of school and the Director of Enrollment Management should suggest goals and objectives for the Enrollment Committee of the Board or make a strong recommendation that the board creates this committee. Tap on the shoulders of the right individuals to provide expertise to your enrollment work. You need some members who truly understand marketing, communication and sales in a non-profit environment.
Help make the enrollment committee your experts on the board. Convince a member of that group to be on the finance and policy committee. This may be your best shot at having someone who has a favorable understanding of your enrollment complexities representing the interest of the school’s enrollment management.
- Review compositional goals – Although the board will think about compositional goals in regards to the amount of full-pay students needed, they don’t always think about the quality of the student body while setting financial goals. Without compositional considerations, schools’ admission offices may be forced to bring in full-pay students who have strong adverse effects on program and the long-term enrollment strength of the school. How? The weaker matched students will draw on more resources and adversely impact the quality of the other students’ experience.
How to help: Compositional goals and challenges need to be a part of the presentation to the board. They need to hear it at least once a year as a strategic approach to enrollment management. The director needs to help them to understand what the target compositional goals are, what it will take to get there, and why those compositional goals are the right ones.
- Explain the impact of tuition Increases – During board meeting, there will be charts and spreadsheets showing the necessary tuition increases and enrollment needed to sustain the – school over 1, 3, or 5-year periods of time. I have never seen them show a chart of the number of full-pay families that will be lost at the various tuition increases over time. The board also will usually not ask for it. This tells me that they don’t truly understand the connection, between the rise in tuition and its effects on the full-pay eligible numbers. Anecdotally, they might see the speed of rising tuition, particularly day parents who are hearing their friends complain. However, they usually view it in relationship to how much more they need to pay to send their child to the school and not an empirical analysis of how your brand and market is being affected.
How to help: At least once every three years, someone may need to show the relationship between varying tuition increases and the effects on the number of available full-pay families with age appropriate children. It isn’t an easy task, but with access to the right information, it is doable. I have done it once; however, I would recommend that the school hire someone who has the information readily at hand, to do it.
- Surveying the customers – Quantitative information can be a valuable tool for assessing the needs of a school’s enrollment management strategy. Surveying the current and prospective customer is an important part of this process. Often, heads of schools want to interpret the data for the boards. Boards need to see the data and interpret it for themselves, so that they are able to ask the right questions and understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the school. Surveys may identify something that is overlooked by the head of school or his/her administrative team. It may be hard for those actually implementing the program to see their weaknesses or may recognize something uniquely special about their program.
How to help: Anytime there is a change of head of school, the board should do a quantitative survey of the program. This way the head doesn’t feel that the survey is a reflection on his/her work and the new head may be less afraid of presenting all of the weaknesses to the board. If the head has been there a long time and is not leaving, then the board should work with the head to do a survey, but collect the results themselves instead of through the administrative team, preventing any unintentional biases.
- Understanding the school’s brand image presently – It’s difficult to create an effective enrollment system, if the powers-that-be don’t understand the school’s brand now. Particularly boards with many alumni will remember the school from the past. This may distort what needs to be done in the current enrollment environment.
How to help: The enrollment committee and the general board need to be provided with the school’s brand image and messages. The school should demonstrate how some things that they deem important now, might not be so important as the customer is making their decision today. Both can exist, but one may not be the key message presented to prospective parents who aren’t disciples of the school as yet. I am talking about programmatic aspects, not mission. In my opinion, the mission should not be changed without the board’s approval. I recognize that, in some schools, the board may control brand messaging, too; however, my main point is that everyone needs to be on the same page and running with the same messages of today not from the past.
- Create the budget with the director of admission – Although business offices can save money, they don’t often create new money (except for endowment investing), yet they are in all of the budget decisions. The director of admission creates new money each year and boards need to understand that this person may have some insights that can direct the financial management of the school.
How to help: The head needs to hire a director of admissions in whom he/she has enough confidence to handle discussions with the finance committee of the board. This person then needs to be aware of what is important to be presented to the board in order to help them make the best short term and long term decisions about tuition revenue. This is where data will be invaluable.
- Using financial aid strategically – Boards may have many thoughts around financial aid allocations, but when they aren’t informed, they underestimate the full value that financial aid creates. As a result, they are less likely to give it the attention or support it may need. Financial aid is a marketing tool that can have tremendous effects on the composition of the student body and its ability to generate income. The composition of the student body, of course, affects the ability to re-enroll the following year.
How to help: Improving awareness of the use and purpose of financial aid should be at least a yearly reminder for the board. It should be a part of the new board orientation too. The director has to have a solid understanding of the purpose for financial aid and be able to demonstrate its effective uses.
- Understanding why full-pay families are important – I know this seems like a “duh” tip. However, until there is a serious problem, some boards don’t think about how important the full-pay family is to the institution’s success.
How to help: This is, once again, about keeping the prize in front of the board. They need to understand the numbers behind this group and should be reminded about how this group fits into the financial and composition picture of the school. The director of admissions should provide data around these numbers, for example, growth in the market and yield on full-pay students. Also, a reminder about the percent of full-pay students needed to operate the school should be on the list.
- Understanding how the selection process works – Each school’s selection process should have some methodology and intentions. Whether you are selecting individual students, because they are smart, athletic, a girl, a full-pay candidate, or a student of color, conveying how the admission office works is essential to the information that the board should know. They need to be able to understand when you make statements such as:I accepted only boys in that class
a. I added additional athletes
b. I didn’t take all of the siblings
c. Three full-pay 6th grade students couldn’t do the work.
How to help: Sharing the process should be an easy task. Pull out some folders, remove the names, and explain your methodology and let them be the admission committee. It’s an eye opener when they have to make hard decisions to achieve the compositional goals.
- Understanding the school’s marketing strategy – The board needs to understand your marketing, communications or sales strategies. The enrollment committee needs to be able to say that they are aware and interested in supporting you in your efforts. Money is often involved in marketing, so creating a board that is aware of the marketing strategy and requirements can have a positive impact on your bottom line.
How to help: You have to develop a strategy to share with the board and continue to put it in front of them at each turn. They will tend to want to look at the tactics and not the strategy, so you will need to share both with them to help them to best understand and support your work and not try to micromanage.
- Minimizing parking lot talk – Boards are people too, and they do have areas which are particularly important to them in the enrollment management process. However, out-of-the-board-room conversations may sideline a well laid out plan or put unnecessary pressure on the administrative team. Boards, in my opinion, should funnel this energy, criticism, or ideas to the head, or the appropriate committee of the board.
How to help: The chair of the board and the head need to make the statement that these items should go through the proper channels. With an enrollment committee, the director might be able to direct the individuals to the enrollment committee or at least get the chair of the enrollment committee to speak to his peer.
- Update and re-educate – The information about enrollment management is important enough to provide reminders to the general board and the enrollment committee. If they don’t get reminders, trustees may not remember what was said in the previous meetings and the new members missed your presentation 6 months ago.
How to help: The day of the board meeting, or the day before, schedule a 2 to 3 hour gathering with your enrollment committee. Use this time wisely to continue educating them and tapping into their expertise. Add interim meetings via Webinars, Google hangout, Skype, or Go-to-meetings. If nothing else, send a couple of updates or informational reports beyond what you normally do. Don’t be afraid of sending a revised one that you might have sent two years ago as a reminder.
These are not complete thoughts. I do hope that they can augment the thinking around this topic. I welcome further discussion in the comment section of this blog.