Welcome back folks! Although things look a little different this year, it feels so good to be back. And back to school, means back to recruitment!
Due to COVID-19, HEROs had to come up with an entirely new recruitment strategy from previous years. Usually, HEROs spends about a week and a half tabling and hosting in-person interactions to attract new members. This year we had to change to a completely digital recruitment.
Our WOW/Recruitment chair Pierce Pittman and Executive Director Patrick Femia spent a lot of time brainstorming digital recruitment strategies that would still attract new members. Some of these ideas were: a personal outreach campaign, an Instagram DM campaign, a giveaway basket and shooting new promotional videos.
We also had to change an in-person kickoff to a virtual kickoff at the last second. Hosting a fun kickoff over Zoom is challenging, but HEROs kept it engaging by having meaningful speakers. One of the women who spoke had previously participated in the HEROs program when she was a kid. She is now the assistant director of Camp High Five. Hearing her story about how much HEROs impacted her life and the ways she now wants to give back to the organization through her role really struck a chord with the audience.
As for moving forward, Pittman hopes we come into the next recruitment cycle more prepared: “This was our first time going through a digital recruitment, so we were figuring it out as we went along. But for spring, which will most likely be digital as well, I know that we have some experience now that will make it even better.”
Just because we cannot hold in-person meetings or events does not mean HEROs is over. Everyone’s hard work, dedication and collaboration proved this true. We can’t wait to have a great fall semester!
We wanted to give a final shoutout to Pierce Pittman, Patrick Femia, Lauren Craig and the Communications Team for making this digital recruitment happen!