The quality of your faculty is a major component in your school’s appeal to potential enrollees—and is critical for re-recruitment of your current families. How are you highlighting your teachers’ achievements, both inside and outside the walls of your school?

On January 1, 2014, the brunt of changes included in the Affordable Care Act will become effective. These changes will affect both the health insurance offered by your school and the health insurance offered in the individual marketplace for your school’s part-time employees. We’ve been working with client schools over the last several months to prepare for these adjustments, but, if you’re not part of the ISM insurance community, you might find yourself wondering, “What do I need to do to prepare?”

They say life isn’t always a bed of roses. In fact, sometimes it can be downright brutal. But, just because life doesn’t always flow smoothly doesn’t mean our careers can be put on hold—especially when what we do involves the lives of children. Sometimes we need to reach down into our depths, find what strength is left in our reservoir, and push on.

When recruiting potential Trustees, you may set your sights on cultivating one or two high-powered, experienced nonprofit representatives. Do not rule out tapping the Board members, employees, and key volunteers who serve smaller, less-experienced organizations. Be aware, however, of the potential risks, which may take the form of the following problems.

Q: We are a small school and cannot afford to offer health insurance for our employees. We’re thinking it will make more sense for us to let them purchase insurance in the marketplace and payroll-deduct the premium pretax. Now I’m hearing we cannot do that. What is the right answer?

With any sort of competition comes emotion. With sports, especially those with championships and awards on the line, can come a good deal of emotion, both positively and negatively charged. To insure that your students and their families, as well as school staff, uphold your values your school should have well-established policies on sportsmanship—what’s acceptable behavior at all games and matches.

It seems that with mandates, constantly evolving policies, and looming deadlines, health care nowadays is anything but a light topic of conversation. A much larger portion of your responsibilities involves keeping atop the reform and how adjustments to legislation will impact your school. Changes to your job duties may have caused you to catch yourself shaking your head, wondering why it is again we’re going down this rocky path to launch the Affordable Care Act. It’s certainly a topic that our field advisers face on a daily basis. Politics aside, here are some health care statistics from the past few years that might help shed light on that question. If nothing else, they’ll give you an idea (or a few other ideas) of the critical state our health care system is in.

Recently, Christopher Davenport of Movie Mondays for Fundraising Professionals asked three donors what was the number one factor that motivates them to give. The answers should not surprise you.

Whether your school is religious or secular, you can find yourself in court facing discrimination charges if you fire a faculty or staff member because she is pregnant—even if you have clear policies in your employee handbook addressing your school’s mission and expected behaviors. There have been several recent cases to make headlines, which have brought new attention to this matter. Yes, even in today’s world of heightened workplace sensitivity, discrimination cases continue to make headlines.

If you listen to public radio or watch public television, you’ve heard their appeals to be a sustaining donor. That is, you have the option of contributing X number of dollars a month, usually via a credit card or debit card. This can be quite appealing to an individual who can’t quite see themselves writing a $720 check, for example, but who says “Yes, I can do that” to a monthly $60 deduction to support the station, program, or cause. It’s all the same amount in the end; it's all about the delivery method.