Better Metrics

by Barbara Barron | Posted January 10th, 2024 | Subscribe to this newsletter Last fall, I wrote an article about what I see as the misplaced emphasis on participation as both a focus of the advancement team’s work and a measure of the effectiveness of the giving program. I argued that the 100% goal is more likely a moon shot. …

What Good Are Trade Secrets If We Don’t Share Them?

by Barbara Barron | Posted November 8th, 2023 | Subscribe to this newsletter Having a niche is both cool and challenging. Mine happens to be independent school advancement. I don’t work with other non-profits. Just schools. Very defined. But it is a small world. When I decided to begin a consulting practice almost 7 years ago, the answer to the …

Is Technology a Crutch?

by Barbara Barron | Posted October 11th, 2023 | Subscribe to this newsletter Recently I was working with a client school on the community appeal for their capital campaign. Like most appeals, this one was electronic, and it required the need for thoughtful customized segments. As I’ve often written, when we write a generic appeal, we’re speaking to no one …

Why Participation is Not Worth Fighting For

by Barbara Barron | Posted September 6th, 2023 | Subscribe to this newsletter Years ago, my team and I set out to put the then-popular 80/20 rule into practice. I posed this challenge: since 80% of our support comes from 20% of our donors, should we not deploy 80% of our time, resources, energy, and love on that loyal, generous …

How Can We Set Priorities that Serve Us and Our Programs?

by Barbara Barron | Posted August 16th, 2023 | Subscribe to this newsletter A new school year. A new chance to get off on the right foot. If you’re like me, after a needed refresh over the summer, you’re ready to take it on again — but maybe with some new thinking. A new set of practices to keep us …

Sacrificing Sacred Cows: Some Reflections on CASE-NAIS ’23

My overarching “ah-ha” was that the sometimes tough-to-make tactical goals of increasing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at our schools were made real in several sessions — with actual, honest-to-God solutions that we could take home and implement.

Moving Beyond Conflict Between the Development & Business Offices

August 11th, 2021 by Barbara Barron Conflict between development and business offices doesn’t have to be a thing, but my experience in this profession has shown me that it often is. Many school’s business and development offices live in an awkward space between conflict and cooperation. Sometimes the relationship is chilly but workable, other times unproductive, even adversarial. From the …

How Can We Fit In at Our School?

May 26th, 2021 by Barbara Barron and Kelly Tieger We talk a lot about “fitting in” at schools, don’t we? Our admission teams are charged with identifying and enrolling students – and families – who we believe will be a “right fit”, or a “good fit”. This is, of course, crucial, because selecting students and families who seek the program …

Ignoring “The Gap” and Moving Away from a Scarcity Mindset

February 24th, 2021 by Barbara Barron I get why “The Gap” was created. Back in the day, it made a certain amount of sense for independent schools who were charging tuition but still needed additional non-tuition revenue to mount annual giving campaigns to make their operating budgets work. No doubt they were finding it incredibly challenging to explain to parents …

How Do We Become Schools That Truly Value Teachers?

by Barbara Barron | Posted March 13th, 2019 With huge gratitude to the brilliant mind of Gordon MacKenzie and re-reading his astonishingly smart and creative book “Orbiting the Giant Hairball”, I’ve been moved to write about our typical organizational charts and how we might think about them in a very different, and perhaps better, way. Most schools operate within a …