Written by Dr. Jeff Lemke,
VP of Admissions and Marketing, Bethany Lutheran College, Mankato MN
How many budget meetings have you been to? Now, how many income planning meetings have you been to? You’ve likely been to lots of budget meetings, but few, if any, income planning meetings.
The business plans for ministries are heavily weighted toward conversations about spending priorities with a goal of reducing expenditures to balance the budget or to afford a new budgetary item (Pue, 2013).
Often, the assumption is that income will remain the same, unchanged, or increase at the rate of inflation. School costs typically rise at a higher rate, about 5%, than general inflation, about 2% (Pue, 2016). With rapidly increasing inflation upon our ministries, it is time to look at that side of the budget that gets little attention, the income side.
Engaging Families in Your Ministry
Christian daycares and schools are like any other service provider that relies on a sales funnel or a customer base. There are similarities to every sales funnel, including stages of engagement of a family: aware, interested, inquired, applied, deposited, and confirmed (Kirchoff, 2019). But the stages of engagement also continue at every moment a family is utilizing your school ministry. An organization may track the number of financially active donors, the number of children at each grade level, the number of young people that are confirmed, and the rate of mortality.
Understanding the nuances of your ministry’s unique funnel can aid in understanding true motivators of engagement and can ultimately help with the development of key messages that resonate with more families. Ministries sometimes make the mistake of confusing the reasons why people engage with the church with the reasons why families engage with the school (Lemke, 2018). The reasons are often very different:
Walk Into Church
- Baptized
- Get Married
- Tragedy
- Food Pantry (Need)
- Like Pastor
- Tradition
- Social Pressures, Raising Kids
- Networking
Walk Into Christian School
- Fix My Child
- Safe Environment
- Quality Education
- Curriculum and Rules/Legislation of Public Schools
- Family Feel
- Smaller Classes
- Compare Options
- Not Like Public School (Low Funding)
Branding & the Mission of Your School
A ministry has a mission that helps to convey your unified focus. A brand is slightly different and considers what your community is looking for and why they come to you, meshing those factors with your mission. For example, a common brand is _______’s (name of town) PK – 8 school of excellence in Christian education. The mission part of the brand is found in the ministry’s focus on Christian education, but the brand also elevates why someone comes to seek out that ministry, because they are looking for excellence in education.
Brands are also good for making bold claims that can be defended. My favorite example is “St. Croix Lutheran, the Global Leader in Christian Education.” One may say that St. Croix cannot really defend this brand statement, yet it can to those affected by the statement. It is not meant to say that St. Croix is better than any other Lutheran high school. Families in the Twin Cities clearly seek out St. Croix for its broad cultural mix of students, for its identity as a school of excellence, and for Christian education. It is a bold statement, but within an assumed context.
Sometimes brands convey a feeling or attitude because that is more differentiating than a bold statement and it fits the organization and the reasons people come to it (Clifton, 2009). My favorite example is Bethany Lutheran College – Bethany. Values. Me. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I was involved with the development of St. Croix and Bethany’s brands.)
The choosing of mission and brand are important decisions and can take up to two years and over twenty meetings, plus multiple surveys and focus groups, to do well (Kotler, 2016). After having mission set, organizations often develop purpose statements, create vision statements, and establish core values, but that is discussion for a different article.
As mission extends to brand development, then, it is wise for organizations to have three key messages that support the brand statement. Each of these key messages will be supported by photos and a good story that substantiates that statement.
Marketing Your School to Prospective Families
Finally, a marketing plan is needed to help the ministry project its brand to those it tries to attract (Kotler, 2016). All quality marketing plans include defining the market you are trying to reach, setting goals regarding reach, evaluating the costs of saturating the market with your message, and then defining the breadth (impressions) of methods that you will use to achieve saturation (Jacobson, 2020). Yes, it is good to be in your town’s parade, but most marketing plans are built on two core methods: direct mail postcards and online digital advertising (Lemke, 2019). Hiring a marketing vendor may be a good option, but remember that all marketing vendors will want to know your marketing budget so that they can get as much of it as possible.
Understanding the Cost of an Empty Seat
Circling back to your budget planning meeting, doesn’t marketing feel like wasting money? An empty seat in your classroom is a real waste of money and your ministry. It is time to define the cost of an empty seat in your classroom and tie it back to wise budgeting and sustainability.
If you have one empty seat per grade level, and it costs your ministry $6,000 to educate a student, but only $1,300 of hard costs, your ministry is inefficient by $4,700 per empty seat in the school. If you are confident that your well-prepared marketing plan will reach one more student each year, your ministry could spend $42,300 (9 years x $4,700) per year on marketing with no budgetary loss. Furthermore, each additional student that your school receives above that one per year simply lowers the cost of Christian education and makes it more affordable for all who are involved. Most importantly, it is another soul hearing the Lord’s Word.
Dr. Jeff Lemke serves as vice president of admissions and enrollment management at Bethany Lutheran College-Mankato, MN. Dr. Lemke also serves as an MLC graduate faculty adjunct teaching EDU5310 School Business Administration, which is offered online every summer.
Dr. Lemke will be presenting this topic at the WELS Education Conference in Pewaukee, WI, on June 21. REGISTER HERE to attend the conference and this sectional.
References
Baker, Christine (2012) The NAIS Enrollment Management Handbook. National Association of Independent Schools. Washington, DC.
Clifton, Rita (2009) Brands and Branding. 2nd ed. The Economist and Bloomberg Press.
Gruber, Aimee (2021) Save the Funnel, an Industry Call to Action. The Enrollment Management Association. Skillman, NJ.
Kirchoff, Dana (2019) What Is a Sales Funnel? Strategic Growth Consultant. Appleton, WI.
Kotler, Philip (2016) Marketing Management. 15th ed. Pearson. Boston, MA.
Lemke, Jeff (2018) Workshop Survey of WELS School Leaders. Wisconsin.
Lemke, Jeff (2019) How Much Digital Postage Do You Pay? Gospel Outreach with Media, Mankato, MN.
Patterson, Paul (2020) Private School Choice Programs. WELS Lutheran Schools. Waukesha, WI.
Pue, Alan (2012) Rethinking Sustainability. Purposeful Design Publications. Colorado Springs, CO.