BetterSchools executive seminars reinforce your mission, energize your school, enhance your value proposition, and strengthen your bottom line.

Executive Training for Schools and Associations

Getting people on the same page regarding best practices, expectations for competence, and workflow can be one of the most rewarding investments schools and school associations can make. Boards and leadership teams benefit from concentrated engagement with our expert presenters, who deliver interactive, practical, even entertaining learning events.

From improving governance to optimizing fundraising, BetterSchools executive seminars reinforce your mission, energize your school, enhance your value proposition, and strengthen your bottom line.

Transformative Boards for the 21st Century” Video Training Series

Our cutting edge video based board training introduces board members to the basic structures of private school governance.

Focused on positioning board members to make optimal contributions to the schools they lead, the series dives deep into the structures of schools and what they need to thrive. Beyond the standard lists of board member “dos and don’ts,” Being the Best helps board members, new and old, envision a dynamic and prosperous future for their schools based on a coordinated understanding of the school’s missional enterprise. Seven highly produced video modules outline the framework for effective board leadership in about 5 hours:

Training Module 1

The Private School As An Enterprise: What am I governing, anyway?

Training Module 2

Indicators of Success: What do great boards contribute?

Training Module 3

Signs of Dysfunction: How will we know we’re failing our school?

Training Module 4

Effective Board Culture: What patterns lead to the greatest results?

Training Module 5

The Pro-active Board Member: What’s my job?

Training Module 6

Evaluating Effectiveness: How do we know we have the school we want?

The Contrarian’s Guide to Effective Fundraising

A cutting edge seminar that challenges common fundraising conventions, positioning the board, head of school, and development office to recruit gifts with greater confidence and a higher expectation on return. The seminar helps boards and executive leadership teams to make the most of fund development efforts by

Aligning fundraising with strategic planning
Identifying and coaching high-capacity fundraisers
Evaluating fundraising performance
Synchronizing fundraising and technology

Private Schools and the New Economy: Profitability and Promise

A one-day seminar exploring the effects of new economic realities facing private schools and proposing new thinking that will help to stabilize and sustain schools in the next generation. Highly interactive, the seminar challenges financial myths that hinder the value relationship between schools and families, encouraging a planning paradigm that integrates price and value, active enrollment management, and gift support.

Session 1

Where we’ve been, where we are, and what the future holds

Session 2

Cost, price, and value: Managing our first revenue source

Session 3

Pricing mechanics: Setting tuition in the New Economy

Session 4

Enrollment management, family needs, and strategies for growth

Session 5

Motivated giving: Optimizing the case for generosity

Governing Strategically

A half to one-day seminar focused on moving a governing board’s work from pre-occupation with annual management priorities toward forward-looking, growth-oriented activities. Boards and heads of school learn to plan, craft agendas, and establish strong working relationships in the context of goals for growth. The seminar includes strategies for evaluating the performance of both boards and heads, and provides objective measurements for overall school health. The seminar can be expanded to address the mechanics of an on-going strategic planning process.

The Strategic Board can also be combined with an assessment of a school’s governing documents, board structure, board training and orientation, and performance evaluation protocols.

A Better Way to Set Tuition

This half-day seminar presents a detailed, updated approach to tuition setting for the 21st century. Beyond formulas or platitudes, A Better Way explores three main themes:

What is a values-based, mission-driven tuition model?
What are the true variables affecting tuition?
What does a step-by-step reproducible annual tuition setting process look like?

A Better Way also includes a detailed case study of how one school turned a $900k operating deficit into a $300k budget surplus. An additional exercise of customizing the process to an individual school’s budget can also be included as a feature.

Leading Your School to the Next Level

We designed this one-day discussion of critical institutional realities for schools that are making the transition from start-up (1-15 years in operation) or schools that are finding the need to reconsider institutional priorities as they recover from economic or other setbacks. Leading Your School engages boards and executive teams in fundamental examination of core values in five key areas:

Vision: Getting and staying on the same page
Growth: Mission and market complementing one another
Resources: Accumulating the fuel for prosperity
Relationships: Building trust and confidence in the organization
Structure: Designing a scalable, sustainable institution to outlast us all

Four Reasons That Families Leave Our Schools (and what we can do about it)

Gleaned from interviews with over 1,000 independent school parents, this seminar addresses four common, yet still surprising reasons that families say they would leave their schools. It explores the emerging relationship between parents-as-consumers and schools, highlighting the accelerating effect of the Great Recession on values and decision-making. A great way to organize your school’s conversation around recruiting, retention, and sustainability, it is especially recommended for executive team members and faculty leadership.