Your school depends on volunteers to provide an array of services, from helping out in the classroom to handling the nuts and bolts of the annual auction. These key constituents support the professional staff in just about every aspect of the school’s life. Their time and talent are essential and invaluable in enhancing the school’s ability to fulfill its mission.* As Director of Parent Relations (or another administrator who oversees volunteers), one of your responsibilities is to build and maintain a reliable volunteer force. To meet this goal, ensure the work is rewarding for both the individual and the institution. Value and appreciate those who give freely of their time and skills. For its part, the school needs to be assured that everyone working in the school clearly understands expectations.

Many schools have endowment programs. Even more do not. Whether your school should have an endowment is not an easy question to either formulate or answer in a meaningful way. Schools that have them believe that they are a critical part of their futures. Many school leaders think that endowment has to be a part of their ongoing planning. Clearly, if you have an endowment, it can be an enormous plus for the school’s ability to deliver its mission. But it is not as simple as it seems.

In recent years, partly because of the challenges in our economy and partly because the techniques are so successful, some schools use a capital campaign-style, personalized approach to donor cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship that has inspired many to give and others to continue to increase their level of giving. ISM now suggests that this become the norm, not just a response to special circumstances. The annual fund is the foundation of your fund-raising efforts. Like all development programs, its impact goes beyond dollars—the ultimate goals are to build relationships and to create a culture of giving in your school. Because the annual fund is broadly based and occurs regularly, it connects your school with the widest possible group of donors in your community. It also helps you identify individuals who later might become primary supporters of your capital, endowment, and major gift programs. A robust annual fund also provides a training ground for volunteers to identify, cultivate, solicit, recognize, and steward donors and prospects.

A central component of providing “direct and consistent donor cultivation” is the school’s ability to assist donors in making informed decisions about their giving, while protecting the school from awkward, inappropriate, or perhaps risky gift transactions. Consider the following two scenarios. A donor wants to make a gift to the school using securities that she has owned for many years. She requests the school hold the stock for a month before selling it. A patron of a nonsectarian school will make a seven-figure gift if the school agrees to add a religious component to its mission.

By ISM’s definition, advancement refers to the strategic process1 by which a school advances its mission through the integration of its admission, development, and marketing and communications programs. Each specialty area within advancement has particular “performance characteristics” commonly needed to carry out the function with great effectiveness. Identifying the characteristics most pertinent to each role in your advancement area will guide the school in hiring outstanding professionals as well as in coaching, mentoring, and supporting incumbents toward their greatest effectiveness and impact.

ISM has long held that stable schools have strategic Boards. A capital campaign grounded in the Board’s understanding of (and commitment to) its strategic role is critical for campaign success. The use of the word strategic is intentional. “A strategic Board is one that sees its core role as building a financial/organizational platform that ensures that the institution will be able to fulfill its mission on behalf of the next generation of students … [by]… sustain(ing) long-term programmatic excellence.” The following set of four core elements critical to institutional readiness as the Board considers embarking on a capital campaign.

ISM has recently published several articles on the 21st Century School, all addressing the changing nature of the classroom experience. No less dramatic are the changes taking place in school resource management, resulting from the need for schools to maintain strong enrollment and to generate increasing amounts of gift and auxiliary revenue—all within the context of a challenging economy. These changes require that the school’s message be coordinated to engage a donor base that is sophisticated in gathering and synthesizing information from multiple sources. Admission prospects and donors are demanding the demonstration of value, and philanthropy must now fulfill their interest as much as it meets institutional need. In view of these changing circumstances, the 21st Century School is compelled now to coordinate the roles of admission, development, and marketing/communicating.

One of the most important tools your school needs when conducting a major fund-raising campaign is a gift chart. This illustrates to your donors and prospects how many gifts you must receive—and in what amounts—to reach your campaign goal. Gift charts are not created by the following math: to raise $500,000, we will ask 100 people for $5,000. Instead, what is required is a gift chart built like a pyramid—the campaign needs one top gift, several leadership gifts, and many smaller gifts.

As School Head, you want to assure that there is solid alignment between the way you and your marketing team portray your school and the actual outcomes your graduates experience. For example, if you tell others that you offer one of the leading college preparatory programs in your area, you want to be able to back that up with data about your graduates’ college experiences that substantiate your claims. You also want to be able to celebrate the successes of your graduates in ways that reinforce your mission, help keep your alumni engaged, and align your alumni’s values with your mission and vision so as to enable more robust financial support of your school.

In a 2007 study, the Association of Fundraising Professionals found that Development Directors stayed at an organization an average of 3.6 years (3.5 for females and 4.17 for males). Given the time it takes for a Development Director to gain trust with a Board and develop relationships with school donors, it is important to develop strategies that would enable your school to keep its Development Director for a lengthy period of time.