Your school is preparing for a capital or comprehensive campaign.1 As Development Director or Advancement Director, you want to ensure that the campaign will be successful, so you’ve contracted with outside fund-raising counsel to provide a feasibility study to test whether your campaign dollar goal is achievable. While testing a dollar goal is part of what you will determine from the study results, you are not getting the full value if you stop there. A robust feasibility study tests the waters for a particular campaign, and also tests institutional readiness and lays the foundation for long-term development success.

ISM has defined advancement as “the process by which a school supports admission, development, and marketing/communication programs.” To stress its direct relationship to faculty, we will now add another aspect to this definition—“to provide the resources for strong and sustained student performance, enthusiasm, and satisfaction.”

In its work with schools, ISM often hears Development Directors say that the annual fund goal is determined by the Board and School Head, based on the “gap” between expenses and expected revenues (often referred to as the “plug number”) with little consideration of data gathered by the Development Office. Further, the performance of Development Offices is frequently evaluated based on the school’s ability to meet these goals. In ISM’s experience, budgeting for gift income and evaluating the development program in this way provides an inaccurate picture of the school’s financial resources and the true fund-raising potential of the school’s constituents.

ISM recently surveyed a random sample of Development Directors from our I&P subscriber schools; 277 responded. (See “About the Respondents” for more information on survey participants.) This article focuses on the competition that private-independent schools face in hiring and retaining Development Directors, and on the role salary plays in this process.

The results of the ISM 2000-01 Development Director Survey implied that increasing salary could help attract and retain a quality fund raiser. However, other factors are also involved, and the responses suggested methods for bonding this administrator to the school’s community. As Head of School, take the following steps to support and nurture the Development Director and cement his or her relationship with your school.

An essential element of accountability in the Development Office is the capacity to evaluate whether objectives are being achieved, and to measure progress toward those ends. The following table suggests a framework you can use to think through the metrics that define and measure success. You, as the Development Director, can use these metrics to analyze the state of your operations, to establish your baseline, and to assess your forward progress and communicate this to the School Head, the Board, and the school community. They will also aid you in planning and managing your operations.

The relationship that you, as the Development/Advancement Director, have with your School Head can be a complicated and confusing one. There are five major reasons for this. Few Heads have any background in development. They tend to reach their position because of their academic background, not development experience. Few development people, on the other hand, have much background in education. They typically come from the nonprofit sector, or they start as parent volunteers and graduate to become staffers, with little formal training in the nuances of fund raising at private-independent schools.

One of the prime responsibilities of the Board of Trustees is to provide strong and consistent stewardship of the school’s assets. Your school’s nonprofit (501)(c)(3) status with the Internal Revenue Service and its good name in the community are two examples of non-tangible assets that must be preserved. If your school loses either or both of these assets, its position could weaken drastically, moving you into murky, uncharted waters.

One of second-tier markers of the ISM Stability Markers® is “demand in excess of supply.” While it would be desirable for every grade to be described this way, ISM has always viewed this Marker as critical when it describes the situation at the school’s traditional “entry” grades (e.g., pre-kindergarten, sixth, ninth)—the first grade of the school and the grade(s) where it expands, either through attrition or by design, the number of seats available for new students.

Mrs. Smith, who has been the Administrative Assistant for the School Head for the last 10 years, is overseeing the sign-in table on “Parents Night” for the ninth year. Once again, she will not be paid for this activity. It began innocently in 2001, when the school was much smaller, and she said, “I can help out tonight.” Since then, there has developed an expectation by the Head and the faculty that she will continue to “volunteer” each year for the event.