enrollment

Building an Action Plan for Enrollment and Revenue Success at the Strategic Enrollment Planning Forum

Lew SanborneSenior Vice PresidentOctober 11, 2023
Blog: Building a Strategic Enrollment Plan

Are you satisfied with the enrollment trends at your college or university? Have you sufficiently diversified your revenue and enrollment streams so that as traditional-aged enrollment declines nationally, your institution remains on a path to enrollment and fiscal sustainability? If you did not answer those two questions with a hearty “YES!” then you should consider investing two days at RNL’s December Strategic Enrollment Planning Executive Forum, preparing the foundation for the long-term success of your institution. Invest two days not just learning about RNL’s proven process but framing the strategies that will form the core of your institution’s strategic enrollment plan

Join presidents, provosts, and chief enrollment, financial, and advancement officers, who, for more than 15 years, have invested two days to attend the RNL Strategic Enrollment Planning Executive Forum. This is a gathering of college and university leaders driven to be proactive in the face of a challenging marketplace, led by industry experts with well over 150 years of collective experience leading the kinds of planning that leads colleges and universities to thrive. It’s a hands-on event created by enrollment leaders, for enrollment and senior leaders. More importantly, here’s how spending two days with us on December 6-7 this year will pay big dividends for you and your team.

Building a foundation for strategic enrollment planning in two days

Strategic enrollment planning is a data-informed process that aligns your institution’s fiscal, academic, co-curricular, and enrollment resources with its changing environment to accomplish your institution’s mission and ensure its long-term enrollment success and fiscal health.

Because this is a serious and significant undertaking, it’s important to generate momentum early and get a strong start on setting the scope, objectives, responsibilities, and measures of success. That’s why the Strategic Enrollment Planning Forum begins by creating a framework of a plan that you can take back to your institution. You will work on foundational strategic steps that include:

  • Identifying key performance indicators.
  • Articulating your overarching scope and limits.
  • Working on an implementation schedule with action steps, owners, and dates.
  • Calculating enrollment impact.
  • Working through budget detail and revenue expenses.

Developing actionable strategies for enrollment and revenue diversification

New this December, we’re including breakouts around key strategic areas, sharing best practices, and providing time and space for you to begin to develop strategies within each area:

  • Marketing and recruitment
  • Student financial aid and scholarships
  • Student success and engagement
  • Academic program planning
  • Advancement and venture philanthropy

Updating our book to reflect the significant changes in the enrollment landscape

SEP is complex enough that you could fill a book with what it entails…which we did when we published the first edition of Strategic Enrollment Planning: A Dynamic Collaboration in 2012. A second edition followed in 2016, but as you know, higher ed has undergone massive changes in the last eight years. I worked with a dozen campus and RNL experts to create a new third edition of the book, and all Forum attendees will receive a free copy.

The new edition dives into adult, graduate, and online enrollment; the latest demographic, economic, and technological changes impacting campuses; and other areas that have changed significantly in the last decade and especially in the post-pandemic world.

Sharing high level, candid insights with other campus leaders and generating momentum with your team

Discussion and interaction are also a major part of the event. As you can see from the agenda, we will cover a variety of key topics about the higher education environment, examine major parts of the SEP process, and conduct working sessions. This is an ideal opportunity for you and your team to not only interact with SEP experts, enrollment leaders, and advancement leaders from other campuses, but also spur conversations with each other that can build momentum for change.

A history of enrollment and revenue success

This event has catapulted many, many campuses to long-term, sustained success. Because they leave with the beginnings of a working plan, they return home with momentum and direction for moving forward with a strategic enrollment plan. Institutions have:

  • Achieved record-breaking enrollments.
  • Boosted student outcomes.
  • Generated millions of dollars in additional revenue.
  • Supported crucial goals such as increased student diversity and greater operational efficiency.

With the addition of looking at revenue diversification and breakouts on advancement, we will help Forum participants understand all the ways they generate the revenue needed to sustain their success.

Take a big step toward your enrollment future and attend the Strategic Enrollment Planning Executive Forum

See the agenda and register for the Forum today, and bring your leadership team to help spur discussion, action, and results. I think you will be hard pressed to find an event that equips you with more actionable steps to propel your institution forward.

Learn more and register.

About the Author

Lew Sanborne

Dr. Lew Sanborne is RNL's leader in strategic enrollment planning. He offers three decades of experience in higher education and enrollment management, with a range of expertise including annual, and strategic enrollment planning, student success...

Read more about Lew's experience and expertise

Reach Lew by e-mail at Lewis.Sanborne@RuffaloNL.com.


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