Over the past year, we’ve written on a range of topics, from treating your faculty like prospective donors to the partnership between the Development and Admission offices—and we’ll be sure to cover more hot topics in the year to come. Before we move on, though, let’s look back to articles from our top-read editions of the Development e-Letter in 2014.

Fundraising events: Whether they're one-offs for a special capital campaign or a school tradition, fundraising events are profitable, engaging ways for your school to raise money. Such events often require you and your team—along with a volunteer cadre of parents and community members—to put in time before, during, and after the event to make it successful, often without pay and "volunteering" their efforts. But can school employees work as volunteers when they pitch in for fundraising events? Should they be paid for their time? The answers to these questions could determine whether your school could face repercussions with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Beyond your formal minutes from Board meetings, you should also have “action minutes” that capture casual suggestions or observations and turn them into agreed-upon tasks. For example, during the course of a discussion, a Board member might say, “Great idea—we should look into it,” or “Lori’s committee could tackle that project.” Three meetings later, you realize there’s been no follow-up. Or, worse yet, everyone’s forgotten the matter entirely.

Over the past year, we’ve written about everything from professional development (both useless and useful) to the importance of recess—and we’ll be sure to cover more hot topics in the year to come. Before we move on, though, let's look back to the top-read articles in the Division Head e-Letter over the past year.

There’s no denying that winter has arrived. Even stereotypically warm locations such as Nevada, Arizona, and most of Texas have experienced arctic air and snow this season. Northern states have already embraced temperatures well below zero! Cold temperatures can lead to several life-threatening risks such as heart attack and hypothermia, as well as several non-lethal yet serious health concerns such as frostbite, depression, increased exposure to the flu and colds, and a trigger for asthma—just to mention a few of the most common. Colder weather also means more time spent indoors, which could expose you to dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, a potentially poisonous gas that causes more than 20,000 emergency room visits each year and nearly 450 annual deaths.

Winter in the U.S. is often associated with reduced exposure to the sun, which means no tan. With class proms and pageants on their minds, teenagers find this time of year irritating. After all, nothing puts the finishing touch on that perfect gown or tuxedo like a tan. And, with tanning salons still peppering shopping malls across the nation in spite of research linking them to melanoma, it’s easy enough to put fear aside, duck inside for ten minutes, and come out looking as though you’ve spent a day in southern Florida. But, tans aren’t the only thing teens acquire in tanning beds. The need to look beautiful during the winter months is what researchers are blaming for an increased presence of skin cancer in young adults and teens.

Q: We need to terminate an employee. Understandably, this is a common element of running a school, but I feel as though our past practices haven’t been very HR friendly. What do you recommend as the best way—the "HRiest" way—of letting an employee go?

As an Admission Officer, your mission is to form relationships with prospective families, which you can't do until they first contact your school. One of the ways in which you can entice families to call the office is to exclude important information from print materials and the website. This technique can certainly work, but some schools believe in a policy of transparency, maintaining that building trust with future parents is more important than providing an excuse for the initial contact. Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages to withholding information from marketing materials, so let’s break down some of the nitty-gritty details.

Over the past year, we’ve written about everything from perpetual enrollment to the contents of your school’s welcome packet—and we’ll be sure to cover more hot topics in the year to come. Before we move on, though, let's look back to the top-read articles in the Admission e-Letter over the past year.

New Year’s resolutions are popular to make, but difficult to keep. After all, you wouldn’t have to dedicate yourself to the formation of a new habit if it were easy—you’d already be doing it! But it is possible to keep your commitments this year, if you follow the conclusions found by researchers looking to discover the panacea for personal behavior modification.