Outbound Student Recruiting that works!

First, let’s cover the two things that don’t work… ► drum roll… the first two ideas that most people think about… 1. Recruit through or from the Interact club 2. Present to all foreign language students in the school (with or without the help of a YE student)

What does work? ► Have the right products ► Word of mouth ► PR ► Direct marketing ► Educate influence makers

Have the right products ► Promote Long Term program only this year ► Require training benchmarks ► Have the same cut-off date for all applications ► Require all students to write a research paper ► Require all students to schedule pre-exchange presentations to their clubs

Word of mouth ► In and outbound students ► Host families ► Club members ► A YE chair that loves YE

PR ► Get newspaper stories about inbounds, outbounds, and recruiting of outbounds ► Inbound students to present to clubs ► Outbound students presents to club before the exchange ► Rebound students presents to club after arriving back home

Direct marketing ► Work up an to have club members send to their contacts

Influence makers ► School counselors

How to teach a club YE chair to get started ► Give them ONE task to complete, and make it the “low hanging fruit” ► The “low hanging fruit” of recruiting is …

School counselors

► The easiest way for a club to kick off exchange student recruiting ► The counselors are already being asked by students about YE programs. All you need to do is to educate the counselors why our program is the best, and make it easy for them to refer students to you. Here is how it’s done…

What the club YE chair needs to do ► Setup a 45 minutes meeting with ALL counselors at each high school ► This meeting should be either before school starts, or as early as possible after the fall semester starts ► The YE district chair may offer to be at the meeting

Bring the following to the meeting: ► Rotary Brochure (1 per counselor) ► The book the New Global Student (1 per counselor) ► A laptop and the Youth Exchange recruiting DVD

Meeting with the counselors What is Rotary? Who are Rotarians? What do they do? ► Over 1.2 million Rotarians in more than 32,000 clubs create the extensive network that provides support for Youth Exchange.

Rotary Youth Exchange Play the movie…

Rotary Youth Exchange ► 8,000 students each year ► Two programs: Short term and Long Term (explain both programs) but District 5390 is only participating in Long Term

Why Rotary YE is the best program ► Safest program ► Best training ► By far most affordable (100% volunteers)

Safety ► The student is “adopted” by the whole Rotary club. Not just one host family ► Counselor + at least two host families ► Very effective student protection training ► 75 years of experience

Training ► Youth Exchange overnight weekends ► Research papers ► Presentations to sponsoring Rotary club ► Volunteer work with sponsoring club ► District conference

Cost – Long Term Program ► Most long term (full academic year) programs cost $15,000-$20,000 total + spending money ► Rotary LT program: $4,500 and the hosting club pays monthly stipend to student for spending money.

Is Rotary always the best program? ► No. if the student is only willing to go to one specific country, Rotary youth exchange is not a good match. Our students make up a list of 4-8 countries that they would like to go to.

End of meeting with the counselors ► Explain that we don’t expect them to “sell” our program. We just give them the brochures, stands, and the poster to display, so when a student is interested in YE, the counselors have somewhere to refer them. ► Explain that the students need to have application done no later than 10/31/11

The End