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Creating a Connected School

K–12 students are not ordinarily giving prospects, but they are conduits to two types of prospective donors— parents and future alumni. Optimizing the student experience starting with the application process creates a pathway to parental giving today and lifelong alumni giving. 

Schools that are successful in fundraising have a collaborative relationship between the Admissions Office and the Development Office and employ a data-driven approach to building relationships with students as well as parents. This requires intentional data collection for each student throughout their K–12 lifecycle and beyond. 

A robust database is not simply a dumping ground for information, but a standardized, integrated, strategic compilation of data designed to facilitate relationship-building. Once that database is established, it must be maintained to customize the experience for each student. Individuals who feel engaged with their school community as students become evangelists and donors as alumni.  

Creating a Connected School

With careful planning, robust data management systems can support new ways of doing things while enabling routine tasks to be accomplished more quickly. Time savings and reduced costs may be two tangible effects of changing to a new school management system. Pair that with rethinking the processes used in your school and leveraging technology to liberate both time and money. New and more powerful ways of using data will emerge too. 

Changing from a mix of disconnected applications to an integrated and comprehensive data system will require decisions about data formatting, data governance, and more. Ultimately, a school data management system should focus on the people who use the system to make their tasks easier, whether administrative or educational. 

For more information on this topic, please visit: Technology

The Connected Office
Process Improvement: Building Streamlined, Centralized Data Strategy for a School
Assessing Value on Investment for School Management Systems
Planning Tool: Assessing Value on Investment
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