Area Catholic Schools Look to Marketing As a Way to Boost Enrollment

Catholic schools across the United States, which have been hit with decreasing enrollments over the past four decades, are employing new marketing and advertising techniques as a way to bring more students into the parochial school system.

That’s the latest report from the Associated Press, which distributed an article to news agencies on Sunday headlined, “Catholic schools see marketing aid enrollment.” The piece talks about how these marketing methods are actually paying off for some Catholic schools in certain areas of the country, as a way to combat the trend of schools losing students each year.

Right here in Connecticut, it’s no different. The Archdiocese of Norwich, which overseas Middlesex and New London counties, has been finding new ways to reach potential students and families and to attract them to one of their 15 parochial schools and five high schools in eastern Connecticut.

Some of the ways include buying air time on the radio, holding benefit dinners with alumni and trying to market the schools as centers of Catholic tradition.

“There’s definitely a growing awareness of need for marketing help,” said Michael Strammiello, director of communications for the diocese. “We’re a district that’s essentially rural. We have a lot of geography but we don’t have a lot of cities like Hartford, Bridgeport or New Haven.”

The formula for enrolling students used to be pretty simple. Parishioners of a specific church would contribute to funding the adjacent school, and the rest of the costs would be picked up by tuition, Strammiello said.

“But in this economy it’s just not substantial enough,” he said. “As the recession gets deeper and deeper… and families are dealing with energy costs going up and all the numbers going in the wrong direction, the support of the local parish is creating more and more of a gap to fund the schools.”

Drawing in more students by reaching out to them through marketing is being “more and more recognized,” he said.That, and the fact that the kids coming into these schools may not even be from that parish or may not even be Catholic.

"I think that’s understood and I think it’s welcomed," Strammiello said.

This year, the diocese hired a person devoted just to marketing the Catholic schools, and in recent years there has been an effort to implement more programs as a way to garner potential revenue. Strammiello gave the example of St. John’s School in Old Saybrook, which is holding a big annual car raffle this month where bidders can try and win a Corvette.

Another area for financial support is in the alumni which, Strammiello noted, varies in levels of strength depending on the school.

“For each school, we’ve put a strong effort into mining their database of alumni so that they understand their alumni organization better,” he said.

Apart from that, the Norwich diocese has also instituted some “across-the-board” efforts to raise funds, like holding collections at Mass just for the Catholic schools and nice dinners with potential donors and alumni. There’s also a sharing of best practices amongst each of the schools, as they try to find out which marketing techniques work the best, he said.

“We’ll be doing more and more (marketing) now each year,” Strammiello said. “Maybe five years ago you wouldn’t have seen this. You wouldn’t have seen extra help in all of the high schools, you wouldn’t have seen all of the development stages.”

Xavier High School, an all-boys school in Middletown, has already been doing marketing as a way to enhance enrollment for years, said John Guerin, director of communications. The school draws from over 60 towns and cities in central and southern Connecticut, and enrollment has stayed constant over the past several years.

“We’ve used everything from radio advertising, some print media, billboards,” he said. “We do use a variety of stations where we will advertise in prime time and during drive time for radio, on sporting events.”

Right now, Xavier’s enrollment stands around 900, with nearly 250 freshmen starting this fall.

“In fact we’ve had increased numbers on our open house in the fall,” Guerin said. “Last year we had over 400 families that came through in open house day and our entrance exam numbers have been very strong.”

Guerin said the feedback the school gets from parents is that Catholic education, security and consistency are all important reasons for attending. That, and the percentage of students who move on to a two- or four-year college hovers in excess of 94 percent.

As for the diocese as a whole, Strammiello admits that marketing the Catholic elementary schools was not as prominent 10 years ago as it is now. But, going forward, that will change.

“I don’t think it’s safe to say we’ve turned the corner but I think it’s safe to say we’ve turned the corner in understanding it,” Strammiello said.