Private School Campaigns: Maintaining your identity, leveraging what makes you different.
What's your school's special sauce?
Every school has the thing that differentiates them from their peers, and your campaign plans should build on it. How do you consider a campaign without sacrificing on your mission + culture? Let's explore the work we've done with three uniquely different schools who have completed or are well on their way through successful campaign initiatives.
1. The School with a long history, beloved + well-known faculty, and great former parent engagement:
It's somewhat rare to see tremendous alumni and former parent engagement at PK - 8 schools when high school, college, and (so often) grad schools take the cake for active involvement and financial support at their respective times, and even in alumni season, having been the most recent experience.
We worked with a school over this past year who had said at the onset that their special sauce was truly in the foundation that they set for their students, and because of the same teachers who've welcomed every sibling of hundreds of families with consistent tender care and compassionate leadership year in and out. The feasibility study affirmed this.
This school's best prospects were a combination of a few current parents, and even more former parents – and we had to truly listen to what they wanted to invest in and the outcomes they wanted to see. Current parents are usually motivated to support projects that will immediately benefit their children. Still, parents have that valuable "in hindsight" vision because the school has already served them, and they want to see that go on into perpetuity. Ultimately, we proposed that the majority of campaign funding be allocated to an Educators Fund which will support recruiting and retaining the top faculty – an honored + valuable asset to this school – and also ensure they can take professional development opportunities, and be compensated for their work extras, like leading clubs and helping out with athletic programs. This fund will be in part spendable, but in majority endowed: current parents will see an immediate increase in clubs offered and know their teachers are being paid more, and both former and current parents will know that this is possible forevermore thanks to the endowed piece.
What about the capital projects that made it into the Case for Support but weren't paid much attention to by interviewees? We suggested that the school remove a couple of them altogether and handle them when the budget allows and that they solicit the two prospective donors who showed significant excitement in feasibility study interviews for a smaller capital project to fully fund it, and then focus the rest of the prospective donors on the Educators Fund priority. The Educators Fund is not only a chance to honor people who have shaped the trajectory of children's lives, but it also becomes budget-relieving, attention-grabbing to the community, and valuable to everyone who currently enjoys and has enjoyed the school knowing it's only getting better and better as it invests more and more into the people who are the heart and soul of it.
Bonus to the above approach: Struggling with enrollment? Something splashy like the above, regardless of the dollar amount, will attract attention from community members who might be on the fence about their own current education circumstances. Campaigns open a fresh door for marketing + enrollment efforts by throwing a lot of positive momentum behind something!
2. The School with healthy enrollment, capitalizing on the influx of new families to fund priorities that had never been a part of a campaign before:
The schools that have welcomed families since the pandemic are in a unique position to turn gratitude into impact. Parents have been thrilled to have their kids back in school (in person), and they're offering more than we've ever heard to whatever the school needs to keep the experience an amazing one.
Recently, we worked with a school who knew that they needed to take advantage of this influx of newcomers to their community and school – in large part, people with the financial ability to make gifts, and a willingness to support whatever is needed. How does the school decide what to prioritize? Many schools are similarly situated to this one in that on the outside, you can't imagine too many challenges: long history of success, no enrollment issues (in fact, the opposite), and seemingly wealthy families supporting you regularly. But schools have made investments over the years in spaces and might carry some old debt, or might talk often with their board about not having an endowment when their academic or regional peers do.
We can't change the past but we can use money available now to change the future. In this case, we recommended that the school prioritize a 3-way split between starting an endowment, counting annual fund dollars, and a restricted but spendable budget-relieving priority. The school's physical space was in great shape (hence the debt), and there is no more space on which to build.
This comprehensive campaign – counting all dollars in the door for a 3-year period of time – will allow them to tackle two problems that inhibit growth: 1) by establishing an endowment they're finally putting their stake in the ground as an institution that's here to stay for the long-term, and can more easily welcome legacy families and donors at estate-planning-ages to have a conversation about being a part of this monumental growth opportunity for them and 2) by making a big deal out of something that is restricted, needs spendable dollars now, and helps to relieve the budget, the school can swing all of that otherwise budgeted money to the debt to pay it down quicker without soliciting for debt-reliving gifts. Money is fungible, I hear myself saying often. Let's raise for what matters to people, and spend on what makes us financially healthier and well-positioned for the future.
Bonus to the above approach: By including the annual fund, this school has the chance to educate existing and new families at once about the importance of the unrestricted dollar in education. Do these parents all know that even full-pay tuition only covers 87% of the cost of educating their child? Probably not! Use campaigns to boost your annual fund and teach people about the power of annual fund dollars – before, during, and after campaigns.
3. The School with uncertainty about which grades it should have, and seeks to add on if any, while trying to consider a successful campaign for another priority.
We've all heard people say "I really wish my kids could just stay there for high school" about their beloved elementary / middle school. Or, "If this school had a PreK, my kids would have gone there from the start." It makes us think about how a school can determine if and when growth makes sense, and who will pay for it.
We've worked with a school for almost 2-years now who has a constituency split between absolutely loving the very small, family-like community it has built, and those begging for more grades and no abrupt stop to their kids' education experience there. The school has responsibly explored how many people feel strongly about this and what they can or should do about it. But adding grades isn't easy: it comes with recruiting more faculty, finding more space, adding athletics facilities, a growing budget for everything from food to air conditioning – and will gifts from supporters and tuition growth cover this all!? Put that aside and consider that the school needs a new gymnasium and all-school gathering space desperately. The board has approved the exploration of a campaign for this capital piece, but the feasibility study is overrun with parents asking about whether a high school can be built, or the lower school can add programs for 3s and 4s.
We know how tricky it is to listen actively to your parents and community supporters, while you stick to your gut on what needs to be done to make the current school serve its current population exceptionally. We proposed that the school embark on its originally intended campaign for capital plans that are much needed, regardless of grade growth, and add a new component to this campaign: a donor-funded market study to assess what type of growth makes sense (if any) with focus groups as suggested by us based on feasibility study interviews. The leadership moved forward with confidently communicating that the campaign would proceed as planned and that they were grateful for the tremendous show of support in the feasibility study that resulted in new exploration for the school, too. Hiring a third party to conduct the market study for the addition of a high school or early childhood center took the potential personal fall-out from the Head of School, Director of Advancement and Board, and kept it to what professionals say is best for the school. This small sliver of the overall total campaign was easily funded by just a few people who were especially passionate about understanding the findings, and satisfied a lot of curiosities.
Sometimes, you can't make everyone happy during a campaign. You have to ask yourself whether what you're raising funds for accomplishes two things: makes the school stronger and well-positioned for the future, and satisfies what your community is very eager to see impacted.
Bonus to the above approach: Do you have a board that has been involved for a long time, and/or tends to think more traditionally than some newcomers to the school do? It's hard to run a campaign when there are opposing approaches to growth. The approach outlined here can typically take the pressure off of the board to be "the bad guys" or make heavy decisions that affect a lot of families by spending some money on a professional process to do that for you. It's hard to ensure the board and rest of the constituents are on the same page when prioritizing what will be funded in a campaign – sometimes, it's just a matter of what's funded first, then second, and so on, and include multiple initiatives that may be less or more of a priority to different families, but on a whole, make people feed heard + included.
Bottom line: Planning for a campaign is the surest way to know you're not wasting time, money or energy on projects that don't make sense or resonate. Go through a thorough planning period and get creative as we have with the schools shared about here to save yourself later on. Rooting for you and your school's next initiative!
