Measuring Success: What We Do for Independent Schools
- Recruitment. Schools balance a need to prospect for new students while retaining current students. It is critical to mission success. We have helped thousands of independent schools find custom data solutions to issues surrounding student acquisition and retention. In the May issue of NBOA’s magazine Net Assets, see the white paper we co-authored on tuition price elasticity. In the study, Measuring Success found that raising tuition doesn’t necessarily impact a school’s ability to recruit full pay families.
- Strategic and Financial Planning. We recently helped Greenhill School in Dallas with a long-term financial planning strategy that saved them $5 million over the term of their five-year financial plan by working with school administrators, board members, staff, and faculty. The work not only helped them to tap undiscovered sources of revenue — but kept an expected 4.5 percent tuition increase at a more modest 3 percent growth rate, allowing them to work towards their goal of a diverse school community. In working with Greenhill, Head of School Scott Griggs said of working with Measuring Success, “We wanted someone to push us in ways we hadn’t thought of previously, someone with a broader point of view. We wanted to know about things we wouldn’t have thought of. We also wanted someone to keep us on task.”
- Sustainability. Many factors play a role in sustainability, from faculty compensation to tuition pricing to facilities use (and more). We have worked with schools to tailor strategies to meet specific priorities and goals using data analysis and custom consultations. In our work with Montgomery School, Mark Murray, director of finance and operations said, “The Measuring Success survey tool is so very helpful to me and to our school. The output from this tool is very powerful. The benchmarking data and the related graphs help shape conversations and conclusions of our finance committee as well as our board. The overall benefit from this tool far exceeds any other survey tools that I’ve used.”
- Advancement/Development. Want to grow your endowment? Tap undiscovered sources of revenue? Using data to solve problems is one of the best returns on investment for independent schools. It directly leads to evidence-based decision-making strategies to strengthen your independent school’s market position. As Sarah Buchanan, director of enrollment at Ensworth School in Nashville said, “Over a period of five years, Measuring Success has provided us with a continuous feedback loop to support data-driven decision-making on an ongoing basis. The survey analytics have become an important tool as we work to refine and improve our program, and those with whom we work at Measuring Success have been detailed, responsive, nimble in their ability to individualize our product, knowledgeable, and exceptionally helpful.”
- Retention and Advocacy. Measuring Success has conducted more than 1,500 of parent, student, and alumni surveys. We recently concluded a data project focused on 14 independent religious high schools from across the United States and Canada. We presented the findings in April and May of 2017 to a receptive audience of school administrators at each location who wanted to not only know their own results, but see how they were faring in comparison to peer schools. Debbie Abelson, director of enrollment at deToledo High School in Los Angeles, one of the participating schools, said, “I appreciate the level of detail that Measuring Success brought to the project. The collaboration within the cohort is priceless. I found instant colleagues who now all speak the same language of the study’s initial findings.”