Development must take place in conjunction with Marketing, Enrollment, Retention and Asset Management strategies in order for Advancement to occur. Since Marketing leads to Enrollment, it is essential that some type of tool be used to effectively track Marketing inquiries, and then follow-up with parents of prospective students. Enrollment is sales, and if sales professionals don’t follow-up with prospective customers, they can see their careers begin to fail or come to an end. I’m sure you can see how analogous this is to faith-based schools today.

SchoolAdvancement.com has developed an aid to assist in estimating school enrollment based on researched principles rather than on “hope” (as in, we “hope” to increase our enrollment) called BASIQS (Bringing Additional Students Into Quality Schools)(SM).  You may be familiar with it as BASICS, as it was first developed for Catholic schools, then Christian schools started to use the tool.  Schools from both faith traditions, however, told me that a faith-based school must be a quality school, because when you’re doing the Lord’s work, He deserves the best.

BASIQS is a “pentelemental” (that is, containing five elements) system to give your school the tools it needs to estimate, track contacts and follow-up information, and record potential new students as early as the October prior to a new school year. The earlier estimates can be made and materials offered to parents of prospective students, the earlier enrollment efforts can begin in a school.

The BASIQS system continues to be developed, but three of its components are currently available to all visitors to SchoolAdvancement.com at no cost! (Some of the components may still have the BASICS logo and tag line).  Right now, the Enrollment EstimatorTM, the follow-up forms, and the Scoreboard are available.  Please use the drop-down menus from the “Enrollment” navigation under “The ARMED Elements” on the home page of this site to access these tools.

Components four and five are a follow-up tool/database and a 5-year Enrollment EstimatorTM for strategic planning purposes, which will be available in the near future.  If you would like to be a “beta test” school for the 5 year enrollment estimator, please email [email protected], and use the words “5 Year Estimator” in the subject line for details.

The fifth component is an online database tool.  There are a number which are available, and some great application and enrollment services.  If you’d like my recommendations on what you might like to try out, email [email protected] and use the words “Enrollment Database” in the subject line.