Volunteers are vital to your school, but especially to the Development Office. These people represent those who believe so much in your school’s mission and what it’s accomplishing in your community that they’ll freely offer their time, talents, and dedication to further your school’s goals. While you need volunteers to help your school function, your volunteers also need certain things from you to ensure their success and to keep them coming back to help in the future.

Storytelling lies at the heart of every successful annual fund or capital campaign. Everyone wants to hear how the school changed the lives of its students and their families, coupled with an inspirational call-to-action to help the school continue to bring its mission to more people. Getting those stories, though, can sometimes feel like panning for gold—Lots of work for a single nugget you can use—but it doesn’t have to be that way. This month, we’ve got three questions to ask your school’s key stakeholders to find those shining stories.

Any place that parents gather is a place where gossip and information spreads like wildfire—like your school’s parking lot during drop-off and pick-up periods. While waiting for their children, parents like to talk about what’s going on in their lives, which often includes their perspectives on school life. Such conversations should be expected, monitored, and maintained as a microcosm of your school’s broader marketing effort. As School Head, you’re in a unique position to discover which way the wind blows early—and to communicate in ways to change the direction of the conversation.

Last month, we talked about the benefits of having monthly “Head talks,” during which you’d make yourself available to chat with parents and families in an informal setting. We still believe they’re a great tool for building rapport with families and community stakeholders. There are, however, some problems that may arise in such a program, should you not take care.

Unexpected events come, well, unexpectedly. Caring for family members, healing from extended illness (or bus mauling), property destruction from fires, floods, and the apocalypse—life often forces professionals to take unexpected leaves of absence for numerous reasons. While you can’t know when you might have to step away from your office for a while, it’s a good idea to have what we’ll call a hit-by-a-bus plan ready for someone to take over your tasks while you’re gone.

Q: I have heard that they are changing the overtime rules, and I'm getting worried. Will these changes greatly increase our budget?

We’ll be coming into hiring season before too long, which means you’ll be inundated with resumes to fill vacant faculty, staff, and administrative positions. While it’s hard to gauge a candidate based on a piece of paper, a résumé can tell you a lot about a candidate. Here are some potential “red flags” on résumés so you can be aware of potential warning signs that a particular candidate might not be the best fit for your vacant position.

Source readers, we’d like to introduce you to Katie Johnson. By day, she’s an art director from Austin, Texas. By night, she’s the founder and CEO of the Monster Project. Her organization fosters imaginative play by sending student-created drawings of monsters to professional designers all over the world. These designers then create their own versions of the students’ prototypes and return them to the schools, so students can see how their monsters—and their own creativity—can “grow up.”

Report cards: One of the few things that parents are guaranteed to read. It’s a unique opportunity for your teachers to communicate—clearly and authentically—with both students and families. This semester, evaluate your students with more than a letter grade or a percentage; it’s time for teachers to tell families what they really need to know.

As a Trustee, you are expected to carry out your due diligence roles—particularly when it comes to Board meetings. In your service to the school, your participation in Board functions is imperative. The Board acts as an entity, not as a collection of individuals. Your attendance and participation are vital to the success of the Board and its actions.