Sucessful Open house

[NIN]

I had a big long post done up, then my login expired and killed it.. So I'll just attach a photo of my basic flight from last night:

22 new cadets in-processed as a result of our 25 Sept open house.  1 senior and 2 more in the pipeline.

Wooo hooo..

I just added more cadets last night than some squadrons HAVE.

[jacklumanog]

Wow, outstanding.  A great looking group in formation!  Congratulations.

[NIN]

BTW. for those who don't believe it: pipelining works. 

[Eclipse]

BTW. for those who don't believe it: pipelining works. 

I'd certainly believe it when you're bringing in numbers like those!

[NIN]

BTW. for those who don't believe it: pipelining works. 

I'd certainly believe it when you're bringing in numbers like those!

We've been pipelining for YEARS (started in early 2001) and its been 12-15 cadets each time.  This past spring it was only 8 or 9 (I think we changed something in the recruiting formula) and the fall 2001 event netted us over 25. YMMV, of course.  Our retention tends to be higher, too.

22 is a little high.  I would have expected 16.

BTW, 6 are female cadets. That's a much higher percentage than we've seen in the past.

[RiverAux]

I'm hoping for similar success with similar events in the future.

[Rangercap]

Nice. I just went to one school today. They ran annoucements all week, but neglected announce one more time right before the event. I got four solid leads. I was hoping for more, but I still have three schools to hit. 20 is my goal.

I cleaned up a little bit of your slideshow, NIN. Thanks for the link.

Question... are these numbers strictly though an open house? Or do you actually beat feet and hit the schools in person? I have read your post on cadet stuff... I like the plan you have set up.

Brian
PAWG

[NIN]

First, my concept of recruiting, which I repeat over and over to my cadets, is: "Maximum effective range of recruiting is 1 meter. An arm's length.  Anything beyond that is advertising."

In other words, its talking to people, direct contact, answering questions, etc, that recruits.   Person-to-person contact.

That said, we print 500-700 flyers for each open house (gladly donated thru a little "Xerox equity" where I work), and let the cadets doing the recruiting. Our informal survey of participants in our open house recruiting nights over the years show that the vast majority of people who actually come to the open house do so because of  direct, person-to-person action, not the newspaper, TV or anything else.  Put a flyer in their hands. 

Second, this year two of my high school-aged cadets managed to get a setup in the lunch room of their former middle school.   While the data is not clear on this, my gut says that this accounted for a fair amount of the "increase" in numbers.  Go team!

So my goal is to put recruiting teams into each of the 5-6 middle schools in my area in the 2-3 weeks prior to our next Open House in the spring.  If I can actually get traction in just 3-4, that would be ideal.

Glad the presentation helped.  We've been using that one for years as the lead off to the open house nights.

[Rangercap]

It still needs an update or two... like AFRCC is at McDill, and no longer at Langley, but does the job, and is very thorough.

Brian
PAWG

[BillB]

AFRCC is at Tyndall, not MacDill. Same state 300 miles apart

[Rangercap]

Thanks for the clarification.

Brian
PAWG

[Snake Doctor]

NIN,

Please , could I have a look at your presentation please?  I'm going to pitch the virtues of Pipeling to the commanders in my group. 

Thanks.

Paul

[NIN]

Not to necromance a 6 month old thread....

We held our Spring Open House last night.  It sneaked up on us, so our advertising cycle was shorter than normal.  I anticipated a turn out similar to last Spring's (which netted us 8-9 cadets), and we were fine with that.

The recruiting duo was back at it hitting their old middle school's lunch room with flyers earlier in the week.

We had between 40 & 45 non-CAP folks show up, of which there were between 16 & 20 cadet-aged individuals there.    And we had at least two families contact the commander that they couldn't come to the open house, but could they still join if they're at the meeting next week?

The commander and I agreed that if we get 12, we'll be doing well. I bet we get more.

Remember, the Maximum Effective Range of Recruiting is 1m.

[Stonewall]

You just motivated me Darin.

[Pylon]

You just motivated me Darin.

His success makes me cry a little inside.  I can never live up.

[Stonewall]

I hate one-line posts...now I'm a hypocrite!

In regards to pipelining cadets, I have met more resistence with this one subject than almost anything else in CAP.  I have seen a lot of people get so mad they want to file a complaint about me telling potential new members to "go away".  

I've already felt the reluctance from both my cadets and seniors at my squadron as I take the reigns of DCC (again).  I have real life experience with this and our efforts provided tangible results.

The best example I can give goes back to about 1996 when I tracked the tenure of 10 new cadets that were "pipelined" into CAP through T-Flight.  10 started and 3 years later those same 10 cadets were still in CAP.  It wasn't until they started graduating high school did they leave.

[Senior]

I know what the pipeline is for Pararescue.  What is the description of"pipelining " in this threads context? 

[JayT]

I know what the pipeline is for Pararescue.  What is the description of"pipelining " in this threads context? 

The exact same thing, except for CAP. You have cadet enter at a certain time of the year, go through a standarized training regimen, and then join the regular flights.

[Gunner C]

Not to necromance a 6 month old thread....

We held our Spring Open House last night.  It sneaked up on us, so our advertising cycle was shorter than normal.  I anticipated a turn out similar to last Spring's (which netted us 8-9 cadets), and we were fine with that.

The recruiting duo was back at it hitting their old middle school's lunch room with flyers earlier in the week.

We had between 40 & 45 non-CAP folks show up, of which there were between 16 & 20 cadet-aged individuals there.    And we had at least two families contact the commander that they couldn't come to the open house, but could they still join if they're at the meeting next week?

The commander and I agreed that if we get 12, we'll be doing well. I bet we get more.

Remember, the Maximum Effective Range of Recruiting is 1m.

One of my squadrons (WIWA Group CC) did pretty much the same thing - a new, motivated SM, whose son was a cadet, who had caught the vision of CAP.  They tripled the cadet membership overnight.

As far as pipelining cadets, I can see advantages as well as disadvantages.  WIWAC, we started a "class" every month for Phase 1.  Back in those days the Phase 2 achievements could be taken in any order, so it wasn't the logistical problem that it is today.  We had a huge, successful program.

[NIN]

UK: dude, its one part NIN's Pipelining and one part UK's t-flight. That's it. 

The recipie for my part is simple.

Its committing to the diet which daunts some folks.