Any professional, knowledgeable architect will ask your school for educational specifications—a definition of the “who, what, when, why, and how” for each space in the structure. These “building blocks” make the difference between a generic, restrictive structure and one specifically designed to: support your school’s mission; meet the needs of your program; serve the students, faculty, and staff who use the building daily; and stay within your budget constraints.

An effective and productive development operation is essential to a school’s long-term ability to sustain excellence in student programs. An accountable Development Office must evaluate how well its operations reflect best practices and whether objectives are achieved. A standard metric makes this evaluation possible. The following questionnaire provides a framework for appraising your performance and reviewing the practices that define success. Development Directors can use these metrics to analyze the state of their operations and establish baselines. They suggest ways to implement best practices in your development operations, and to measure progress and communicate it to the School Head, the Board, and the school community.

Who’s’ volunteering at your school? What are they doing? How many hours have been contributed? To provide oversight of volunteer activity, you, as Director of Parent Relations (or another administrator who oversees volunteers), need to have that information in hand. One of your responsibilities is to recruit and value parent volunteers, and maintain a reliable volunteer force. Work closely with your Parent Association leaders to ensure that your school makes the most of this invaluable resource.

The Board of Trustees is the champion of all your fundraising efforts, through their leadership roles in campaigns as well as their own financial support. As a development professional, School Head, or volunteer development leader, you know that the annual fund is one of your most important fundraising programs, providing the platform for developing a culture of philanthropy at your school. Trustees are the school’s volunteer leaders and fiduciary stewards, and therefore play a pivotal role in ensuring that your annual campaign achieves its goals.

All of your school’s advancement efforts (admission, marketing communication, and development) should share a common focus on your children and your mission. Too often, messages in these areas lack incisiveness and unity. A strong message—one that invites people to enroll and to give—communicates a educational experience through the lens of the student. To understand what is different about marketing schools, consider the following student-centered advancement approach.

When you look at the Comprehensive Advancement Model (see the graphic in the accompanying article), “Strategic Board” forms the base. Simply stated, the effectiveness of your advancement program is inextricably linked to your school’s overall stability, and the Board is the guarantor of stability. When the Board operates strategically—focusing on sustaining financial viability and excellence for future generations of students—every aspect of school operations performs at a higher level, including advancement efforts.

Advancement integrates your admission, development, and marketing communications programs at the service of your school’s mission. It is important to collaborate among these three areas. When you do, you impact student recruitment and re-recruitment, aid your school in its strategic direction, and encourage philanthropic giving. ISM now offers a way to measure the effectiveness of your advancement efforts. While the Comprehensive Advancement Model illustrates the key relationships that exist among these areas of advancement, metrics are appropriately seen as important in measuring results. To develop these metrics, we offer ISM’s Advancement Core Values and Standards, including an assessment tool to bridge the gap between values and results.1

In a recent article on endowment, we wrote: “Endowment is no panacea for poor governance, overreaching debt, or an unwillingness to charge what it costs. However, in a school that is mature in its governance and operations, endowment will be a powerful aid to enhance the school’s ability to deliver its mission.” While the optimum gift is unrestricted, many donors are inspired to donate in support of faculty excellence, thus directing their gift for a specific purpose. Setting up such an endowment is not quite as simple as just putting money in the bank. The following suggestions for both organization and intent are meant to provide guidance and to stimulate your own thinking. All boxed comments are illustrative only.

A comprehensive campaign incorporates all of an institution’s fundraising initiatives and objectives—annual, building, and endowment—over a predetermined time period into a unified effort with a coherent theme and coordinated communications strategy. The comprehensive approach to fundraising emerged as a solution to the diverse needs and constraints that a school confronts. Individuals have long given gifts to their favorite institutions. They were inclined to direct their gifts toward building the school’s capital base, either by directly funding new construction or renovation of existing buildings or by making an endowment gift to generate continuing income to establish or sustain programs in perpetuity.

The annual fund is the keystone of your entire development program. Since it is broad-based and regularly occurring, it connects your school with the widest possible group of donors and helps build a culture of philanthropy in your school community. The annual fund also helps identify individuals who might later become primary supporters of capital, endowment, or major gift campaigns. It is a vital point of contact for Development Office professional staff to engage volunteers and develop volunteer leadership.