For purposes of this section, we will assume that you have an initial pool of money with which to implement the program. (If you need help in putting together an initial pool of fundraising dollars, see the Fundraising section of this website.) You have money; you have volunteers, now you need the children! How do you get them?
“Registration” means that a parent or caregiver fills out a Ferst Foundation registration form. The Ferst Foundation office in Madison will provide these forms free of charge (allotted quantities per year). Registration forms may be full color and/or single color depending on your CAT's preferences or budgetary restrictions; they may also have the name of your local sponsoring organization printed on them, if you wish. Spanish language forms are available as well. The Ferst Foundation office staff will work with you to determine the type and style of registration forms that best suit your program. As a rule of thumb, initially you will need to obtain at least twice as many registration forms as you have children to be registered. For example, if you have approximately 700 children under the age of five in your community, you should plan to distribute at least 1,400 forms during your first registration push.
Although there is basically one registration form, there are five different registration methods. A successful, ongoing registration effort will be a mix of all five. Please read about the registration methods below and then brainstorm with your CAT about ways and places to implement all five methods. This is part of what makes your program unique; different methods of registration work in different communities and no two programs will approach this in quite the same way.
Methods of Registration
1. DISPLAY REGISTRATION
This type of registration is the simplest to implement, and the easiest to sustain over time. You simply display stacks of registration forms for pickup by interested parents and caregivers. Your most important display registration site will almost certainly be your local library(s), where registration forms should ALWAYS be available. But you may have as many other display registration sites as you like—the Health Department, shops, grocery stores, food banks, thrift stores, banks, doctors’ offices, pharmacies, laundromats, family style restaurants; all make excellent display registration sites. Any business that serves people who have small children may be a display registration site. Generally, the more display sites you have, the better, however you should only have as many display sites as your CAT can adequately supervise and stock with registration forms. Your CAT should maintain a list of these sites in your community and make periodic contact with the sites to ensure that they have a ready supply of registration forms at all times. Also, be sure that every employee at each display registration site receives a Fact Sheet about the program so that all employees can answer general questions about the program from parents picking up the form. If a parent goes to the Health Department, sees the registration forms on the counter, and asks, “What is this?”—the person behind the counter should be able to tell the parent the basics of the program. Fact Sheets can help employees do this. If the proprietor of the display registration site can also post the Fact Sheet on an employee bulletin board, so much the better.
2. DIRECTED REGISTRATION
Directed registration is the distribution of a set number of registration forms to a particular population of families, most of which are likely to have children who can be registered. An example would be the daycare provider who sends home a cover letter and a registration form to the family of each of her students under the age of five. Another example of directed registration would be the elementary school principal who sends home a cover letter and registration form to each primary grade child, urging families to register siblings who are still at home. Directed registration can be a powerful tool, as you are essentially identifying families likely to participate and putting the registration forms in their hands. Again, provide Fact Sheets to workers who come in contact with the population being targeted, so that they can answer general questions posed by interested parents. (For example, if you are conducting a directed registration through the school system to the parents of Pre-K, kindergarten and 1st graders, make sure all school officials and each teacher in the targeted grades receives a Fact Sheet.) Every member of your CAT team should decide upon a population of families with which they can conduct a directed registration.
3. MEDIA REGISTRATION
Another powerful registration tool is media registration, which are generally conducted sparingly but often with excellent results. A media registration involves the printing of a registration form in a local newspaper or organization newsletter. Interested parents or caregivers may then clip the printed form, fill it out, and mail it in to Ferst Foundation. These may be modified versions of the printed registration form, often condensed due to space considerations. When encouraging a media registration, make sure that the organization printing the modified form includes every line item from the original forms. If information is omitted, there is a risk that some children will not be registered. Ideally your local paper will contribute a media registration at some point, but do not allow your CAT members to overlook other potential sources of media registrations such as Chamber of Commerce newsletters, civic organization newsletters, and the like.
4. EVENT REGISTRATION
Event registration involves going to the participating families rather than having them come to you. An event registration may involve a group of volunteers outside of a local grocery or discount store (with the store’s permission, of course) on a Friday evening or Saturday morning, approaching people with small children and encouraging them to register on the spot. An event registration could be a group of high school volunteers who take stacks of forms to a local sporting event, for example, and attempt to register families at the site. In an event registration, you may distribute forms to those who would like to take them, but the idea is to have people sign up then and there, so that you can take all the forms and either send them to Ferst Foundation for data entry or enter the registrations directly into our database via our website. Event registrations are attractive for a number of reasons; they give your organization public exposure, they don’t require a registering parent to mail in a form, they allow you to make use of volunteers who want to give time to your organization, and they tend to get you large numbers of registrations in short period of time. The key to this method is to successfully train the volunteers so that they are able to accurately answer questions about the program. It is also a good idea to have extra Fact Sheets on hand on these occasions so that interested parents may peruse detailed program information at their leisure. You may set up event registrations at any time, at any place in which you have permission to do so; but don’t overlook golden opportunities to conduct event registrations at local festivals, public gatherings, special sporting events, and the like. Have your CAT brainstorm possible times and locations for event registrations.
5. WEB REGISTRATION
Currently, an electronic version of the registration form may be downloaded from www.ferstfoundation.org. This version can be printed out and mailed in like a traditional registration form. Parents and caregivers can also register directly online. In any case, do not miss the opportunity to promote the web registration route. Include the address and information regarding the online registration form in all press releases and presentations. This is the most convenient form of registration for families with Internet access, and we expect the percentage of total applications that come from online to grow exponentially in the coming years.
How Much Is Enough?
Your initial registration push should include at least five display registration sites, at least five directed registrations, at least two media registrations, and at least three event registrations. Try to plan all of the above for one initial three month period. After that, maintain your five display registration sites and try to implement at least one directed or event registration each month after that, with at least two media registrations in each twelve month period. Do more if you can, but try to maintain these levels at a minimum. Finally, you may want to plan an annual registration drive, similar to your initial efforts, in August of each year just after school begins.
If you devise an initial registration program that combines all of the above types of registration, and as many of each type as possible, you will be rewarded with a veritable flood of registrations. That is great news! And if your CAT further maintains an annual schedule of monthly registration pushes, the news will be downright fantastic. Remember that your pool of children changes every month and every year. Every year approximately 20% of your participants will turn five years old and graduate. You must continually replenish your pool by registering the new babies and the newcomers to the community as well as current residents who missed your first registration efforts. Registration is an ongoing process, but if you think in terms of registration types and schedule examples of all types over the course of the year, your task will be greatly simplified.
Thinking “Outside the Box” - Registration Incentives
Registration is truly a unique process in each community. Your CAT is encouraged to think outside the box and brainstorm ways to bring the registration process to your community. Forming partnerships with the schools and library is essential. Many of your activities will piggyback on what they are already doing.
One method of spurring registrations that has worked in other communities is the use of registration incentives. CAT members in Putnam County, Georgia, decided to host an ice cream party to encourage children in the local elementary school to take forms home to younger siblings. School officials sent home a cover letter and registration form to the parents of each pre-K and kindergarten student, asking them to register younger siblings. Every child who brought back a form was allowed to participate in an “icecream social” in the cafeteria sponsored by a local business. Children without younger siblings could participate simply by returning the unused form. Such incentives may or may not work for your community, but you may wish to brainstorm possible opportunities for similar programs while you are outlining your registration efforts.
In conclusion, you should hold registration events often and repeatedly. This is the only way to sustain the Ferst Foundation program over time. The more children you have registered, the more impact the program will have on your community as a whole. The more participants, the more clout you will have with potential sponsors. The more participants, the more readers you will be growing in your community! Register early, register often, and register REPEATEDLY.
Outreach Registration
Be aware that while the Ferst Foundation program is for every child in the community under the age of five, it is often more difficult to register children whose families have lower income levels. More affluent parents may have more leisure time to visit the local library, read the local paper, and be a part of various civic or social clubs, all of which are avenues through which those parents may learn about Ferst Foundation and subsequently take steps to register their children. Less affluent parents, who may work nontraditional hours or may work more than one job, frequently have less access to these lines of communication. These less affluent children may best be reached through carefully targeted event registrations. Conduct a weekend event registration at the grocery store or at a local discount store. Ask the local plant manager if you can conduct a registration event during lunch shift at the plant. All families, regardless of their income, need food and medical care—find out if you can reach local families while they are obtaining these services. Only your CAT can determine how best to reach the hard-to-reach children in your community.
Skepticism
Be aware that the number one impediment to registration is SKEPTICISM. Many parents simply don’t believe that you are providing their children with up to sixty books, free of charge, no strings attached. They may mistakenly believe that they will be charged at some point for the books and that the books will be propaganda for a particular sociopolitical position. Some parents may even be insulted. These concerns affect parents regardless of race, income level, or educational background. They are legitimate questions that concerned parents may ask, and it is your job to provide information that will allay their concerns. Once again, having Fact Sheets on hand at registration events may be useful in order to share specific information about the program with parents. Once they understand that it is truly free for all children they will not only sign up but become your strongest supporters.
Age Limitations
Finally, you should also be aware that there is a cutoff age at which children can register for the Imagination Library. Because of data entry time frames and because books for participants are actually ordered by Ferst Foundation two months before they are mailed, children who are over the age of 4 ½ years and are not yet in the program should not, ideally, be registered. Depending on what time of the month a registration form is received by Ferst Foundation, it can take two to three months for a child to receive the first book in the program. If a child is only a few months shy of their fifth birthday, it is possible that they will not be registered in time to receive any books. This can be a problem, for example, in directed registrations at daycare centers; a well meaning owner may send home a registration form to every child in the center, despite the fact that some of the children nearing school age are five years old or nearly so. Take special care, whenever possible, to avoid situations in which parents of children who are too old to participate in the program are permitted to register their children.
If you would like a powerpoint presentation about registration and methods for your registration committee, please email us at info@ferstfoundation.org.
Spanish Registration Forms
We have a registration form and a program information sheet in Spanish you can print and use as part of your registration efforts.
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