Scale Your Project Beyond School to Stand Out.

Do not limit your project by only involving your friends and students from your school. To an admissions officer who has read through thousands of students’ initiatives, a solely school-oriented project does not really indicate particularly impressive scale or impact.

We elaborate more on why leading school clubs are the bare minimum for your project profile in our previous article.

So how do you expand your organization? Fundamentally, it begins with your team and building membership that reaches beyond your school walls.

Why Grow Beyond Your School?

• Build real scale. Attracting members from other schools show that your org is more than just a club. It’s a true community initiative with citywide influence.

• Bring new perspectives. Members from different schools will provide more ideas and approaches, making your org stronger and more innovative.

• Access more resources: Each member has their own network. A larger network connects you to unique skills, contacts, and resources you might not find in your own school.

Here are three steps to start recruiting students from other schools and communities.

Step 1: Build your online presence

Before reaching out, set up a professional and engaging online presence that clearly represents your organization’s mission and goals.

Go through this checklist:

a) Have an official website. 

Most students resort to an Instagram page - but most sponsors or partners such as other non-profits, organizations or businesses will look to a website first. Your website should establish your credibility. Visitors should understand your purpose at a single glance.

b) Start a social media page for student-facing outreach. It should succinctly highlight your project’s mission and goals. Update it regularly with photo or video assets to indicate that your organization is active & engaged. Also share a recruitment post to signal your organization’s hiring efforts.

c) Finally, start a Linktree. This will be your hub for everything including directing people to your website, external resources you may want to share, or Google Forms for members to sign up.

Step 2: Start with student ambassadors

Rather than relying solely on cold outreach, tap into your current team’s connections to spread the word about your organization.

List the schools and communities you’re connected to. You can then list out members of your current team and all the connections they have. Encourage your current team to casually share what they’ve done with your initiative to different circles.

You can fill out a table like below to give you a better visual representation of who you may know.

A good outreach strategy is to identify a student ambassador team. Who are the most connected members who are already attending your events? Who’s already coming? Who are the most involved and passionate about what you’re doing?

These students are the best candidates to be a student ambassador who can share your organization to more people.

You can begin to offer more leadership opportunities.

Building deeper relationships with engaged members is often the best way to start expanding your organization’s reach.

Step 3: Track progress and set quantifiable goals

To really encourage and systemize your student ambassadors, track their progress and set realistic goals. This comes from slightly reframing their responsibilities.

Track each ambassador’s progress. Facilitate regular check-ins and see where you can support them.

Setting quantifiable trackers makes your team feel accountable and ensures a steady growth in your network. It will naturally bring more attention for others to join.

Overall, you need to engage students in and outside of school. This indicates that your organization’s story is compelling enough to build public support.

Student Resources

Free Extracurricular Consultation Call!

Unsure if your academic and extracurricular portfolio is strong enough? Book a call with a member of the Porte’s admission team. On the call, we will:

• Learn about your post-secondary goals & school list

• Assess the strength of your portfolio in relation to your major

• Share additional & personalized resources you can use.

Upcoming Webinar: How to Create Impactful Extracurriculars

On Nov 6 from 6:00-7:00 pm, our team is hosting an informative webinar where we show you exactly how to create impactful extracurriculars. We tell you: