What is an "Advancement Appraisal"?

An "advancement appraisal" is an extensive examination of your school's advancement efforts.

While every advancement appraisal is as unique as the school program being examined, each individual appraisal tends to start the same:

    • review giving data
    • review communication procedures
    • interview staff and key stakeholders
    • look for opportunities to strengthen and enliven your advancement program.
    • look for outdated or ineffective practices we can sunset

From there, I tailor my approach to meet the needs of your school's program including assessment of the skills of the team or deep dive into the ways your school’s parent association intersects with the advancement team.

Interested in an advancement appraisal? Let's talk.


Common Questions

What do you receive when the advancement appraisal is completed?

When the advancement appraisal is completed, you will receive an in-depth confidential analysis of your school's strengths, along with areas where growth might be needed.

You will also receive a set of recommendations for how to implement improvements, based on your school’s mission and culture -- all according to best practice-- that you can share with key staff and stakeholders.

The scope of the advancement appraisal depends largely upon your school’s needs and goals but typically includes a careful review of development, admission, and communication procedures and processes, and the Board of Trustees’ readiness and involvement.

Which schools have benefited from an advancement appraisal?

An advancement appraisal is an excellent starting place for our work together because it gives us a clear sense of what’s going well - so we can amplify it - and what’s not - so we can begin to make corrections immediately.

Clients who have retained me for this project report great results that come from having a clear game plan. Even if some of the changes needed are difficult ones.

Below is a short list of schools that have retained me to conduct an advancement appraisal.