5 Signs Schools Want Your After-School Program (Ep. 20)

Episode 20 · June 11, 2026 · Guest: Jeff Kerestes, The Ukulele Project

An after-school program has product-market fit when schools come to you. The signs: a school employee asks for your program by name, the administration and PTA tell families you exist, classes reach their minimum without rescue marketing, and families sign up again. If you're pushing at every new site, stop adding schools and fix the fit first.

Listen or watch: Spotify · YouTube · Apple Podcasts

In this episode of The Youth Enrichment Leader, titled After-School Program Business: Find Product-Market Fit with Jeff Kerestes, I sat down with the founder and CEO of The Ukulele Project, a music enrichment program serving schools across Portland and Vancouver. Jeff is a professional musician by trade. We compared notes on one hard lesson: getting into a school and being wanted at a school are two different things.

What does product-market fit look like for an after-school program?

It looks like demand pulling you forward. Before fit, you're pushing a boulder up a hill. After fit, the boulder is rolling down and your job is to stay ahead of it.

Jeff's program fills a real gap. Music is disappearing from public schools, and a play-based class where kids play a song on day one is an easy yes. In his first year, schools reached out to him. That's pull. His second year he added a lot of schools at once, and some of them never took off. That's push. At first he couldn't tell why, until he went back through his own numbers.

Why does it matter who refers me to a school?

Because the source of the referral predicts whether the program will fill. I used to think a happy camp parent asking for us at their kid's school would get us in. It's the thinnest referral there is. The parent rarely knows who decides and doesn't want that job.

A little stronger: the parent knows the decision maker and will send an introduction. Strongest: someone who works at a school heard about you from someone who works at another school. When an office manager calls because the office manager across the district said good things, that program goes well. Jeff sees the same pattern: one family wanting it for one child doesn't mean the community is ready. More in how to get school referrals for your enrichment program.

How much do the school and the PTA affect enrollment?

More than the quality of your program does. Jeff told me he used to believe that once he was in a building, the class would sell out. What he learned is that if the administration won't send even one email telling families which after-school options exist, families can't choose you. He paid to run programs like that, and they never grew.

His shift: he's no longer the only one auditioning. The school is auditioning too. That landed for me, because one of my old pitches was "you won't even know we're here." A program that serves a whole community takes a little give from both sides. We do our part. The school tells families we exist. What to look for is in how to choose the right school partners.

How do I check for pull before I add a school?

Run five questions before you say yes.

1. Did the request come from someone who works at the school?
2. Did they hear about you from another school or partner, by name?
3. Will the office or principal send families a message that lists your program?
4. Is the PTA or parent group behind it?
5. Do you have a named contact who answers email?

A quick tally. School A: the office manager called you, heard about you from a sister school, and the principal will email families. No PTA yet, but you have a contact. That's 4 of 5. Go. School B: one parent asked, and nobody at the office has replied. That's 0 of 5. Keep the parent warm and wait.

What do canceled programs teach you about growing too fast?

That the bill is bigger than the refund. One fall I doubled our sites from one term to the next, because nine times out of ten a new site had gone well. The new schools looked like our best schools on paper. We hadn't been pulled into them, and a lot of those programs never reached their minimum.

By then I had hired the instructors, bought the materials, paid the fees and run fall training. Then my team and I went through our data on families whose program we had canceled. Almost none came back. A canceled program can cost you that family for good, and it costs you with the instructor and the school too. The decision itself is in when to cancel a class for low enrollment.

How do I keep quality the same across many sites?

Write down what you do, then build a feedback loop. Jeff saw in his first year that great teachers left alone teach a different class at every school. So he wrote an instructor manual with every lesson planned, working with one of his instructors whose strength was writing. It's on its third version. He added videos of himself teaching each lesson.

The part I'm borrowing: every instructor fills out a short follow-up form right after class, from the car. School and date. Who was absent. Which lesson. What went well. What could be better. Anything concerning. For his contract instructors, the same form is how they submit for pay, so it gets done. Written reflection is one of the strongest tools education has for improving teaching, and this one runs when you can only be in one classroom a day.

When should I expand to a new city?

When your current market runs without you in the room. Jeff had his eye on a bigger metro a few hours away. He chose to test nearby communities first, close enough that he can step in. I made the same call once I asked who was already in that city and whether demand was unmet. I wasn't going to grow chaos. Go slow to go fast.

Who should listen to this episode?

Operators deciding how many school sites to add next term. It's about an hour, and the first fifteen minutes cover fit, referrals and school support.

Listen or watch: Spotify · YouTube · Apple Podcasts

Frequently asked questions

What is product-market fit, in plain words?

People want what you offer badly enough that they come looking for it. For a school-based program, that means schools and families ask for you before you ask them.

Should I say no to a school that a parent requested?

Say "not yet." Ask the parent who decides, get an introduction, and look for the other four signals before you commit an instructor.

Does The Ukulele Project use enrops?

Yes. Jeff's story is on our customers page.

Create your first registration. Free for businesses. Live in under 5 minutes. Or click through a sample registration first.

Arielle Hammond, Ed.D. is the founder of enrops and host of The Youth Enrichment Leader, presented by enrops.