4 Key Ingredients to Finding & Recruiting Parent Ambassadors for Your Private School

With the start of a new school year fast approaching, it is important to consider your parent ambassador program. Your parents are key to your enrollment and marketing effort. By recruiting a team of parents to help you, you can exponentially increase your reach. 

One of the first steps you need to take is to recruit your team of parent ambassadors. However, you don’t want to recruit just any parent. Your goal is to find the right parents and ask them to join you in your efforts. For example, putting out a mass communication (like an email or phone call) asking for parent volunteers usually doesn’t yield great results. The best parent ambassadors are recruited individually and honored when you ask them directly to be a part of your team.

That’s right — your team. I believe that a Parent Ambassador is a selected member of your enrollment and marketing team. The following is my definition of a Parent Ambassador:

“Chosen because of their passion for the school, credibility among peers, connections in the community, and desire to advance the school, Parent Ambassadors are instrumental to expanding the reach of your school in the community and growing the enrollment.”

This definition includes four qualities to look for when you are recruiting your parent ambassadors:

1—Passionate – It is important to identify parents that are passionate about your school. These parents eat, sleep and breathe the spirit of your school. They are positive about their child’s experiences and are already an advocate of the school in the community.

2—Credibility – Parent ambassadors should be selected because of their credibility among their peers. In other words, you don’t want to select a parent that isn’t respected within your school community.

3—Connections – Your parent ambassadors should be selected because of their connections in the community. For example, you might select a parent because of the market segment they represent—a feeder school, church, or neighborhood. Whatever the case, your goal is to create a group of parent ambassadors that reach into every segment of your community.

4—Desire – It is critical for you to select parents who have a desire to advance the school. There are parents within your school who will do anything to help your school grow, and they love to be part of the admissions effort.

If you can keep these four qualities in mind as you consider the parents you want to recruit, your result will be a great team of parent ambassadors that will help you advance the school.

In addition, I want to encourage you to consider recruiting new parents to your parent ambassador team. Don’t just consider the parents that have been at the school for years and have been over-involved. New parents have just gone through the search process and have chosen your school. They are excited about their choice and your school. And, since they are new to your school, nothing has gone wrong for them yet. For these reasons, new parents can help you with their enthusiasm and connections in the community to fuel your grassroots word of mouth marketing effort.

In my coaching, I have helped many schools successfully launch a parent ambassador program in their school. This should be a core strategy in your enrollment and marketing plan.

Do you have a parent ambassador program at your school?

Can you use these four qualities to identify and recruit parents to your program?