Fundraising & Marketing (8)
Finding the best freebies for your school
By Rachel Gordon on 04 January 2013, 14:10pm
This article originally appeared in the September 2012 Innovate My School magazine.
It’s a familiar problem: you want to start a new project at your school, but there’s no money for the equipment or services you need.
Don’t dust off the rolling pin for a fundraising cake sale just yet. Believe it or not, you may be able to get what you need for nothing!
Organisations across the country give thousands of free items to schools and allow them to use facilities and professional services without charge. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Over the years, schools have received all sorts of freebies: from maps, books, cereals and giant chess sets to hedges, telescopes and even trees!
Marketing your school’s image and getting the right message across
By Colin Wells on 18 April 2012, 14:17pm
With the advent of Marketing Awareness and the increase in the number of schools who now have Marketing Managers or Marketing Departments, Headteachers are becoming increasingly aware of the power of marketing at many levels: how good marketing can effect how a school is perceived and, in many cases, how this affects pupil numbers.
There are many ways that a school's image can be improved and school signage is certainly one of them. School signage has come a long way in the last 10 years, both in style and design. It now plays an integral role in marketing the school and often sets the tone of first impressions that visitors, parents, staff and pupils form about the school.
3 ways to make your school funds grow
By Rachel Gordon on 17 April 2012, 14:34pm
Setting up an after-school club, purchasing new books for the school library, updating computer equipment, and installing specialised playground equipment – these are all important projects for the creation of a diverse learning and social environment at school but they are often the first things to go when budgets are tightened.
Taking matters into their own hands, more schools and colleges are looking for new and inventive ways to boost their funds to support special projects and activities. The great news is that there are plenty of ways that your school can make money that don’t take up too much time or require sustained effort from school staff to organise and operate. The following ideas constitute a selection of easy-to-implement money raising schemes which, once they are put into action, you can sit back, relax, and watch your school funds grow, giving you that additional income to enhance the school experience for your pupils and local community.
5 practical ways to make money for your school
By Paul Main on 10 April 2012, 15:37pm
Finding new ways for schools to save money seems to be the ‘hot potato’ at the moment, and quite understandably so. There is another option though: find new ways to make money. With all that intellectual property, skills and knowledge floating through the corridors, are there any opportunities for new business ventures to emerge from your school?
There has always been a contribution culture amongst teachers: 'We can get hold of lesson plans at the click of a button and reuse someone else’s work', or, as the saying goes: ‘There’s no point reinventing the wheel’. However, should we be more business-minded about giving our hard work away?
School fundraising – where do I start?
By Rachel Gordon on 13 March 2012, 12:12pm
Your school has decided to turn its hand to fundraising, but you are unsure about where to start. Getting started is one of the most difficult aspects of fundraising and it challenges all of us – from fundraising beginners to seasoned experts embarking on a new venture.
These initial feelings of uncertainty are easily managed with a planned approach to fundraising. It begins by answering two simple questions: why are you fundraising and what do you want to achieve?
The importance of communicating with your alumni
By Annie Manning on 17 November 2011, 11:55am
Schools and Colleges all have their own websites and this may be the first place an ex-pupil will visit to re-establish contact and possibly offer professional services and/or wish to make a donation. Similarly, your alumni database is your school’s business and you must get to know all of your supporters/members. With the aid of the right software this can be achieved easily and efficiently.
ASI Europe have recently published their own white paper 3 keys to smart website. Jyoti Hull-Jurkovic advises how schools and businesses can easily conduct a sales and marketing review with the aid of the correct tools alongside the norm of their site being just ‘user friendly’.
CRM database management – for Alumni activities
By Annie Manning on 31 October 2011, 10:23am
Value your database
Proper planning and management of any fundraising activity will culminate in better results and managing your alumni database is no exception. What many schools often fail to recognise is that their Database is a vital business tool and it is also a core alumni fundraising asset. Regular maintenance will enable you to ensure that the correct data is retained and all relevant history and information to your supporters is easily accessible to your staff.
Your alumni database is also the driver for any PR or marketing campaign. Consider what actions are required to be carried out by various personnel which need to be taken into account. Ask yourself have I incorporated their role into my follow-up procedures? However, if you have the right IT hardware and software many of these administrative dilemmas can be eliminated, or, at the very least, be managed efficiently.
Printed Prospectuses vs Digital Prospectuses
By Jeanette Lloyd-Stern on 02 September 2010, 21:27pm
The debate may be new to the school marketing world but not so in the world of business to business or consumer magazines. Think of any big UK brand and you will find that they are now producing a digital magazine. Think British Airways, BT, Tesco’s, Waitrose, M&S, Virgin, Cadbury’s, Boden to name a few. And then of course the traditional magazines themselves are creating a digital magazine, think Homes & Garden, Marketing Week, even “Dairy Farmer” has a digital edition! So just why has the digital magazine arrived and why is it becoming so popular? Firstly, faster internet speeds are now the norm at home and in the office making so many more things possible. We, as a society, now spend more time on the Internet than reading magazines or watching TV. Secondly the birth of eReaders such as Amazon’s Kindle and the iPad make reading on the move a light weight, slip in my handbag / briefcase, must have. And, while you may be in the “I prefer reading printed versions of books, etc.” camp, many people find reading on screen far easier as they can make the text any size they want.
So, what are digital magazines – after all they’re not websites and they’re not print. Is it a lazy way to get online without investing in a really good website? You may have been led to think so by the proliferation of PDF / Flash, whatever replicas of print, where you take your prospectus and simply turn it into a page-turning edition. Some simply convert their prospectus into a PDF file, which loads at a snail's pace, even on the fastest computers. Others convert their printed prospectus into page-turning online magazines using Flash based software - simple and low cost and many schools have them. However, many of these printed online replicas are clunky to use, slow to load and have type so small that you have to constantly zoom in and out. Not to mention the photograph quality is often blurry. So the PDF or simple page-turning printed equivalents have major shortcomings – although on the upside they are still more environmentally friendly and lower on cost than printed prospectuses.
