🌕 Independent School Moonshot Podcast

How to Build an Enrollment-Driven Strategic Plan

Doreen Kelly, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, The Creds Group, and Tom Sheppard, Founder, 20 More Students

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Treating Enrollment Like a Business Without Losing Mission

This episode of the Independent School Moonshot Podcast is sponsored by Blackbaud.

Blackbaud helps independent schools unify admissions, advancement, academics, and finance so leaders spend less time chasing data and more time leading. Visit blackbaud.com to learn more.

Blackbaud

What if every program, schedule tweak, and staffing choice first answered one question: what is the enrollment and revenue impact? Former heads of school Doreen Kelly, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, The Creds Group, and Tom Sheppard, Founder, 20 More Students, argue that growth targets and strategic plans only work when schools practice true strategic enrollment management, not just new titles or one-off tactics.

They unpack how heads, boards, CFOs, and enrollment leaders can move from siloed, transactional decisions to an interdependent operating model.

Expect practical moves: pilot programs with preset thresholds, scenario-based budgeting, honest data audits, and a culture where some ideas launch and others gracefully sunset.

Independent school leaders will walk away with a playbook for aligning mission, money, and enrollment momentum.

What You'll Learn from Doreen Kelly and Tom Sheppard:

  1. Treat enrollment like your primary revenue engine: Adopt business discipline in a nonprofit context. Put enrollment impact at the front of every programmatic decision.

  1. Interdependence beats silos: Make CFO and enrollment leadership true partners. Strategic decisions should be cross-functional by design

  1. Titles do not equal strategy: Shifting from admissions to enrollment management requires new responsibilities, decision rights, and data habits.

  1. Pilot before you promise: Frame new initiatives as pre-launch pilots with clear thresholds for participation, dollars, and timeline. If thresholds are not met, sunset with transparency.

  1. Clean data, longer horizon: Aim for five to seven years of usable enrollment data. Start where you are, improve data hygiene, and plan across multiple years, not just this cycle.

Recommended Next Steps

  1. Convene the core trio: Schedule a working session with head, CFO, and enrollment lead to align on goals, roles, and nonnegotiables.

  1. Run a program audit: Build a simple four-column sheet: program, revenue influence, expense, mission impact 1–10. Use it to surface what to keep, fix, or retire.

  1. Design pilot criteria now: For any proposed program, set thresholds for enrollment lift, participation, cost, philanthropy, and decision date. Communicate them upfront.

  1. Build three budget scenarios: Create best case, base case, and downside linked to enrollment targets and tuition outcomes. Share with the board and faculty.

  1. Start the data clean-up: Commit to standard fields and definitions across systems. Backfill at least one prior year to begin a reliable five-year view.

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