Lincoln University Curators this week approved a new, one-year contract with Royall and Company of Richmond, Virginia for marketing and undergraduate recruitment services.
The contract is the same as last year's, Jerome Offord - LU President Kevin Rome's chief of staff - told curators during a 10-minute open-session telephone conference call Thursday.
"We changed some of the target markets, to include places like Omaha, Nebraska; Lincoln, Nebraska; Indianapolis; Dallas; some other cities in Texas; Houston; (and) cities outlying Atlanta, Georgia," he told the board, adding some of the Missouri cities targeted in last year's effort were dropped from the new contract.
"We yielded only six students from Missouri" in the Royall and Company recruiting efforts, he said.
Several LU employees have been designated as recruiters for the Mid-Missouri, St. Louis and Kansas City areas, Offord reported.
The contract is for $141,000, plus $8,500 in postage.
Since the money was not included in the current budget, Offord said, it will have to come from the school's reserve funds as was done last year.
But, Offord said, the expense is worthwhile.
"They helped us increase our numbers - we had, I believe, a 26 percent increase in our freshman class," Offord said after Thursday's meeting. "They yielded us close to 700 additional applications than we could yield ourselves."
LU officials this spring will develop a request for proposals for a more permanent marketing arrangement, for contractors to bid on later this year.
That would mean, in future years, Lincoln would "have a multi-year contract that will be a part of the budget process," Offord said.
Still, he said, only one or two companies "actually do the kind of work that Royall does," Offord told the board. "Royall has the expertise of working with HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) that other companies do not have."
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