Admissions - "Marcom" - Development: Three Legged Stool?
... or triangle of sadness?
This is Talking Out of School, a weekly newsletter about schools, change, leadership and being a human in the 21st century. Thank you to all the subscribers who support this work!
If a subscriber passed this on to you and you’re enjoying this work, please consider subscribing! More subscribers means growth and growth increases my ability to attract interesting guests to be interviewed, more readers to send me interesting ideas, more community members to start a resourceful comments section etc.
Hi Everyone!
I guess this qualifies as Stony Creek Strategy news, but as we get busier I need to get more disciplined so I can consistently meet the Friday deadline! It was a good week, but as I kept figuring out when I could sandwich in a final edit for this week’s post, in reality, it ended up that I could only get to it on… Saturday. Whoops!
My September appearance - Rethinking Admission Strategy podcast with Angela Brown of Niche
Upcoming webinar - “Creating a Talent Development Model for Hiring and Retention” - for a one day online summit, TransformED from founder and producer Peter Baron
And a link - a rebuttal to the Paul Tough NYT magazine piece from The Atlantic - The College Backlash Has Gone Too Far
Admissions - “Marcom” - Development - Where Do We Go From Here?
A collaboration with guest writer Lauren Castagnola
Last spring, Lauren and I wrote a post about the confusion around a communications director’s role in independent schools and it was the biggest eye opener of the last academic year. I honestly can’t remember what propelled our frustration, but looking at well meaning but “wishful thinking” job descriptions certainly helped get us there.
Since that time, we have heard and learned so much! So many of you are “one man bands” looking for professional engagement. Many are getting mixed messages about how important, or not important, your work is, including feeling like a “service” department for admissions and development and not as much a valued partner. A number of people puzzled over the fact that it seems because everyone consumes communications, many people feel they have expertise in communications - so it’s both very important (it’s everywhere and you have to do it) and anyone can do it.. Some have collaborative partnerships with the head of school and some barely ever see the head of school. Some are in a role with marketing or communication in the title but feel over their heads in terms of what the school expects from them while other people feel as if they are persistently underutilized.
Overall, this is a group eager for connection and engagement and evidence their messages are heard - that’s why they’re in communications!
And clearly, schools are going through a major transition as to assessing their marketing and communications needs and about how this function works within the structure of their organizations.
One thing we get asked all the time is, what are the ideal components of a school communications function?
The somewhat unsatisfying answer is - it depends on your school. It depends on the needs and the goals and it also depends on the values of the culture. It depends on where the school is in terms of how it views capital “C” communications. It’s kind of complicated.
Language, and the concepts it creates, is a complicating factor. At some schools, it’s all “marcom” all the time - indicating a primacy of the external marketing component. Often this is most closely associated with admissions.
At some schools, it’s strategic communications. At others, just “communications.” And at still others, advancement communications.
And then there is the school of thought that has been around for decades now that the ideal to strive for is an “advancement” umbrella over the outward focused revenue generators and marketing and communications. Our sense is that the dream for this model is an exciting collaboration between admissions and development where marketing and communication is the glue, with consistent messaging shared between them.
So if a school is oriented towards this model, communications most often reports to a Director of Advancement because these outward facing departments can work together to advance the mission of the school, with communications a key component.
This idea makes total sense - so why does it so often just not work in practice, especially at smaller schools? (To begin with, we’ll throw this one out there - how realistic is it for one person to be responsible for more or less all revenue outside of the endowment draw, especially in 2023?. However, is there a way to take the concept in restructuring administration expectations or redesigning the traditional role of the head of school - yes! But that is for another day!)
Bear with us as we frame up some extremely broad generalizations.
Admissions and Development - Cultural Apples and Oranges
In general, independent school admissions people and development people have widely different training, backgrounds and experience. We realize there are unicorns out there who have done both, understand the culture of both and excelled at both, but they are rare.
Admissions people generally love activities like attending conferences, school fairs and conducting revisit days. Lots of people, all the time. There is a clear time frame and a rhythm to their work. Each new enrollment is a thrill but there is also a certain predictability in the cycle and when you lose one, you quickly move on to the next. Out of necessity, there’s an acceptance that you win some, you lose some. There is a certain pace and it’s hard to get bored because as soon as you’re feeling a little “same old, same old” it’s time for the next stage in the cycle. And admissions is generally adults working together with the student at the center. It’s wonderful and helpful to have a strong relationship with the parents/adults, but the road to a successful enrollment can look all kinds of ways.
Major gift officers who often become chief development officers foster relationships over time. Sometimes, really long periods of time. They hone strategies. They play golf with donors. (Golf takes a long time.) They are meticulous about detail because any detail missed could be a donor pissed. Not aggravating constituents is a huge part of the development office’s job. Often parents are a key constituent and they can be around for twelve years. There’s no “move fast and break things.” Major donors aren’t relationships for the cycle, they’re relationships for the century. And mainly it’s about the adult relationship; which puts more pressure on the individual interactions. There’s a lot of phone conversations, too, and making notes in Raiser’s Edge. It’s a completely different time horizon and pace.
Julie aside: We are not dissing either area! I have documented my respect for admissions officers. But the predictability of the cycle would get to me. And I really enjoyed my work in development as a head and I am in awe of what a development office can produce. But I mostly came in at certain points in the cultivation cycle and just had to focus on the relationship with the donor. Most people are interesting if you have the attitude that “most people are interesting.” But I wasn’t responsible for the cultivation cycle. I would not be good at recording my touch points and the other elements, from my point of view, that make up the detail oriented day to day of a development officer.
But you can see how the very nature of these two offices can come into conflict. You can see how marketing in a new world to new families is a very different flavor than marketing alumni events to constituents you don’t want to annoy.
So it then stands to reason that when many development offices became advancement offices when that wave started (maybe the 1990’s?), they essentially remained development offices with fundraising and constituent relations as their portfolio. We have no idea why it was mostly the development offices that became advancement offices, but we’ve never seen an admissions office become an advancement office where there is also a stand alone development office.
But our point being - if the school believes in this concept of advancement being the troika of admissions, development and communications, it’s going to have a different outlook and expectations than if there have always been separate-but-equal admissions and development offices. “Advancement” can reinforce the concept of communications as a service to the outward facing functions of development and admissions. This is not necessarily always the case, but we’re saying it can be a complicating factor.
But an elevated communications function is becoming a must. Given the complications of 2023 - the need for crisp, accurate and compelling brand messaging, SEO and social media ads, the enduring but ever shifting need for print materials, the care and feeding of the website both to keep it up to date and gauge when it’s time to refresh - admissions and development deserve an elevated comms professional because they have other important work to do and they need a talented partner.
So what’s the solution?
We believe the ideal in 2023 is to have a communications office run by a communications professional with a clear job description who manages a discrete budget and reports to the head of school. Yep, we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again!
However, that is just not going to be possible at many schools, given budgets and culture. So where do we go from here?
We think it’s helpful to think about the admissions - communications - development trio in this way as they advance the mission of the school:
Enrollment management/admissions - Recruits and supports retention of mission matched students and fulfills revenue goals
Development - Fundraising and constituent relations and fulfills revenue goals
Communication - Guardian of the brand, the keeper of consistency - the messaging (in our opinion, the most important part), the look and feel of your communications. Someone who ensures the brand message is being consistently conveyed, even in subtle ways, throughout school communications and marketing.
And remember, you have a brand whether or not you want to call it that. You have a reputation. And you have values. And you have a mission, a why-you-exist. The brand messaging is how you convey who you are and what you stand for. You can understand the power of consistent messaging and strategy employed by admissions and development saying who you are and what you stand for. It’s powerful and it’s inspiring. It cuts through the noise. It’s not just picking up a bull horn and broadcasting, “yes, we’re a great school!” It’s why you’re a great school and who the student is whose life would be changed by joining your community. It’s earnest and it’s for real.
It is a three legged stool and although we think it works best if all functions report to the head, it can still work if the director of comms reports to development or admissions, too - IF she is treated with respect and like an equal partner.
Communications really does have the power to elevate your school, from supporting improved internal communications, to enhancing the communication of the head of school from everything ranging from weekly newsletters to the charge to the graduates to the ever more important area of crisis communications to supporting bold enrollment goals to increasing fundraising capacity. Schools need to strategic storytellers who can highlight the amazing work of faculty and staff while also understanding constituents’ needs. It all results in strengthened relationships with the school.
But you need to start somewhere building the muscle that communications is an important and valued function in and of itself.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you need a highly paid new senior administrator. But you need a person who understands the power of your brand - harnessing and directing the reputation and qualities you already have - who is given visible opportunities to build political capital and community trust, and who is publicly thanked for their contributions, whether it be towards reaching enrollment goals or making the annual fund goal or creating that really great new internal weekly eblast. It needs to be clear that people in authority respect and value their work.
And the comms director deserves clear direction, an accurate job description, feedback with both applause and, if needed, course correction and evaluation.
And for those of you who are regular TOOS readers, this will come as no surprise to you, but what you also need to move towards the ideal is to get a clear picture of how marcomm or communications or advancement communications looks and operates right now.
Ask some hard questions and ask constituents what is working and what isn’t. Make no assumptions. Are you deploying your precious resources around marketing and communications wisely or could it be utilized better in some other way?
A very durable insight is this: Water the flowers that are blooming. Don’t water the rocks. Then the garden grows and the appreciation for communications can really blossom.
All this is why Stony Creek Strategy developed an SCS Solution, the Communications Operations audit.
Email me at jfaulstich@stonycreekstrategy.com for a PDF detailing the audit process and deliverables.
And stuck and not sure how to make marcom work better for your school? We are happy to chat.
In my travels over the past few days, it appears autumn is finally making her colorful appearance in New England. I hope you all have a chance to breathe after the busy start to the school year and enjoy some of of the beauty of fall.
See you next week -
Julie