In the first article in this series, we emphasized the importance of the leadership funnel in ensuring leadership continuity through the inevitable personnel changes implicit in a volunteer leadership structure. As Chair of the COT, you already know that excellent people are the precondition for excellent performance. However, they are not sufficient. Determining what “excellent performance” is (execution) and holding committee members and Trustees accountable to that performance is equally important. This recognizes the reality that the school’s volunteer leaders have a limited amount of time to carry out their responsibilities—maybe 60–80 hours a year for a complex task. We recommend that you lead the Committee on Trustees in carrying out four tasks: self-monitoring, reminding, measuring, and maintaining accountability.

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“Rainy-Day” financial aid is one of the three types of tuition assistance identified by ISM, with the other two ensuring “diversity” and “filling empty seats.” While, in theory, rainy-day aid is straightforward in definition, strategy, and budgeting concepts, in reality we have found that it’s not well understood, much less effectively put into practice. By definition, rainy-day financial aid is meant to be a short-term solution to help a family through a temporary setback (e.g., job loss, divorce, medical condition). Strategically, this type of financial aid helps to create a sense of security for families—knowing their children won’t be asked to leave without a chance to get back on their feet. Funds for this aid should be derived from tuition, endowment, or a development initiative.

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In January 2015, BoardSource published Leading with Intent, a report self-described as “a comprehensive scan of nonprofit board practices, policies, and performance.” While the report is built on “data collected and analyzed dating back to 1994,” the new release is the result of a 2014 survey of more than 800 nonprofit organizations. BoardSource’s summary conclusions are succinct.

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For over 35 years, ISM has posited that, when attempting to ascertain the factors that drive families to enter, stay, and leave your school, you must attend to two constituent groups: parents and students. While parents hold almost all the decision-making power when children are very young, students begin to gain influence over the decision beginning in the middle grades. This increases through upper grades such that they can have the majority of the power through high school. Knowing this parent-student dynamic and the reasons each constituency chooses a private-independent school can (and should) significantly influence how you allocate time and resources to achieve your mission, as well as how you market your school.

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Each fall, ISM publishes a set of conversion factors to simplify recasting previous tuitions into current dollars. (See the accompanying table.) We continue to use the Urban Consumer Price Index (CPI-U).1 However, we also realize the CPI-U does not reflect expenditures in private-independent schools. It can only serve as a base figure. There are compelling arguments for adjusting your tuition at a rate of at least 2% above the overall inflation rate. The CPI has a built-in “productivity factor.” It assumes the workforce is increasingly productive as technology and other laborsaving developments provide greater output with fewer personnel. The more efficient a business becomes, the more it can stabilize or reduce the impact of inflation. Education, however, differs from industries in that it is people-intensive and not truly “product”-driven. Education cannot offset the effects of inflation by increased efficiency—the classroom still basically consists of a teacher and a group of students. If more students enroll, we create more sections with more teachers. Even as the demand for additional programs (and teachers) occurs, schools often refuse to remove any standing programs to lessen the budgetary crunch. Costs go up even as productivity remains static.

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We've identified two strategic objectives of marketing communications as being: to sustain and strengthen enrollment using your Strategic Marketing Communications Plan and its subset, the Parent Retention and Enrollment Plan; and to promote investment in the school by giving parents confidence that the school’s plans make sense—and may even be inspirational as the school constantly renews itself through quadrennial strategic planning/strategic financial planning. While your key constituent is the parent, the center and purpose of the school—as illustrated by the school’s mission—is the student. What does it mean, therefore, to have the parent as your key constituent while still being student-centered? This requires putting into practice the following three understandings.

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ISM has long urged private-independent school leaders to agree among themselves that their school operates—or intends to operate—with one of three marketplace focuses: price/value, best-product, or best-process. This article updates this concept and, in the process, provides a number of modifications and clarifications.

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Graduate successes are some of the best demonstrators of your school’s program quality. They are strong, results-oriented measures of the education your school offers. Knowing that students who have attended your school have done well at the next level(s) is reassuring to parents. In short, successful graduates are proof that your school’s “process” works.

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As Chair of your school’s Board of Trustees or its Committee on Trustees, you regularly attend to the content of meetings of the full Board and also monitor the quality of the processes through which the Board does its work. The participants in this process include a mix of Trustees who have been carefully and intentionally cultivated, elected, and oriented so as to be strategically focused members of a strategically focused team.

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As parents seek validation for selecting your school for their children, the quality of your faculty is a major gauge—and one of your strongest competitive advantages. How are you highlighting your teachers’ achievements, both inside and outside the walls of your school? A private-independent school is often described as a “community of learners,” and a main tenet of a school’s mission is to instill a love of lifelong learning. One of the best demonstrators of these tenets is that faculty members spend time improving themselves—professionally and otherwise—outside the classroom. Plan now to highlight your teachers’ individual accomplishments

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