Recruitment Strategies

Best Buddies Recruitment Strategies

Hello Best Buddies Leaders!

For those of you who have started school, the YLC hopes that your school year is off to a great start. With the start of a new school year comes a new year of Best Buddies! One common issue that many Best Buddies leaders may face is recruiting new members in your local community. This can be both an exciting yet somewhat overwhelming task when new, enthusiastic students are considering various organizations to join within your school. Here at the YLC, we hope to help with this aspect by suggesting several ways to increase membership in your Best Buddies chapter.

Setting a Goal:

Before brainstorming ways to recruit members, it's important to firstly set a goal for yourself regarding how many members you hope to have. You may want to consider:

• How many total members did our chapter have last school year? Do we want to meet or increase this number? If this is your first year operating as a chapter, now is a great time to think about how many members you wish to gain.
• How many buddies will our chapter have? Based on this number, how many matches can we successfully maintain throughout the year?
• Is this goal realistic and attainable for our chapter?

Start of School:

The first few weeks of school is the perfect time to start spreading awareness about Best Buddies and interacting with new potential members. Here are some ideas:

• Get involved in activity fairs at your school where you can showcase Best Buddies
• Host an information session or interest meeting to invite and educate students
• Spread awareness about Best Buddies through your school's daily announcements, newspaper, website, activities office, etc.
• Utilize social media to post event details and other reminders
• Collaborate with other BB chapters and/or clubs at your school to boost awareness
• Identify buddies, peer buddies, ambassadors, program managers, etc. who may be willing to speak personally about Best Buddies to a group

Mid-School Year:

Once your chapter has successfully held a couple of events and recruited some new members, the focus is now on retaining those members while continuing to build awareness. Here's a few ways to do so:

• Encourage members to actively bring their friends to meetings
• Continue to use social media to promote inclusion and friendship (e.g. featuring a buddy pair, posting group photos)
• Check in with buddy matches/groups to ensure growth in the relationship; if someone is interested in joining a match, feel free to welcome them!
• Advertise Best Buddies statewide events (e.g. Friendship Walk, state sport outings) as a way to increase participation in out-of-school group outings

Final Comments:

Overall, recruiting members truly depends on what goal your chapter has in mind. Some schools may want to focus on smaller, personalized matches while other schools may recruit hundreds of members to maximize engagement. Whatever your chapter decides to pursue, always make sure that your events are both accessible and inclusive for all members. After all, the mission of Best Buddies is to foster meaningful friendships, which rests upon the participation and mindset of you and your fellow chapter members.

Feel free to leave a comment below about ways that you have successfully recruited members. Thanks for reading and best of luck with your chapter this school year!

In friendship,

Nathan Moldavsky

YLC Member