Grow Your Program

Running classes, managing enrollments and trying to market all at the same time can seem overwhelming. However, you can get help filling your classes from an often overlooked resource — your instructors! Don’t forget your instructors are usually just as interested in filling classes, especially if there’s a minimum needed for the course to run. When they become your partner in the effort to promote their classes, everyone wins in the end.

Here are 4 simple – and free! – strategies that your instructors can use to promote classes and attract more students.

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Most of the nonprofits we work with are constantly on the lookout for ways to reduce costs and grow their programs. That’s why we had to share the news that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has recently partnered with another company called TechSoup Global (TSG) to connect nonprofits and public libraries with up to $2,000 worth of select AWS products and services.

TechSoup is a nonprofit technology network that connects nonprofits with discounted or donated tech products and services. That list now includes the AWS Credits Program for Nonprofits.

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Summer camp season is here! The school year is ending, the weather is finally getting warmer, and kids everywhere are getting anxious to head off to camp.

For camp administrators, the busy season is already in full swing. Fielding phone calls, answering emails, tracking registrations, following up on cancellation lists – just getting the campers registered is a full-time job in and of itself. Many camps still require parents to fill out a paper form and pay the registration fee by check. Others use email registration or Google forms, which simplifies the process a little but still requires time and effort on the part of the administrators and parents.

Instead of spending hours on paperwork, wouldn’t you prefer to use that time to develop new programs, talk with parents, or work on marketing?

We hear this a lot, and that’s why we decided to make tracking and managing camp sign-ups impossibly simple.

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Here at CourseStorm, we want our clients to be successful in all aspects of running their organizations. Sure, we try to make it easier by providing a simple course registration system, but another way we can help is by letting our clients know about a fantastic program where you can receive advertising grants for nonprofits from Google. With just a little bit of legwork, nonprofits can receive up to $10,000 per month in FREE advertising on Google.

The program is called Google Ad Grants, and here’s what you need to know about it.

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Here at CourseStorm HQ, we consider it our job to make it simple for students to connect to those great classes of yours. So, as you might imagine, we’re about as disappointed as anyone when a class has to cancel because there just aren’t enough students registered. It’s not great for you and your team who have worked hard to make the class available, it’s not great for the instructor who’s excited to share their knowledge, and it’s not great for the students who were really looking forward to taking that class!

Well, thankfully, just in time for Fall registration, we’re adding a brand new way to help you cancel fewer classes, automatically, and it’s launching today!

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For a long time, people have accessed education and gained skills in both formal and informal educational settings. But until recently, there’s been no consistent way to acknowledge or get “credit” for informal education.

We’re excited to tell you about an emerging trend in education that is providing a new way to recognize learning wherever and whenever it happens. The trend is called “badging.” Badging is the process of recognizing and verifying various forms of learning using digital badges. It’s a movement gaining momentum worldwide among educators, adult education programs, students, and professionals. Read more

Do you believe in serving your students better, growing your program, and saving money? So do we! That’s why we work diligently to make “impossibly simple” software for online course registrations.

At the same time, we acknowledge that it feels scary to try something new and unfamiliar, especially if you’re not convinced that new means better.

We’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately, and so we’ve compiled a list of “what’s in it for you.” Whether you use CourseStorm or not, here are 9 reasons why we think you’ll be happy when you switch from paper to online registrations.

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We’re excited to continue the Grow Your Program series to help our customers and anyone out there looking to sell more classes (see also our previous entry on effective website use).  Today’s focus: Things That Sell Classes.

A lot of thoughts go into helping register more students for your classes, but today we’ll be focusing on a few of the most important: photos, instructors, and location info.

Before we get into that, however, it’s important to note that there is one thing that’s more important than all of those and without it you’re losing about 25% or more of your customers: a simple way to register online.  When people go to your website, they’re not just looking for the class to take, but they want to register right then.  The more steps you put in the way of each student registering for the class, the more of them will walk away.  And the simplest way to make that registration right when they want to sign up is to offer online registration where students can use their credit card.  Even if you don’t use CourseStorm for that online registration — make sure you make it easy for them.  It makes all the difference in the world.

But, I digress.  Let’s get on to the rest of our tips! 🙂

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Welcome to Part 1 of our Grow Your Program series.  The goal: to give you some tips about how to make the best use of digital tools when marketing your classes.

Today’s topic: using your website!

Use Your Website

In this day and age, it sounds obvious that you should use your website to market your classes, but you might be surprised how often programs are missing a step or two that would help them to reach students more effectively.

To start, let’s review what makes a website so great. Read more

Here at CourseStorm, we specialize in helping programs to grow. That’s how we’ve helped our customers reach 30% more students each year online, doubling the size of their programs in less than 3 years. We recently had the opportunity to give a workshop at an Association conference to pass along some of our knowledge. The reaction was so positive, we thought it’d be great to share the same information with everyone via a series of blog posts we’re calling Grow Your Program.

Today, we’re releasing the first installment of this series — Part 1: Use Your Website.