Every day, there are stories in the news that public school districts are forced to cut programs for budgetary reasons. Chances are this has happened in your community. This can be a perfect opportunity to offer after-school, evening, or weekend programs to your community that will introduce your school to a wider audience.

Volunteers form the backbone of many a good fund-raising effort. You appreciate their efforts—why not show them how much with a few of these unique gift ideas?

For many nonprofits (including private-independent schools), the current economic circumstances are particularly hard-hitting—restricted resources may mean that you are less able to help as many people as you would like. To combat this, some nonprofit organizations are experimenting with different ways to reach potential donors and strengthen their bonds with current ones. Here are some tactics you may want to consider.

Your annual report may be one of the most expensive pieces your office produces. With money tight and budgets frozen—or slashed—schools are going online with their reports. You can invest in the message and the design, while reducing or eliminating the high cost of printing and postage. Here are some things to think about before taking the leap that can help control costs in the transition.

The Annual Fund. Yes, everyone expects your school to have an annual fund-raising campaign. But are your parents, alumni, and faculty emotionally invested in it? A robust annual fund is critical to all of your fund-raising efforts. It is the first place where your prospects/donors will invest their dollars into your school. Here are several steps you can take to strengthen the emotional ties. After all, educating and making connections with your school and its mission are what cultivating supporters is all about.

Looking for long-gone alumni? Thanks to the Internet, it is getting a little easier to find them. Schools are starting to use social networking sites such as Facebook to their advantage. Facebook was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg as a social network for his fellow Harvard students. In only two weeks, half of the student body had signed up. Other schools in the Boston area demanded the service and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. Now, anyone over age 13 can join, and there more than 100 million users.

There's a new free, online "college guidance" tool for students and parents. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) is appalled at the state of higher education, finding that many major colleges and universities no longer require classes in what it has identified as seven key subjects: composition, literature, foreign language, history, economics, mathematics, and science. This lack of "general education" will have a significant impact on the country's ability to innovate and compete in the global marketplace, the nonprofit organization says.

Planning is key in the world of development. To help you best track the Development Committee's calendar through the end of the school year and summer, we've listed major points you should be sure to tend to as the year progresses, starting with the month of February.

People are often reluctant to assume new and unfamiliar tasks, and the resistance often increases when fund raising is involved. Preconceptions about fund raising can thwart your efforts to recruit volunteers. Before you approach them, consider these six common "roadblocks" and the accompanying strategies that are designed to overcome volunteers' reluctance, build confidence and enthusiasm, and encourage them to take on the role of "crusader" for the best possible education for your school's students.

Nonprofit groups—private-independent schools included—have established their presence on social networking sites to reach out to supporters, but few have attracted more than a few thousand supporters to their networks or been able to raise a large amount of money via the sites, according to a survey of 980 nonprofit officials about their organizations' use of online social networking sites.