Winning financial freedom for your school

Kajima Community work with schools to optimise facilities and generate additional revenues through community engagement. Both their lettings software and range of lettings services are designed to help market facilities available to hire, open doors and establish schools as part of the local community - whilst generating profits to be invested back into the school. Kajima Community also directly manage community-use across a number of their self-built sites and other venues.

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The school helping their community, in good times and bad

Images via Sports England.

Wilbury Primary School had been letting out its facilities to the local populace for some time, however their local authority-managed booking service was deactivated at short notice. This, as you might imagine, brought about a wave of new headaches for the SLT. It was clear that they would struggle to manage the bookings internally as they didn’t have the necessary resources, and therefore needed to find a system that could replace and improve upon the previous one. To solve this issue, the school looked for an alternative provider.

The Wilbury Primary leaders approached us in March 2016 to assist with their lettings. We were able to ensure that our school lettings software, BookingsPlus, would make their bookings to be transparent and easily manageable. However, it also became evident that the school would benefit from some additional support, and so we implemented BookingsGuru - our lettings administration and marketing service. All of this has had a significant impact on the amount of lettings that the school has been able to attract. But don’t take our word for it…

“Kajima have been great from the outset,” said Claire Griffin, the school’s finance manager. “They have handled everything on our behalf, and we’ve seen our bookings income rise significantly as a result. Alongside ensuring that we get the best value from our bookings, Kajima have helped us set up a user-friendly website, worked alongside site managers to ensure we get the best value from our bookings, and have helped bring in a number of ad hoc bookings, such as the NHS Blood Bank. We have really appreciated the personal service they offer. It has made the bookings process simpler, easier and more profitable for us!”

Wilbury Primary School are now making more than ever from their lettings, and with zero hassle. Since using our BookingsGuru service, revenue generated through hiring out the school facilities for community use has increased by almost 50% (although we can’t take all the credit - this is an incredibly passionate team!). The school is now able to take bookings six days a week and manage them efficiently. They have a near-constant stream of bookings from a variety of different groups, ranging from birthday parties to weekly church groups.

The functionality and usability of the system has meant that any teething problems were easily resolved - the financial management and streamlined contact makes BookingsPlus easy for both the school and their clients to use. Using the BookingsGuru service has meant that the phone and email response to the online marketing is always immediate.

Paul O’Sullivan, premises manager at Wilbury Primary, said: “Through BookingsPlus, our lettings process has become a real asset to the school. We regularly rent out a number of our facilities, and the process is quick and easy to follow through with. In a time of budget cuts to schools, the financial freedom given to us through BookingsPlus is an absolute necessity.”

Budgeting is obviously a huge source of stress for schools, so knowing that we’re actively helping to combat this issue is a real joy. We’re incredibly proud to say that the staff at Wilbury Primary School have been hugely impressed with the service; it is innovative, has significantly increased revenue, and the lettings coordinators are always there to help.

Could your school benefit from this kind of service? If so, book your personal demo today by visiting www.bookingsplus.co.uk/#contact-data-row, or contact [email protected] / 01604 677 764. Alternatively, visit www.bookingsplus.co.uk for more information.

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