For school leaders, advancement and marketing teams
Bring clarity to your school’s enrolment journey
Align your team, design meaningful experiences, and build the brand, website and materials needed to deliver them well.
Even great schools feel the strain when the enrolment journey is unclear
Families feel it:
The website says one thing, the tour says another. Wait times grow, communication varies and confidence fades.
Staff feel it:
Work is split across teams, fixes happen in isolation and the root cause becomes harder to see.
The school feels it:
Your school’s story fragments, and families struggle to grasp its value.
We’re Bolsta
We bring story, people and systems into one coherent enrolment experience
Our work follows a simple logic.
- Understand the current reality
- Align the people involved
- Redesign the moments that matter most
That might involve workshops and mapping, or brand work, websites and enrolment materials. The goal is always the same, to make enrolment easier to run and easier to trust.
When your story, people and systems work together, families trust what they feel, and staff deliver with clarity
Families experience a school that feels calm, clear and genuine.
Staff gain shared expectations, smoother handovers and systems that support them rather than slow them down.
Leadership gains visibility, confidence and a foundation for sustainable growth.
Let's start by understanding how your enrolment journey is working
What situation are you in?
You know your school has a story worth telling. Yet new families struggle to see what makes your classrooms, community and culture special.
Your website might feel dated, your materials undersell your strengths, or your tours rely too heavily on individual charisma. Internally, you hear the same refrain: “If people could just see what we’re really like, they’d get it.”
We clarify the story at the heart of your school and reshape the enrolment experience so families can feel it from their first touchpoint.
"A big thank you to Jacob for running such a practical and inspiring Enrolment Journey workshop with some of our leadership, marketing and administration staff. Jacob’s Enrolment journey-building concept cards were fantastic tools to help us think critically and creatively about the entire journey.
It was especially powerful to see how experience design principles can support meaningful change in a fee-free, independent school setting like ours."
Katy Devers, Marketing & Administration Manager – Kairos Community College
Your school is filled with care and intention. You want that to be felt, not just stated. But in the day-to-day chaos, good intentions don’t always translate into experience.
You’re looking for a way to connect the dots between what you believe and what people actually feel.
We help schools design meaningful enrolment experiences that reflect who they are at their best – for families, for staff, and for the future of the school.
"Working with Bolsta brought a sense of consistency across our whole school. From the website to the prospectus to everyday tools like email signatures."
Peter Henderson, Principal – Namoi Valley Christian School
You’ve got good people working hard, but the journey still feels clunky. You’re reliant on spreadsheets and memory. Families get followed up… eventually. No one’s quite sure who owns what, and parents experience it all as one blurry, frustrating journey.
We help schools bring structure, rhythm and clarity to their enrolment journey so that families feel confident and staff can work together with confidence.
"Jacob laid the foundation of the ‘The Enrolment Journey’...we could see how the elements of Marketing, Communication and Enrolment fit together into an integrated system...
We could suddenly see the direction we needed to go, and the changes we needed make to clean up our strategies and processes."
Allie Smith, Communications Manager – MidCoast Christian College
Everyone agrees something needs to change – but without a clear picture, it’s hard to know what to fix first. Perhaps you have something in mind, but you don’t want to waste time on surface solutions or expensive redesigns that miss the real opportunity for improvement.
We help schools see the full enrolment ecosystem clearly, so you can focus your energy on where it will make the biggest difference.
“Without Jacob, we would not have made the developments and growth targets that we have managed to achieve in recent years. I consider Jacob an extension of our team, for a fraction of the cost, and yet if you ask me, his return on investment is ten fold.”
David Gray, Director of Mission & Community – Belmont Christian College
Our method
The Enrolment Ecosystem™ shows how story, people and systems shape what families experience.
It's the missing logic many schools have been working without. It helps you see the whole picture, cut through team silos, and focus on changes that make the most impact.
Explore the Enrolment Ecosystem™
Frequently Asked Questions
An enrolment ecosystem is the full picture of how families experience your school — from the first website visit to onboarding. It includes the story you tell, the processes behind the scenes, and the way teams work together. When these parts are aligned, families feel cared for and staff work with clarity.
We help schools design a connected enrolment journey by understanding and building around three layers:
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Journey: clarity, structure and shared responsibilities.
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Experience: how families feel and what they remember.
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Infrastructure: the systems and tools that support it all.
Not exclusively. We’re not a typical marketing agency or a straight consultancy. Bolsta is a strategic partner focused on enrolment experience. We help schools see their ecosystem clearly, align their teams, and design experiences that reflect the best of who they are. We draw on marketing, communications, management and design disciplines.
Families tend to make assumptions and form relationships with schools based on how it feels, not just what it says. A fragmented journey can cause confusion, lower trust and reduce conversion. A connected enrolment journey increases clarity, retention, and advocacy.
It means designing every touchpoint around what families need, feel, and expect in each moment. When parents feel seen, they engage more deeply and advocate for your school
We typically work with principals, business managers, marketing, communication and admissions teams. Our approach brings these roles together with shared language and aligned priorities, so the whole team can deliver a consistent experience.
We don’t start with a website. We start with the ecosystem. Your website, brand and messaging are only effective when they’re aligned with what families experience. We help ensure any creative work is grounded in real stories and supported by clear systems.
We begin with the Enrolment Journey Audit. It’s a diagnostic that helps your school see the journey as it actually works, not just how it’s intended to work. It identifies friction, patterns and opportunities, and sets the foundation for every next step.
