It is easy to measure activities. It is easy to count the number of students served, the dollars spent, and the donors who attended an event or were cultivated. Those numbers only tell you that your school was busy. If the numbers are positive, they tell you that your school is healthy. However, from those numbers it is impossible to know how long your school will remain healthy.
If all of the measures of activity go up 10% next week, all you know is that your school is busier. Hopefully your school is stronger, more agile, more successful, and in a stronger competitive position but those measures are unable to validate your hope. It is doubtful that this time next year the activity measures will matter. What will matter is whether your school’s sustainability is higher or lower than it is today.
What are the measures that will tell you that your school’s sustainability has improved?
More students served is an activity that sounds great. It might lead to more students achieving success. However, donors and others want compelling evidence of increased success. The compelling evidence is statistics that demonstrate that the number of students achieving success is proportional to or greater than past success.
A student’s non-academic success can be measured but success occurs long after graduation. Success comes when the outcome promised by the mission statement happens. Since parochial schools exist to solve an important societal problem, fulfilling one of the promises of the mission statement is the most important success measure.
Other important measures tell you that your school is reaching milestones that will lead to success. Some of the more important milestones are:
Donor Engagement
New Donors – Number of donors increases every year
Donor Retention – Average length of time a donor provides support for your school increases every year
Donor Generosity – Average gift size from donors increases each year
New Students – Number of new students entering the programing each year increases faster than the local population growth
Student Retention – Average length of time a student remains a student increases every year
Results – Number of students who achieve the desired results increases faster than the growth in new students each year
Community Engagement
Community Support – Number of referrals, volunteers, and advocates increases each year
Diversity – Student and supporter diversity matches the diversity of your community
Take a moment and add to the preceding list the donor, student, and community engagement measures that are unique to your school or provide your school with a strategic or competitive advantage. Now set goals for each of the milestone.
Next Step:
Determine how to measure your school’s outcomes and milestones in ways that resonate with your supporters and that demonstrate the relevance of your school to your community’s needs
Collaborate with the board on setting long-term goals (more than three years) for the outcomes, results, and milestones
Report only the outcomes, results, and milestones to the board
Let the board committees (finance, fundraising, and programing) report on the activities and recommend changes
Remind the board that it is engaging in micromanagement when it talks about activities
As the school principal, it remains important for you and your senior staff to monitor activities. The activities tell you that your staff is doing the right things. The milestones, results, and outcomes tell you that your staff is being effective. Your donors, students, and community care deeply about your school’s effectiveness. You need to focus on both activities and effectiveness.
Every parochial school board should monitor activities, it is the only way the board will know if the school is healthy. However, the board should limit its discussion of activities to defining the change in activities that will indicate improving sustainability.
Take It Further:
Ask the board to make achieving milestones and success measures the staff’s first priority rather than measuring the activities the staff engaged in or completed
