83. Key Takeaways from the VAIS Advancement Institute

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Aubrey: Welcome to Mindful School 

Marketing. I’m 

Aubrey Bursch. 

Tara: And I’m Tara Klaes. Since our podcast is about learning and growing personally and professionally, it’s no surprise that one of our favorite things to do is to attend conferences. It’s a great opportunity to connect with school leaders and colleagues and to learn more about industry trends.

Aubrey: We were thrilled when the incredible team of VAIS, Virginia Association of Independent Schools, invited the Mindful School Marketing Podcast to record an episode at their Advancement Institute held in Stanton, Virginia this year. I was fortunate to attend sessions, present, and record the podcast. There was such an amazing speaker lineup representing development, marketing, and admissions.

The speakers provided valuable insights ranging from AI to donor giving. 

Tara: So in this episode, what we’re going to do is these industry leaders shared a little bit about their presentation topic with Aubrey, and they talked about why what they were talking about was relevant to school leaders. Like you, now, and also they shared one or two key takeaways from their presentation that they thought were especially helpful.

We’d love to give a great thank you and shout out to the team at VAIS who welcomed us. Thanks to Darcy, Betsy, and Laura, and the rest of the amazing team. 

Aubrey: And if you’re an association or organization hosting a conference for school leaders, we’re here to help. Let us know if you’d like the Mindful School Marketing podcast to record an episode on site.

Simply fill out the contact form at mindfulschoolmarketing. com. Now let’s dive into the episode. 

Guest 1: Hey everybody, I’m Betsy Johnson, the executive director of the Virginia Association of Independent Schools. We are an accrediting organization of 94 schools across Virginia. Uh, one of the Three things that we do, uh, accreditation, advocacy, and professional learning.

And it makes a lot of sense that we’re having this, um, opportunity to speak today because professional learning is where we are. We are at the Advancement Institute, which is an annual event, bringing together people in communications, marketing. Uh, fundraising and admissions from all of our member schools and from some non member schools.

One of the most important things is that, uh, we are only in Virginia. That doesn’t mean that we are so myopic that we don’t look outside of Virginia for experts such as our speakers today. Um, or for trends that are happening in independent education. But what it does mean is that we make our programming so accessible to our member schools so that they can get together and network and learn together, uh, and share a lot of their secret sauces as well.

I was in fundraising before coming to, uh, VAIS at a member school. Uh, and one of the things that I always thought was really terrific when our schools would get together was that even though we might be competing with each other for the same students or for the same dollars, uh, the secret sauce of VAIS is the collegiality with which we hold ourselves.

And so, uh, we’re seeing that a lot today with this packed audience. We, uh, have, as I said earlier, really terrific speakers and, uh, a very intentional way to learn together. So it’s good to, uh, good to be here. 

Guest 2: Hi, I’m Anne Snyder. I’m Senior Director of Engagement at CASE, Counsel for Advancement in Support of Education.

And I’m standing here at Stuart Hall School as its former Director of External Affairs. Um, I have spent my career in student and family marketing, fundraising, admissions. So I’ve pretty much done it all at both schools and non profits. And I did it. Two years stint in the for profit world, one out of ten do not recommend.

Um, that said, my job today at the VA AIS Advancement Institute is to talk about financial sustainability in schools and the future of fundraising. It really could be entitled, actually, you know, the future of constituent engagement at schools, because what I have to say applies to so much more than just, uh, the development office.

It’s, Has to do with how you market, how you engage, how you relate to prospective families, um, and to alumni. So it’s a real full service, um, session. If I had two takeaways, I would love for everyone to be really aware of after this session. The first is that, um, millennial audiences. Are quickly filling up your hallways obviously as alumni.

They’ve been around for a long time, but now particularly as parents And they have drastically different needs Than their peers at in gen x and in the baby boomer generation and certainly Different than gen z So what i’d love for? folks to take away today is that if you are not segmenting your audiences appropriately in either your appeals or your communications to prospective families, even in your retention efforts, both donor and parent retention, um, then you’re going to be in trouble.

And there are some great research to support this that I’ll be chatting about later today. Um, the second thing I really want everyone to think through and take away, which is really a message for your, for your Um, is to make sure that we are staffing appropriately in both fundraising and communications.

Because of these needs that millennial parents have, because that they are your fastest growing constituency, not only is that segmentation going to take some work from your communications and your marketing office, but we really need to start thinking through how we are approaching these folks from a major giving perspective.

Something like 77 percent of all funds received in 2022 and 2023 to independent schools in the U. S. were in amounts under 1, 000. And those are really direct marketing campaigns. But those that, excuse me, 77 percent of all donors gave under 1, 000. Um, the rest of, uh, the funds that came in were huge, huge gifts that are causing our fundraising programs to be incredibly top heavy.

And those relationships with our donors. Are really important. So without the skills in both the communications and the engagement offices, we’re going to be in trouble in a few years if we don’t think carefully now about how we’re staffing both of those crucial offices. So I’m looking forward to my time today and I’m grateful for you all listening.

Thanks. 

Guest 3: Hey, I’m Trevor Waddington with Truth Tree. We do digital marketing for schools. Uh, today at the V-I-V-A-I-S conference, uh, I spoke about, uh, AI for school marketing. The big takeaways I have for you are this is the way the future people are gonna be using AI chatbots to do their search because it’s so much faster than traditional.

Google searching, which means you need to be able to position your school to be an answer to a question or essentially a result from a prompt. One of the big takeaways from that, specifically, something that you can do is make sure that how you describe your school is exactly the same on all of the websites out there, like Niche, Private School Review, Yelp, wherever you have a listing that you can control.

Guest 4: Hi there. I’m Chuck English from English Marketing Works. We do branding, messaging and marketing work for schools. And we’re here at the BIS annual advancement conference. And I just finished doing a session on value proposition for independent schools. And so here’s the, Five minute version of what I just did in 45 minutes, but here, the Reader’s Digest version of value proposition for independent schools.

So the first thing I think you have to think about is the fact that value proposition is something that sounds simple, but it’s really very complicated. People will make it sound like it’s easy to come up with a value proposition, but I think it takes a lot of work. Um, and, uh, in fact, I, in my presentation, had seven, uh, different ways that you can look at value proposition.

I’ll do each of them for you in about 30 seconds. Uh, but the, before I even do that, I think it’s, uh, It’s, uh, important to think about, uh, value proposition from the point of view of what I call the tyranny of value propositions, which is that value proposition is in the eye of the beholder. You may think you know what your value is, but your value is only as good as what your, uh, parents or donors, whoever it may be, uh, think it is.

And so, you know, that’s, I think that’s got to guide your thinking when it comes to value proposition. So quickly, here were the steps. There are seven ways that you can think about value proposition, um, for your school. One is in terms of features and benefits. So, features are, are things that, um, uh, that, that you offer, but benefits are, uh, are the ways in which it helps students, um, in what they’re doing.

So an example might be, you might say to me that we have an amazing athletics program I am with. Um, all kinds of facilities in five different fields and our teams have won, uh, championships in their division for the last five years. And I’ll look at you and I’ll say, so what? Um, and so the benefit is, well, the benefit is that if your child is, um, going to participate in athletics, they’re going to be supported.

They’re going to be in an environment where they can excel and succeed and all of those kinds of things. And we can go on with that, but you’ve got to look at. The world from a features and benefits point of view, I would bet if you went through your website and some of your marketing material, you would find that it’s all very features heavy on.

Andi, you need to think about that in terms of, you know, what are the benefits if you want to think about value proposition? Um, the second thing to think about is cost versus value. So, you know, parents always talk about cost of tuition. We know that the flip side of the coin is value. Different ways of thinking.

Thinking about value, but they’re all based on some formula that says that the value of what parents get Um has to be more than Whatever it is that they’re costing them and bear in mind that costing them Can mean more than just money. It’s the drive to It’s the lifestyle changes, it’s the vacations that you give up, it’s the car that you didn’t want to buy, all those kinds of things.

Um, so that’s another way of looking at value. Um, a third way of doing it is in terms of differentiating yourself. What is your school offer, um, that is better than what, uh, other competitive schools offer that happens to be what parents want. And so if you could find that, actually in my presentation, I had this triple Venn diagram that did that.

But the point is that if you can find out what you do really well, that your competitive schools don’t do as well, and that Parents want. That’s a great point of differentiation, and it will help you establish value. Um, you need to segment. You can’t just treat your target audience, you know, homogeneously uniformly.

Um, you have to find the segments within your target audience. Parents that show share, um, Uh, common needs, interests, and concerns and be able to market to them and think about them and develop, uh, value proposition statements that relate to those particular, uh, segments. Uh, you need to think about number five.

You need to think about the world from a jobs to be done point of view. It’s something that, um, is, uh, It’s common, a common way of looking at things in the business world. NIS adopted it in terms of independent schools. They have four jobs to be done. There are ways of breaking down jobs to be done into even more granular jobs to be done in every, it’s all different for every school.

But if you think about, uh, the jobs that your school can do for parents, um, it’s another way of establishing value. Think about number six, think about pain points. Pain points. Uh, pain points. What, what are, what are the, what are the pain points that you can alleviate for parents? Whether that’s how to afford, uh, your school.

Whether that’s the drive. Whether that’s their concern that they might not be able to help their kids with their homework. Whatever it is. There’s all those pain points. And if you can think about that, then you’ll, um, Uh, be on your way to thinking about value proposition and number seven, which I think is actually the most important one is this.

It’s all based on the premise that value proposition is something that is is more than just described, it is delivered, right? You need to deliver your proposition, value proposition. Value proposition does not live in your view book, on your website, in your digital ads. Value proposition lives in the classrooms and the hallways.

and the assembly halls in the fields of your school. And so if you want to think about value proposition, you need to think about whether you’re delivering value proposition, which means you can’t do this yourself. Your head of school has to be part of the discussion and educational leadership needs to be part of the discussion, but it’s a key Key, absolute key.

Um, uh, I would say key criterion in being able to deliver a value and able to establish and deliver value proposition. And then the last thing that I would leave you with is, um, that you need to test, you need to measure, you need to test, you need to, you know, whatever you do, find a way, whether that’s based on digital ad data website, like Google analytics, Google analytics.

Uh, pipeline admissions, pipeline data, whatever it is, as you implement changes in your value proposition. Uh, be sure to be looking at that data and, uh, and, and seeing whether what you’re doing is working. 

Guest 5 + 6: I’m Kathy Bakes. I am the independent school sector lead for the Compass Group, which is a consulting firm and we engineer philanthropy.

And I’m Mark Cousins and I’m a consultant as well. I’m the vice president with the Compass Group. Today, we presented, um, to a group of development, um, professionals, uh, focusing on, uh, culture of philanthropy, the importance of engagement and building relationships, and then introducing, um, them to what we call the four predictive indicators for success.

And those four predictive indicators are the case for support, dedicated leadership, philanthropic potential, and strategic resource investments. And we. took our discussion into readiness assessment in those four areas on how we are getting ready for a major fundraising effort. And I think the key takeaways are the importance of relationship building, segmenting your donors, uh, and what else would you say?

I would also add that it’s really important that fundraising is a team sport and you have to involve everybody. It’s not just the development team that’s doing the work. Um, and then the last thing I would say is that you need to. Dedicate time to being strategic with anything you do.

Guest 7: Hi, my name is Drew Coco. I am the Director of Client Success at Clarity. Clarity is a financial aid software program that serves over 800 schools nationwide, and we’ve helped hundreds of thousands of families, uh, receive financial aid at different levels. private schools all over the country. Um, I came to Clarity after 15 years in schools as a teacher, as a coach, admission and financial aid director, uh, all the hats that we wear when we were independent schools.

And today at VAIS, I gave a presentation on net tuition revenue as a strategy. And a couple of the key takeaways are that every enrollment decision is also a revenue decision, whether you are admitting a full pay student or a full need student or somewhere in between, and that financial aid should be viewed strategically as a tool to help you achieve your enrollment and revenue goals.

rather than a cost against your line items on your budget.

Guest 8: Hi, my name is Allison Davis, and I’m the Assistant Director of Membership and Business Development at the Enrollment Management Association, EMA. Today, I’m going to be presenting on building retention communities, which we know is top of mind for all admission professionals and school wide leaders. I’m really excited to share with the groups and insights that we got from our recent report, the ride to independent schools that surveyed families who went through the admission process in the summer of 2023, um, one really key insight and takeaway that I found in it that we’ll be digging into is that, um, one in three families who are currently at independent schools are seriously considering other options outside independent schools.

Um, so that’s creating a leaky bucket. Um, for our schools, and now we’re having to refill those seats in addition to the students who are matriculating to college. So understanding that information and how we can get ahead of it is vital to, um, sustainable enrollment. 

Guest 9: Hello, I’m Carl Bom. I’m the chief growth strategist.

For a spiral marketing for schools and help 100 schools. And I am here at the V A I S advancement Institute. And I just gave a fun talk on through the prism, which is about stronger social content, calendaring. And one of the takeaways that I could love to gift you as a listener, dear listener, is that what you can do is create filters for creating.

Better, stronger content. So just aggregate the content categories and interesting components that we call attributes. And then after you have that listed out, allow your content to filter through those in order to create stronger content. Give it a shot. Let me know how it goes. 

Aubrey: Hi, I’m Aubrey Burrish, founder and CEO of Easy School Marketing and co host of this podcast.

I was delighted to speak about marketing strategies for fundraising success at the DAAS Advancement Institute. Um, my presentation centered around the premise that when we apply proven marketing strategies based in behavioral science to fundraising events, campaigns, and initiatives, we can see proven results.

Uh, the reason because effective business marketers Get paid to study human behavior, and they’ve honed these skills to ensure that the content and strategies they use will influence consumer behavior. And as fundraisers, it’s important for us to understand and embrace these strategies as they have a profound effect on how we can engage, connect, and influence consumers.

So I’m going to talk a little bit about how you can use donors to take the next step. These strategies can be applied to event fundraising, to major donor engagement, general donor campaigns, giving days, and more. Really, the list is endless. So some key takeaways from my presentation are, um, write and communicate like a marketer.

For example, marketers know, you know, we as people have a very short attention span, especially when we’re reading things, you know, we scroll. Effective marketers write very short, engaging pieces. They use bullet points and subheadings to break up content. Um, yet when we look at a lot of fundraising material, it tends to be really long and drawn out, um, with no clear call to action.

It’s a lot of block paragraphs. Um, you know, if you can think about your eight and a half by 11 fundraising, uh, solicitation letters, you can probably see a lot of that. Um, so we know that, you know, as I mentioned, people have a short extension span, they scroll on their phones. And so if we’re not communicating our ass to donors in a way that they can easily digest, um, we’re missing a huge opportunity, um, and a potential money making opportunity, revenue generating opportunity.

Um, another key takeaway is. That effective marketers know their audience. They know their interests and how, how they’re likely to engage, um, what social media channels they’re on, what words to use. Yet this work is not often done consistently in development offices. It’s important to know our perspective and current donors, our audience beyond capacity, knowing what our donors, our interests are, what platforms they’re on, how they like to be communicated with and what they like and don’t like about your fundraising events and initiatives.

You know, are they experiencing donor burnout right now? You’re sending so many emails. We need to know this information. Um, what they like, don’t like about your communications and more, right? Um, all that is key to creating an effective fundraising strategy. I hope you found those key takeaways helpful. I really enjoyed my time at the VAS, um, Advancement Institute, uh, visiting at Stuart Hall, um, and really connecting with my colleagues and school leaders and hearing from fellow speakers.

Guest 10: Hi, everyone. I’m Dr. Dorsey Tevault. I’m the Director of Professional Learning here at VAIS. Today’s our Advancement Institute at Stuart Hall School, and it’s just a wonderful day to bring together our marketing professionals, those who do communications for our schools, Our admissions folks and our philanthropy teams, the advancement people raising the money at our schools.

What’s really exciting about today, in my opinion, is that we bring together people from small and large schools, people from boarding schools and day schools from all over Virginia, and they get together to talk about their passion for the work that they do and to build their toolkit. It’s fun to see schools bring their entire team where they all hear the same messages, and it’s also fun to see people taking vigorous notes so that they can bring them back to their colleagues at the office.