Harvard University Band Recruitment & Retention
The early 2020s were not an easy time for University Bands to recruit new members. Many incoming first-year students had missed out on the high school band experience because of Covid Pandemic restrictions. Second, third, and fourth-year members found themselves under increased pressure to carry the performance load with diminishing band rosters.
To break away from this trend the Harvard University Band engaged VergeX — with its strong background in both recruitment communication and user experience design — to recreate its website and candidate communications strategy that would help restore the band’s pre-pandemic roster size.
Creating an Intuitive User Experience
Before expanding a site like this one, it’s critical that we establish an intuitive navigation scheme. This helps both new users and experienced users find everything they need quickly and creates a satisfying environment for all who want to learn more about the band and its community impact.
For the Harvard Band, we placed most of the content for new users on the left side of the main menu and content for experienced users on the right. The upper levels of menu options provide beginning levels of detail in each content category while deeper-dive content lives lower within the menu dropdown.
If you had a band experience when you were in high school then you probably have a lot of stories about lasting friendships, a balance between academic diligence and creative fulfillment, and a bunch of great memories that aren’t directly connected to career success.
But if you missed out on that extra-curricular fun, then you’d probably be a bit hesitant to sign up for hours of weekly distraction from a new academic mission. Sure enough, this is exactly what our discovery research told us about inbound students in the fall of 2023. We needed to help them understand how band participation would provide a faster sense of community, recharge their creativity, and establish life-long friendships.
Our “Ten Great Reasons to Join the Band” page helped incoming students recognize that being part of this creative community could provide some well-deserved stability as they transition into Harvard life. The page also provides a resource that high school band teachers could use to encourage continuing musicianship for graduating seniors, no matter what university they attend.
Finding Strength in Community
The Harvard Band is a primary driver of school and community spirit. That’s why they’re invited to perform not only at traditional sporting events like football, hockey, and basketball, but also at inaugurals, invocations, graduations, as well as off-campus events around Boston and Cambridge.
Hoping to bring some of that love back to Band Members, we created registered membership levels for Friends & Family, Alums, and interested Band Candidates. These new membership levels help create broader community engagement with the Band, sharing news, invitations to special member events, and helping the extended members learn more about week-to-week activities.
Celebrating 105 Years of Heritage
The Harvard Band was established 105 years ago in 1919. To help celebrate that legacy, we created a 105-year timeline with quick navigation for each decade. The timeline names the Band leaders for each year and some of the events that created context for the broader community. Each decade features a montage of snapshots gathered from the Band and university Archives.
Rebuilding Traditions that Drive School Spirit
The new Harvard Band site went live in April 2024, just in time for spring recruiting for a new class of incoming musicians. Short term results indicate that the Band could add 50% more members to its roster for fall 2024. But more importantly, we’ll be watching for engagement from a broader community that will help energize this vital source of school spirit.
