by clair tighe
Understanding the importance of fundraising for schools is crucial. Fundraising initiatives are key in fostering a strong sense of belonging. Imagine the excitement of a bake sale, the camaraderie of a charity run, or the thrill of an auction. These events do more than just raise money, they create lasting memories, build strong bonds, and infuse schools with a vibrant, united spirit.
Having personally worked at schools for 5 years before joining the Productle team, I’ve come up with a list of prompts for school alumni and development teams to get you thinking about how to efficiently use downtime during half-terms to help keep your data in tip-top condition!
Autumn Term: The school year is starting, an influx of new pupils and parents join the school. Most schools will have exciting winter-related events towards the end of this term.
Think about the appeals you have coming up, what segmentations will you be targeting? Autumn half-term is a great time to validate email and postal addresses for these groups. Data8 has a fantastic free data quality audit that lets you know how accurate your emails and addresses are across your database.
Have you imported last year’s graduates? If not, this half-term is a great time to get stuck into that process.
What events will the school be holding for Autumn Term 2? Are there any generous previous alumni that could be invited or recent leavers that could share their success stories?
Spring Term: The school year is in full swing, Year 9’s will be focusing on Options, Year 11’s will have their mock exams. There might be careers events and more exciting extra-curricular activities to share as the days get longer and the weather gets warmer.
What appeals were sent out last term, how are the successes of these reported? If there are bounces, gone aways or unsubscribes, how has this data made it back into your database?
If there were fundraising or alumni events during the Autumn term, have these been logged appropriately on your database? Have all follow ups been logged or actioned?
Spring cleaning time! Do you have personal data on your system that should no longer be there? Do you have individuals that have never interacted with your team?
Are there any alumni career success stories that could inspire the Year 9’s or Year 10’s? Spring term is a good time to liaise with the school team to see where the alumni and development network could add value to the extra-curricular activities ran by the school.
Summer Term: Exams, exams, exams! … But exciting transitions, wonderful celebrations, and plans being made for the future!
Before the influx of new leavers onto your database, reflect on the process you use to tag your alumni or parents. Is this process an accurate and efficient way to separate your database? Is there a written process team members follow? When was this last discussed? Process aside, allocate some time this summer half-term to cleaning these tags. There’s always cleaning to be done!
Reflect on the academic year so far. What successes will the fundraising team celebrate? Were there any pinch points throughout the year caused by inaccurate or misplaced data? Where could processes be improved? Do you need time with any school senior leaders to discuss changes before the summer holidays?
What third party apps does your team use? How do these systems talk to each other? Are there any training initiatives or technical upgrades you could investigate over the summer to reduce time spent in spreadsheets?
Key Takeaways:
We advise school teams to undertake a termly data validation check of their data and would suggest checking different elements of their data each term, so teams are not left with an unclimbable mountain of tasks over summer!
Create a retention policy checklist, that contains a list of step-by-step easy to check boxes to give your team confidence you are only holding relevant, useful information.
Hindsight is 20/20! Take the time annually to reflect on the year. It is as important to celebrate the successes, as well as look into improvements.
Successful alumni love coming back into school and talking to pupils. It is beneficial, rewarding, and helps remind senior leaders of the deeper benefits of an alumni and development department. It is therefore crucial that the alumni team work hard to retain an up-to-date overview of every outreach opportunity within the school community.
