How are your squadrons doing it?We get a steady 1 or 2 new cadets showing up per month, which about meets replacement of the ones leaving. Does anyone have some suggestions for best practices or recent experiences recruiting (yes, I read and digested all of the info available on CAP's website.)
So.. have you tried doing cohort recruiting?My unit is bringing in 35-45 cadets a year in two cohorts. Just two.
Facebook Ads with 3-4 cohorts a year has worked well for units in my group.
Quote from: Paul Creed III on March 04, 2017, 09:35:55 AMFacebook Ads with 3-4 cohorts a year has worked well for units in my group.Yup:Thats the current FB ad for my squadron's upcoming open house (thats a sceen grab of the bottom of the ad, not the whole thing). We anticipate 75-100 prospective members for our Spring Open House. We had a similar ad spend last year, had 109 show up.If you're not doing actual recruiting events, you need to. Trickle in is not the way to go.
Cohort is the way to go. There's a video on how to put on a CAP open house. I followed that more or less, and ended up with 30ish prospective cadets and family members showing up. That yielded about 15 new cadets and they brought a couple more in as friends shortly thereafter, so I count them as part of that cohort. I tried Facebook ads and didn't get anything out of it but that was the first experience I ever had with it. NIN, any chance we could get a video primer on how to best use the ad capability? The open house one was excellent.
So.. have you tried doing cohort recruiting?
Quote from: NIN on March 04, 2017, 09:30:38 AMSo.. have you tried doing cohort recruiting?I knew NIN would be along here shortly to say this. Good stuff.
I'm nothing if not predictable, right?
I know this is discussed often. But if your Squadron only does O-Rides a couple times a year ... don't put such an emphasis on the airplanes. Add some photos of robotics, rocketry, etc. in the mix.
So nobody bit on my comment on page one mixed in with other comments ... so I'll ask it separately.Is anyone having luck reaching out to minorities, and if so, what is working?I'll be quite blunt. I realize its a difficult question, because to specifically 'target' minorities for recruiting efforts could be seen as racist.You look at 99% of our photos of Cadets nationwide and CAP appears to be 99% white. I realize this varies one place to another, but our marketing materials are lacking.Minorities visit a meeting and as soon as they come in the door realize they walked into the country club.Is there a way to deal with this? Or is casting the wide net and taking whoever we catch all we can do?
One hurdle people need to get over is that not every single class will go well, and not every recruiting effort will prove positive. If something doesn't work, change it up and improve. But don't just cut out the effort because you failed once. That's the downfall of a lot of units. "We tried running an open house to recruit a Great Start class. We had 3 people show up." Okay, and? Did you still run the class? No, they cancelled the class because it wasn't worth it. And now you can't tell the next class that you have a system which works, because you didn't do it.
Now, my goal would be to get to where Lt Col Ninness is, but I'll probably be a decrepit old man by the time I see that happen. Still, strive for it.