Evaluating New Student Outreach

Now that New Student Outreach (NSO) is over, it’s important to reflect on how well your chapter captured the attention and imagination of incoming students, so you can better prepare for next year. Here are some questions for your leadership team or NSO Committee to ask as you evaluate how NSO went and what you would change for next time.

Planning ahead

• Were people praying for NSO during the spring and summer months?

• Did chapter members gather before new students arrived on campus in order to make final preparations and encourage one another? If so, rate on a scale from one to five how beneficial you found that time.

• How well did NSO participants seem to understand their jobs?

• Were logistical responsibilities — such as reserving rooms or printing flyers — completed on time?

Making contacts

• How many chapter members were involved in making one-on-one contacts?

• How many chapter members participated in NSO overall? Did the chapter as a whole know what was going on?

• Did publicity materials reach new students in time?

• How many new students were contacted?

• Were your goals realistic, given the available resources and people?

• List your NSO events and where they were held. On a scale from one to five, rate how effective each event was in attracting and building bonds with new students — as well as how conducive each meeting-place was to the event at hand.

Following up

• About what percentage of the new students with whom you came into contact were followed up within 48 hours? What methods of follow-up were most effective?

• What did you do at your first few chapter meetings to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere for new students? What, if anything, went on during chapter meetings that might have made new students feel like outsiders?

Planning for next time

• What were your total expenses? How did you raise the money to cover them? Is that fund raising strategy worth repeating next year?

• In what two areas of planning or executing NSO was your chapter strongest this year? Weakest?

• What steps do you need to take during the coming year to strengthen your next NSO?

• At what point during this school year will you begin planning next fall’s NSO?

—John Roeckeman

For more ideas on what you can do now to keep people involved after NSO, see Retaining new students.