Blog Posts
Is Big Data Too Big for Non-Profits?
Why Big Data remains elusive for the non-profit sector and how collaboration can help By Hannah Romick The words are ubiquitous. Big. Data. Everyone wants it. The for-profit sector has flocked to Big Data like kids to an ice cream truck on a hot summer’s day. This should come as […]
School Affordability & Sustainability: Chicken or Egg?
By Sacha Litman The other day, I received a phone call from a board member of a prominent independent school wanting to dis- cuss affordability and the sustainability of the school’s financial model. A foundation supporting independent schools asked the same question of us a few days later. With […]
Why Should We Listen to the Voice of the People in our Faith-Based Institutions?
Faith–based communities’ ability to lift their congregations to holiness, as well as draw and retain members, depends on the degree to which the congregation resonates with the ideas and direction of the leadership. The weekly Torah portion read by Jews recently was about the census in Exodus, when Moses asks […]
Upending Tradition: Focusing on the Collective over the Individual
By Hannah Feinberg Romick For many years, social scientists have been working to understand how communities, individuals, and organizations intersect. It used to be that a majority of community members went to church on a Sunday, listened to the an- nouncements about upcoming activities, and met up with friends and […]
Measure, focus, incentivize, COLLABORATE, measure
By Andrew Foote Most human service organizations (schools, faith-based groups, healthcare, senior citizen care, etc.) have commendable and far-reaching goals. Beyond staying financially sustainable, they have the purpose of improving the lives of others. This is not an easy task; there is no handbook for how to develop people spiritually […]
Reflections from the ISACS Conference: How do we Articulate the Value Added of Independent School Education
By Dr. Ray Levi As a former head of school, I hear myself and others asking: how do we articulate the value added of independent school education? In the changing educational market-place, this question is critical. Often, for prospective families, we define our value added by articulating the numerous distinctive […]
Successful Strategies for Alumni Engagement
Alumni can have a big impact on your school’s revenue via contributing to a capital campaign, volunteering their time, and generating positive word of mouth. From working with many schools, we’ve seen a variety of alumni engagement strategies. We’ll use three schools we’ve worked with, School A, B, and C […]
What Would Google Do? Leveraging Data Analytics to Grow Your Organization
What makes Google the omnipresent $21 billion leviathan company it has become? Though the company has both an impressive search engine and application suite, Google’s key to success has been its ability to mine data on customers who use Google products for free. Such data allows Google to target customers […]
Is Cost Really the Driver for Member Participation?
Many of our clients have suffered losses in membership, enrollment, or donors. The conclusion tends to be that these losses are caused by increased customer price sensitivity. As a result, many organizations de-cide that the answer is to cut costs, thereby enabling them to reduce the price to consumers. While […]
Optimizing Donor Giving
It is critical for fundraising organizations to focus their limited time and resources on those activities that have the greatest demonstrated impact on giving. To address this need we worked with one of the top consortium of fundraising organizations in the United States to determine which activities and perceptions had […]