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Upcoming Events
Open to all subscribers
Grappling with the Triple Threat Model: Diagnosis and Design will be at noon on Friday February 9th (TODAY) hosted by me and Greg Martin from Vermont Academy. Registration here.
For Premium Subscribers
($260/annual - current subscribers at the $90 level pay the difference)
The second Comms Director meetup will be Friday, February 16th at noon. Lauren Castagnola and I will lead a conversation about comms office roles, functions and making a case in the school budget development process. Registration here. There’s already a nice group registered for this - join us!
Your Career series
We’ll kick off the Your Career series as I’ve set time aside until Febraury 16th for 20 minute 1-1 coaching calls on salary negotiations - sign up here. Make sure you sign up using the same email used for your subscription! You can find my article on salary negotiations here (paywalled). It was originally created for the Carney Sandoe Women’s Forum but the advice pertains to everyone.
Coming in March for Premium Subscribers:
School Statements: Writing with Empathy, the first asynchronous writing seminar, will be offered on three consecutive Tuesdays March 12th, 19th and 26th. Readings and a guided assignment will arrive in your inbox very early each Tuesday and I will hold Zoom office hours late morning for drop in. You’ll receive individual written feedback on each assignment with the goal to have a completed statement prototype/model by the end of the course. A more detailed course description and registration info will follow next week.
Enrollment will be limited - add your name to the waitlist here.
Stony Creek Strategy services
As a former head of school, I’ve been in your shoes and it can be lonely. There are many headaches out there. Stony Creek Strategy now provides crisis and strategic communications services to partner with you through the unexpected. Sometimes just talking through a tough situation helps - help is here!.
Steering the Development Office - Advice for Heads of School
The vast majority of heads aren’t fundraisers before they become heads. But it’s a major expectation of the job. I invited Hilary Wirtz to discuss advice she’d give to a new head but I think it’s also generally helpful to all heads. Today, in part one, we discuss how to both evaluate and get your hands around steering this function as the head of school. In part two, which will follow in the near future, we discuss the head’s role as a member of the development team as well as capital campaign readiness and the role of trustees as philanthropic leaders.
I hadn’t thought much about development and fundraising in a long time. It’s very distinct from other areas of school life, which is part of the magic and part of the complexity. And it was an adjustment when I first came in as head to demystify it, understand what metrics were meaningful and then simultaneously be a good boss to the department, a good partner to the Chief Development Officer and a good team member. It’s tricky and I’m not sure I ever mastered it, but there were moments of great satisfaction along the way. Philanthropy can be very personal and very meaningful, putting a leader in touch with the highest aspirations of an organization.
And sometimes the best meal in the world was a pile of fries and a cocktail at 11PM with a few team members, debriefing, after buzzing around an event for hours, watching everyone else devour the wine and delightful bite sized appetizers while you’re busy updating them about all the exciting events at school. :)
It was so much fun to talk with Hilary Wirtz on this topic. She’s a deeply experienced, mission-driven fundraiser and she’s recently founded Sparktegic, a consulting firm dedicated to collaborating with schools and organizations to optimize their development operations. With a focus on data-driven insights, Sparktegic works with key leaders and development teams to assess opportunity and programmatic efficiency, ensuring that organizations make strategic, informed decisions that align with their mission and goals.
Here’s her bio: With over 20 years of fundraising experience at all levels in independent schools and higher education, Hilary brings her expertise to non-profit organizations to help them achieve their philanthropic goals. Hilary has worked at Harvard University, Milton Academy, Concord Academy, and the New England Conservatory of Music along with volunteer roles at numerous organizations. With experience in nearly every aspect of non-profit fundraising – from the annual fund to campaign planning, team management and leadership development – her passion for this work comes through her ability to pair a data driven mindset with a strategic skill set. Along with her professional experience, she lives with her family at a New England boarding school where her husband is a head of school.
JF
Welcome to the People Talking interview, Hilary. I'm delighted to have you here to talk about advising heads of school, and in particular new heads, about how to come in and be the boss over the development function.
So you're a new head, and you know that the development office raises money. You understand there's an annual fund that contributes to the operating budget. You probably have some idea about major gift fundraising from your own senior administrator experience or watching a head of school do this. You might know a bit of the lingo. But maybe that's all you know - that’s basically what I knew when I became a head. What advice would you give to a new head about coming in and assessing the effectiveness of the development department?
HW
As a head, ultimately you need to see the big picture. You're thinking about the strategic goals of the entire institution, the mission and vision. Is the school doing what it says it does? Does the school have resources to do what it wants to do? And a lot of those resources come from fundraising. So you want to start with having a clear understanding of what percentage of your budget comes from fundraising dollars versus tuition. This is something people will expect you to know so be prepared.
And within the revenue coming through development, where do those dollars come from? Your development or advancement office should be able to tell you who's making gifts. Is it alumni? Is it parents? Is it grandparents? Is it friends? What are the segments? Getting a sense of the picture of philanthropy at your school is certainly one piece and development offices should be able to easily provide that data. And then dig into that data. What is the range of gifts? Do you have one person who's making six figure gifts every year and that's really driving revenue, or are you getting multiple $10,000 gifts for example?
JF
That’s extremely helpful because it’s neutral and simply gathers the current philanthropic picture. And given that everyone is nervous when a new boss comes on the scene, there's no judgment implied of whether people are doing a good or a bad job.
HW
Another question to ask is if goals have been met in the past. And goals can be a lot of different things. It can be straight up dollars; it can be participation of donors; it can be event attendance. It can be people who want to give to a capital project versus an annual fund. Just having a handle on where efforts have fallen short and where efforts have succeeded, is helpful.
JF
Can you explain the difference between annual and capital gifts?
HW
Annual funds typically are raised within a fiscal year - money that directly impacts your operating budget. Capital gifts are raised more for specific projects such as a building or endowment or a restricted purpose, and can often be made over multiple years. So someone might pledge a gift out over time. Both are important resources as sources of income (endowment or annual) every year.
JF
Would you approach setting an annual fund goal in a way that can be steady and repeatable?
HW
I do believe annual giving should be considered as a base of steady support. As you think about budget planning and long range planning for the institution, the annual fund is going to be a part of that. And so you want to make sure you can count on a sustainable annual fund over those years looking forward. So you don't want to say, oh, we raised $2 million this year because we had this $500,000 gift, which maybe we're going to get again, but maybe not. You don't want to necessarily set your annual fund goal at a goalpost that's unattainable, because that's going to throw off your budget planning. So there are other ways to think about using those gifts that won't hijack your budget model.
JF
So once you get that baseline information and you have a sense of realistic goals based on past data, and then as the head, how does the head approach assessing how much investment it takes to raise that money? Because I feel like pretty much every head I know thinks it can be done even a little better, faster, cheaper and every development professional I know thinks they need more resources.