The following is a true story although we have exercised some editorial freedom in terms of the timeline and sequence of events.

Oakhurst School (not the real name) is a K-12 school with 400 students, and enrollment is sinking. The high school has a student body of 125, not enough to field strong athletic teams, to ensure a good social mix or to offer enough activities to keep students engaged. There is little programmatic differentiation from the competition.

The 8th grade class is typically about 80 students and half of them leave before 9th grade. The School does not employ retention strategies, i.e., no story telling about the exciting things to come at higher grade levels.

At one parent coffee held for kindergarten parents, a Dad asked the Head, “Tell me about your college placement record with the Ivies.” The Head, fairly new to the role, replied that the challenge of college placement was almost 13 years away so no need to worry much about that now. The blowback was immediate as the parent said, “Do you want me to keep my child here through 12th grade? If so, I want to know now what the college placement record looks like.  For that matter, I would like to know why I should keep her here beyond K, beyond the Lower School and even beyond the Middle School. Unless you can tell me the reasons why I should keep my child here, you have no retention hopes for my family”. He was right.

Ten years later, the enrollment was 1400 students on a new 150 acres campus with a $100 million dollar physical plant and there were at least 15 applicants for every opening. What happened?

1. Entrepreneurial instincts kicked in. This created program differentiation, such as intensive language study in five languages; partnerships with every major cultural and artistic institution in the city; new athletic offerings, including fencing and lacrosse; a business/financial curriculum supported by local corporations with internships; and more recently, a strong non fossil fuel curriculum for 11th and 12th graders who then have a two-year jump on college work in renewable energy research and its practical applications.
2. A professional development fund was formed that requires every teacher to use $2500 per year with the approval and guidance of a committee to ensure that all teachers and staff continue to hone their skills.
3. A parent ambassador program was developed that enlists over 150 trained, motivated current and former parents (and now alumni as well) who market the school and its success stories wherever these parents work, play, pray and live. The Head receives regular speaking engagements as one group of parent volunteers work solely on that task. Another committee ensures the tag line/mission is omnipresent inside and outside the school grounds. An external marketing committee has over 80 parents who leverage their social/political/economic connections to introduce the School in every walk of professional and work life. Parents serve on an admissions process committee that receives all inquiries and assigns a mentor/guide to each inquiry family based on having a child of similar age, interest, and area of residence. These mentors/guides stay with the family from the initial inquiry to orientation in the fall. The admissions process committee also conducts all the tours, again matching perfectly the background of each visiting family and child to a current family and its own demographic.
4. A pyramid of parent “advocates” of another 150 or so parents personally solicit 10 parents each in their youngest child’s grade level. Annual giving is now at $3.5 million a year. Endowment which was once $0 is now about $250 million. A culture of charitable giving now permeates the culture. The School has successfully engaged almost the entire parent body turning them from passive consumers into passionate advocates.

The new worry is not to disappoint, frustrate, and anger those who cannot get into the School because of the long wait lists. Managing expectations and keeping admissions prospects happy are now equally if not more important than generating new inquiries and applications.

Crucial to this success is a healthy, stable board with long term Members and Board chairs and a long-term Head. This Board is generous, loyal, and strategic, i.e., looking out for unique opportunities including those that might suddenly arrive with a limited window for action.

In addition to good governance, program differentiation, innovation, and teacher talent, the engagement of current and past parents and alumni as school advocates contributed to this remarkable success story. These advocates also serve as advance managers of communications who can use social media creatively to keep the best of the school in the public eye. This is not always an easy task for any school, but it becomes easier if the parent body is engaged in a way that makes them feel positive ownership and pride versus the need to intrude into the realm of management.

Littleford & Associates has assisted hundreds of schools in building powerful parent ambassador and/or advocate programs to generate greater admissions interest and enrollment demand as well as powerful parent driven annual giving campaigns that can raise major sums even in schools and countries that claim to have no local culture of charitable giving.