Recruiting

[starhawk]

I am in a very small squadron, and we need to do recruiting. However, we are very new to it, and would like some advice on what to do.

[Flying Pig]

Another member and I spent a few hours at a High School JROTC unit giving the CAP presentation two days ago.  The ROTC instructors were very supportive.  None of the kids had ever heard about CAP and knew nothing about it.  We'll see if it pays off.

[Pylon]

Read the Cadet Staff Handbook.  Restructure your small squadron to fit the recommended models therein.

Read the Cadet Great Start *DRAFT* Curriculum Guide  and adopt the Pipeline Recruiting method.  (Read more about pipeline recruiting here)

Set up for an Open House.  Learn how to setup and structure and setup a successful open house.

Notify all local community calendars, newspapers and Television stations with a media release.  If there are any local AF or ANG bases, Reserve units, etc., contact their Public Affairs office to get on their base email blasts and in their newsletter.  Make flyers and use your members, their friends and family to distribute and post them widely throughout the community.  Get into your local schools in advance of the date, get your brochures passed out, your contacts made, and let them know the date of your open house.  Also contact any JROTC and Boy/Girl Scout units associated with the local schools or in the local community.

Make sure everybody realizes that the open house is the opportunity to join Civil Air Patrol in your area.  If they can't make the new membership window, they'll have to wait until next time.  This gives your event an exclusiveness and urgency to needing to be there.  Otherwise, Jimmy might assume if he doesn't make your open house this time, he can always show up at your squadron whenever and join later on.

Sign everybody up and good luck with in-processing and recruit training! 

[RiverAux]

Bunch of good stuff on NHQ's recruiting page (be sure to use the links on the left side of the page too): http://level2.cap.gov/visitors/member_services/recruiting/

[Pingree1492]

Everything that Pylon has already said!

We recently had an open house, following the Great Start model, and I've listed some things we did that worked.  In all, we had about 45-50 people show up for the open house- cadets & parents included in this number.  A few were too young to join, but I'm sure they'll be back when they're ready. At the end, we had 12 new cadets join.  (NOTE: I concentrated on just suggestions for an open house for this post)

-One of our local school districts doesn't allow cadets to wear their uniform to school, nor put up/hand out recruiting brochures, so we were a little handicapped there- be sure to check your local policies!

-We printed up a handful of posters to put up, gave some to cadets to post in their church, youth group, etc.  We also got permission of the local FBO to put posters on every door going into the building, as well as put brochures in their rack- this got a few of our new cadets.  The posters were pretty simple- pics of cadets doing stuff our squadron does (don't advertise ES stuff if your squadron won't be doing it, etc).  The largest thing on the poster was the date & time of the open house.

-We contacted the local paper, and they sent a reporter out to interview a number of members about what CAP does.  We had a nice, 3/4 page article on the third page of the paper about CAP, in the end it gave the Open House date/time and instructed those interested in the program to show up (a lot got the message this way)  This article appeared two days before the open house.  (We also got lucky in that CAP had a locally-high profile save the week before open house)

-Have someone put together a picture slideshow of recent events, and beg/borrow/steal good pictures from squadron members, or other squadrons from your area.  Plan on playing this on a continual rotation starting about 20-30 minutes before the start time of your agenda- it will give the early birds something to watch and talk about with your circulating cadet staff members before the meeting begins.

-If you haven't already guessed, the workload for this is quite large!  It really helped us to have one person concentrate on the advertising, recruiting part, and a second member to concentrate on getting everything together for the Open House Presentations, and the training meetings that followed.  You'll do some cross-over work, but dividing the labor up like this really helped us out.

-I know you mentioned you have a small squadron, but don't forget to make a plan for your cadets to be doing something constructive when they're not presenting or helping with the open house.

I hope this helps and that all goes well for you! And don't forget to post your results!

[stillamarine]

We started a new contest this year (because as we all know, we're all competitive to some sense!) The Senior Member or Cadet who recruits the most new members by the end of the year will win Squadron Recruiter of the Year, get a purty plaque and a prize to be announced (as soon as we figure out what it's going to be!)

[mikeylikey]

^ CASH $$$$$$   is always a motivator!

[stillamarine]

LOL yes it is. One idea was a gift card to an area store. Another one was a long sleeve blues shirt plus tie and tie bar. Here many of our cadets don't have long sleeve shirts, but after this winter they learned it wouldn't be such a bad idea.