Recruiting Parent Ambassadors — 4 Key Qualities

With the start of a new school year fast approaching, it is important to consider your parent ambassador program.

Your parents are the 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 to be part of your team. You goal is to find the right parents and ask them to join you in your efforts.

I believe that a Parent Ambassador is a selected member of the 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 in your recruitment of parent ambassadors.

First, 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.

Second, 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.

Third, 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 preschool, church or neighborhood. Whatever the case, your goal is to create a group of parent ambassadors that reach into every segment of your community.

Finally, it is critical for you to select parents that 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. These parents have just gone through the school 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! Therefore, new parents can help you with their enthusiasm and connections in the community to fuel your grassroots word of mouth marketing effort.

Do you have a parent ambassador program at your school?

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

The following are some additional blog posts I have written on Parent Ambassador Programs:

How One School Launched a Parent Ambassador Program

9 Mistakes School Leaders Make with Parent Ambassadors

Using Parent Ambassadors to Expand Your Admissions Staff

Parents as Ambassadors, Advocates and Word of Mouth Marketers