Traverse City Christian School

Traverse City Christian School
Traverse City, MI

A conversation with Craig O’Connor, head of Mission Advancement

Describe Traverse City Christian School’s enrollment and marketing situation before you hired Rick Newberry and Enrollment Catalyst.

Our school was in a bad spot. We had slowly seen a decline in enrollment, and by the end of the 2017 school year, we had just 192 students enrolled from PreK to 12th grade. Our capacity is 325. Worse yet, our re-enrollment rate was just 77% – meaning a quarter of our student body had bailed out. At the same time, our Net Promoter Score (an indicator of how positive and excited your customer base is – anything over 50 is considered excellent) was just 32, which meant our families weren’t happy with us.

What were the results of working with Enrollment Catalyst?

Rick’s process helped us drill down and find what was ailing us. From there, Rick helped us develop strategies to improve. One year later, at the beginning of the 2018/19 school year, our re-enrollment rate was 95%, our Net Promoter score had climbed to 53, and our student enrollment was up 12.5%. Now already halfway through that year, we’ve already added more students since school started and have a hopper full of prospective families we’re interviewing for 2nd semester and the 2019-20 school year. Our expectation is to see at least similar growth numbers again.

What would you say to another school leader to recommend Rick Newberry to help them in their enrollment and marketing effort?

Our school worked with Rick Newberry and Enrollment Catalyst over the summer of 2017 and followed that with a year of consulting work. It was, hands down, one of the best decisions we made! Rick is smart, knowledgeable, encouraging yet firm, and an easy guy to work with. A value-added extra is the Enrollment Catalyst community comprised of Rick’s clients who become your resource pool for advice, sharing of ideas, helpdesk, etc.