Open House?

[NightOwl]

Have you ever hosted an open house? How did it go? Was it successful? Did you do anything special for it?

I hate the interview process so much that the idea of an open house with on the spot interviews is sounding very appealing. I could plan it for a Saturday between 10 and 2, the house would be ready to show, I would have multiple enrollment packages ready to give out, and could do interviews during the open house or right after.

I only have one spot coming open in June, but I just hate the after hours scheduling, the possibility of a no show, the disruption to my family, etc, that comes with interviews. I could possibly knocked out multiple interviews in one day. In theory ....

[Thriftylady]

I personally hate the idea of an open house. The thought of random people just walking in freaks me out. But I know some providers do it with success.

[childcaremom]

I personally hate the idea of an open house. The thought of random people just walking in freaks me out. But I know some providers do it with success.

I like to vet people before they come so for me, an open house would not be something I would want to do. Plus, if a family is off-the-wall, I can get them in and out really quick during an interview. (ask me about my 8 min interview :::

[Josiegirl]

I shudder at the thought of an open house, I'm a 1-person-at-a-time person.
Is there some way you could prescreen phone call interviews to determine whether you'd even want to meet with them or not? Might save some time and aggravation that way.
If you'd sincerely like to try the open house then I say, go for it!! You could always pop open a bottle of wine at 2:01.

[kendallina]

I had an open house last year when I changed my business from a part-time preschool (i.e. stay at home mom clients) to a full time child care/preschool (i.e. full time working families). I needed to enroll 6 families and I knew no full time working families, so I had an open house to gauge interest.

I had 5 or 6 families come and each one of them enrolled for either my summer program or my full time preschool for the fall.

For me, it was a lot of work (perhaps it was more stress than work...but that's just me). The amount of advertising/cleaning/stressing was definitely worth it to get 6 families to enroll, but I wouldn't do that for one family. I'd much prefer to have individual interviews if I only need one family.

Also, what would you do if more than one family wanted to enroll but you only have one space?

I did my open house in the evening (4:30-6:30pm) and I provided snacks, but not dinner. I had lots of packets available and laid out lots of examples of the preschooler's activities, etc for families to see.

[NightOwl]

They would go on a waiting list. It's rare for me to have an opening, so I'm trying to decide the best way to go about filling it. I've had mostly the same families for so long, and they've provided a lot of word of mouth advertising, so I've not really had to go out looking, kwim?