Closing the Summer Revenue Gap with Nelnet Campus Commerce Payment Plans

• July payment plan collections increased by more than $1.5M from 2023 to 2025.
• December collections increased by nearly $890K over the same period.
• Payment plan activity moved into June, a month that previously brought in little tuition revenue.
• Drew strengthened summer revenue flow without adding staff.
• Families gained access to longer payment windows and lower monthly payments.

For small colleges and universities with limited summer enrollment, June and July can mean weeks of payroll, refunds, and operating costs with little tuition revenue coming in. The timing gap can be difficult to solve through outreach alone.

Drew University faced a summer revenue slowdown every year. Most of its roughly 1,700 undergraduates leave campus when the semester ends, and unlike community colleges or research universities with significant summer programs, Drew generates very limited tuition revenue once the spring term closes.

“June and July were historically very lean months,” says Christine Fressola, Director of Student Accounts at Drew University since 2018. “We had almost no tuition coming in.”

Drew’s existing payment plan structure left the summer gap open. Their three- and four-month plans opened in August. By the time the first payment arrived, the summer cash flow gap had already stretched for two months.

Drew extended its payment plan windows from three- and four-month plans starting in August to four- and five-month plans starting in July. By pulling the first payment forward by a month, Drew created the institution’s first meaningful source of summer tuition revenue.

The change was simple to explain, but more complex to execute. Fressola worked closely with Nelnet Campus Commerce (NCC) Customer Success Consultant Todd Siebens to remap due dates, ACH processing windows, and registration deadlines that had all been built around the old calendar. They met every week for over a month before the launch to work out all the necessary details.

“Todd believed in the vision and supported me throughout the process,” Fressola says. “It was great to have such a partner, and an open-minded one at that, to bounce my new ideas off of.”

Two key insights shaped the new payment plan design.

1. Longer payment windows mean lower monthly payments. Spreading the same balance over five months instead of four, or four instead of three, reduced what families owed each month. That made plans easier to afford—and easier to say yes to.
2. The four-month payment plan offered a built-in break. Families paid 25% at enrollment, then had no payment due until September. “Where else do you get a month reprieve on a payment?” Fressola says. “That was a selling point, and we built our marketing around it.”

Fressola also pushed to remove the word “deposit” from student-facing materials. The upfront amount had been labeled a deposit, but families weren’t depositing anything. They were already enrolled, already billed. They were making a payment.

“It’s your first payment,” she says. “Take out the word ‘deposit.'”

Over two years, Drew’s July collections for payment plans grew 52%, while December collections grew 40% compared to the 2023 baseline. For Drew, those gains helped turn historically light collection periods into more productive revenue windows.

Year one produced the largest gains—expected, given that the structural change was biggest in the first year. Year two suggested the improvement wasn’t a one-time spike.

Outreach strategy also supported the results. Before the new plans launched, Drew pulled a list from NCC of families who had enrolled in payment plans the prior year and reached out to them first. The message was direct: changes were coming, and those changes benefited them. Those families were already familiar with payment plans, which made them a natural audience for the new structure.

After two years of stronger summer collections, Drew moved its billing cycle even further forward to mid-June. Shifting the first bill earlier gave families more time to enroll before plan deadlines.

Previously, Drew’s tuition bills went out July 5, with the five-month plan deadline on July 11. That gave families less than a week to review their balance and decide how they wanted to pay.

This year, Drew moved statement processing to June 17, but implementing it required coordination across Financial Aid, Residence Life, Registrar, and Finance. Every department had to be ready weeks earlier than before.

The payoff is already visible. Payments and plan enrollments now arrive in June. Families on the four-month plan have nearly two months between their first and second payment. In the first week of July alone, $150,000 in payments had already come in, with July projections tracking $200,000 above 2025.

Changing the payment plan window is most relevant for smaller institutions with limited summer enrollment and a predictable cash flow gap between the end of the academic year and the start of fall billing. For those schools, extending payment plan windows can be a direct path to earlier revenue.

Fressola is direct about where the approach applies and where it does not. “If you have a large summer population, you might not feel the lean months the same way,” she says. “But if you’re a small liberal arts college and June and July are quiet—this can work. And the benefit of spreading out payments for students and families cannot be understated.”

The mechanics will vary. Larger institutions will rely more on automated outreach than direct phone calls. But the core logic is transferable: extend the payment window, lower the monthly payment, and make the plan easier for families to choose.

“If you’re looking to even out your cash flow,” Fressola says, “you just have to know your setup and be ready to make the change.”

Want to see whether your payment plan calendar is working for your institution? Schedule a consultation to explore how Nelnet Payment Plans can help improve campus cash flow and create more manageable options for families.

Schedule a Consultation