Virtual & Onsite Consulting Services
Ensure that your school’s governance and operations support your mission.
We work together with your leaders, teachers, staff members, and students to understand your school’s unique needs, strengths, and challenges. We help you create a plan to help you meet your goals.
Your team can then put these mission-appropriate recommendations into action to achieve increased cash reserves, higher enrollment levels, and long-term stability. At the end of the day, we all have a singular purpose—advance school leadership to enrich the student experience.
We offer personalized consultations for many leadership divisions of a private school—the Board of Trustees, School Heads, the Business Office, the Development Office, Enrollment Management professionals, Marketing professionals, and Academic leaders. Select the area of school leadership you’d like to further explore.
ISM’s Consulting Services can be conducted virtually, ensuring you get the support you need, no matter the circumstances. Learn more by contacting our School Success team.
Our Consulting Services
School Head
Whether you want to ensure that all school functions run at peak efficiency or are considering implementing new strategies and initiatives, lean on a trusted source of knowledge to increase the likelihood of long-term success.
Business & Operations
Take advantage of a full range of planning, facilities, and operations consulting services that give your school a solid footing for the future. Examine where your key operations work well, and where they can use improvement.
Academic Leadership
Your programs set your school apart. Explore how to create and build programs that pull families in and give them an experience they couldn’t have at another private-independent school.
Admission & Enrollment Management
ISM’s data-informed approach pinpoints what attracts families to your school and inspires them to stay. Receive customized solutions based on your school’s unique marketplace stance, challenges, and opportunities.
Fundraising & Development
Learn how to develop successful strategies to engage and bring donors closer to your institution. No matter your school size, history, or pedagogy, explore how to plan, implement, and evaluate your fundraising strategies to realize your full potential.
Marketing Communications
Explore how to share exceptional stories of student learning, engagement, and outcomes, and illustrate how these can become differentiators that distinguish your school from your competitors.
Board of Trustees
The Board must focus its efforts on governing, planning, and financing your school's future, while leaving everyday decisions to competent administrators. To do that successfully, your Board must think, plan, and act strategically.
Questions? Let's Talk!
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One-on-One Coaching for New Heads
Work with an ISM Consultant in your first years of Headship to set you on a path to success.
•Data-Driven Diagnostics •
• Coaching •
• Customized Support •
Help Your School Thrive
ISM members receive access to exclusive, research-based strategies for every leadership division of your school. Take advantage of guidance, savings, and much more.
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See articles for School Heads, Business & Operations, Advancement, Academic Leadership, and Trustees, in addition to Private School News.
ChatGPT: Friend or Foe?
School Leadership // September 14, 2023
On December 5, 2000, the Daily Mail newspaper ran a headline that seems humorous today: “Internet ‘may be just a passing fad as millions give up on it’.” This headline is humorous because it was so wrong even at the time it was published—the internet had between approximately 400 million users by 20...
Read MoreData Informed Decision Making with ISM’s Newest Offering: Unbound360
School Leadership // September 14, 2023
When used effectively, publicly available data can give your school valuable insight to help develop private school marketing and enrollment strategies and optimize fundraising efforts. Government sources, census reports, and other community data can include beneficial demographic information, in...
Read MoreHere’s Why Your School Needs a SWOT Analysis and How to Conduct One
School Leadership // September 14, 2023
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) is a tool to evaluate your school, assess your current situation, and develop strategies for improvement. SWOT analyses are popular in the business world and are common in private school marketing. Why might your school want to conduct a SW...
Read MoreDeveloping Policies to Balance Discipline and Support for Student Substance Use
School Health and Wellness // September 12, 2023
Substance use—now the appropriate term for what was once called substance abuse—often stems from underlying issues like anxiety, depression, trauma, or social isolation. Early intervention at home and at school can circumvent potential problems before they escalate. But addressing underlying issu...
Read MoreThe Importance of Surveying Constituents
School Leadership // August 31, 2023
“A school’s most important asset is the data it possesses. Data helps you make better and smarter decisions …. Every school and business is a data organization,” said Jesse Roberts, Brand General Manager for Unbound360—an innovative software platform from ISM that identifies new prospects and delive...
Read MoreD.A.R.E.? Get REAL!
School Health and Wellness // August 31, 2023
Keepin’ it REAL Program Teaches Students to Refuse, Explain, Avoid, and Leave For more than a decade, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program—D.A.R.E.—was the go-to curriculum for educators looking to work toward drug abuse prevention in schools. While the success of D.A.R.E. has not been ful...
Read MoreUnderstanding Classroom Anxiety and Practical Strategies to Help
School Health and Wellness // August 31, 2023
As an educator, it's important to understand student mental health. To learn and grow, students need to feel safe and valued, both in the classroom and outside it. Some of the most common student mental health conditions are stress and anxiety. And most people experience stress and anxiety at some p...
Read MoreStuffed Backpacks: How Much Weight Is Too Much
School Leadership // August 31, 2023
An exciting part of back-to-school time is shopping for new supplies: pencils, notebooks, binders, calculators, stainless steel water bottles, and laptops. And even in a digital age, students still carry overloaded bags. Students are also lugging around textbooks. Research from the Brookings Institu...
Read MoreISM Summer Learning Round-Up: Takeaways from ISM’s Summer Institute and Advancement Academy
School Leadership // August 17, 2023
Independent School Management (ISM) hosts professional development events for private school educators every summer. These events feature topics tailored to school positions—from workshops dedicated to new-to-positions (Admission, Marketing Communications), to transforming student assessment, to sustainable headship, to an entire week of learning dedicated to all things Advancement.
Read MoreSchool Head Leadership Skills to Consider Before Day One
School Heads // August 17, 2023
Taking on the headship of a school is hard. Even if you formerly held a teacher, administrator, or assistant leadership role, you still won’t know exactly what the School Head’s daily duties and responsibilities encapsulate—that is, until your day overflows with meetings, responsibilities, tasks, long hours, and decisions for which you will be held solely responsible.
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