Prioritize the Faculty
While the famous “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” quote is probably apocryphal, it is true that what makes our schools work, and what makes them unique, is culture.
Any program innovation, strategic plan, fundraising campaign, or marketing initiative requires a culture that will support it.
So, knowing that culture wins out, what can a marketing and communications department do to support a thriving school culture?
Prioritize the faculty! Whether we plan for it or not, a school’s culture lives in its classrooms, and teachers are the ones who hold it.
There are many reasons to make the faculty your first audience, but I’ll touch upon two:
Great teaching leads to happy students who report positive news at home, making tuition-paying families in our communities more likely to evangelize, re-enroll, and donate. The entire independent school value proposition hinges on the human-to-human connection between teachers and students.
For all of the effort we put into messaging and voice, the vast majority of high-stakes communication on campus every day involves teachers, whether they are communicating with students or families. The power of a thoroughly informed, engaged faculty is difficult to overstate.
At this point in my career, I have asked hundreds of independent school alumni about the most impactful aspect of their educational experience. All of them invoked a teacher, class, team, or other human-to-human connection. (I hold out a strange hope that someone responds with “the facilities” or “the strategic plan” at some point, if for no other reason than to hear a novel answer.)
There is always room to be more deliberate about how we communicate with faculty, in timing as well as in tone and candor. A few easy steps include ensuring faculty know big news before parents and students do (and holding faculty to strict confidentiality when needed), equipping faculty with talking points and specific tour instructions, and keeping faculty informed about trends and parent sentiments.
Years from now, the alumni answering the question about the most impactful part of their experience in our schools will almost certainly answer with the name of a current colleague. A communications office that treats faculty as its first audience is investing in the enrollment and fundraising successes that flow from that reality.