How Public School Districts Can Thrive in Today’s Economy Part III. Using an Action Group Process for the Creation and Growth of an Alumni Association

A Special White Paper by
Tom Borg, MS; Keith B. Elliott, RA, CSI; and Katherine Pinard ©2011

In the first two parts of this white paper we discussed how American public school districts continually endure funding cutbacks and their tendency to immediately identify programs and staffing to cut. Reducing overall expenditures is a logical first step with any budget control process, but when the budget cuts begin to carve so deeply that curriculum and quality will suffer, it may be time to for a different strategy aimed at developing supplemental funding opportunities to offset these reduction strategies.

We suggested that the first step in reinventing this pathway involves the administrators, teachers and school boards changing the way they think. Once that change has begun, it is possible to restructure the problem solving thought process, through creation of Action Groups composed of teachers, administrators, transportation and food service personnel and other pertinent groups that are part of the school district team. These groups may also include parents and students as appropriate to the topic.

In the second section of this paper we discussed how a school district must leverage the opportunities generated by the action group successes and apply this energy to marketing their evolving school district to the current client base of students and parents. As this develops as a process, it then rolls out to potential students and parents who are not yet enrolled in their school district.

Our third section of this paper will discuss the advantages of the creation and expansive development of an Alumni Association for any level of a public school.

Make no mistake about it, the ideal student in your school district should attend from pre-school and kindergarten levels, right through to high school graduation . Even if students attend for a portion of that 13-14 years, your school district needs to recognize and reinforce the opportunity to characterize each student as a lifetime alumni member. Although there are many public school districts that have created successful alumni programs, there are many more that have not. There are numerous benefits for developing a successful and active alumni association for your entire district. Let’s look at some of them.

First, an alumni association provides the opportunity for graduates to maintain a lifetime relationship with past home town classmates, counselors and teachers. It provides a vehicle to connect and communicate with these special people on a regular basis. Integrated social media and communication tools like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin help foster a “people connection” that stretches around the globe.

As a former alumni-admissions recruitment team coordinator for a university, I can say that many people enjoy a broad spectrum of benefits by being connected to their old alma mater. This connection seems to give them a feeling of security, knowing that the school they attended is still there and sponsoring an association to help bridge the gap between fond memories of their younger days and the new world of the present.

With the availability of software packages designed for creating and maintaining alumni databases, connectivity, websites, and events, any public school district can easily and inexpensively reach out, touch, recruit and manage this lifetime relationship with their graduates. Staying connected in many different ways leads to an emotional familiarity over any distance. Connection with the schools that cared about them and the educators that want to continually improve the curriculum, the student experience and therefore the reputation of the district is key. The nearly incalculable networking value of connection to local and larger business owners, employees, programs and philanthropic resources multiplies a funding potential that could save any jeopardized school programs.

It seems that a vast majority of alumni donations from people today get directed toward the college or university they attended. If instituted and nurtured creatively all the way from kindergarten, a public school alumni association could cause a portion of those funds to be redirected to the public school district they attended. Among other uses for this type of funding lies the obvious benefit of increased operating revenues for that school district.

Starting from scratch here? You are not alone. A quote by Aesop from the story of The Hare and the Tortoise” comes to mind: “Slow and steady wins the race” In order for a school district to successfully begin this lifelong relationship with its graduates, it must adopt the attitude of being in the “Friend Raising Business” before it succeeds in the “Fund Raising Business.” Changing the culture of an entire educational district to one of actually living customer service principles, seems a daunting task. It is, and it starts slowly with a few basic and supportable steps.

In the 1980’s, Jan Carlzon popularized the phrase, “moment of truth”, as related to those fleeting unplanned moments of customer contact which potentially generate lasting impressions of your company or organization. BusinessDictionary.com defines this as an “instance of contact or interaction between a customer and a firm (through a product, sales force, or visit) that gives the customer an opportunity to form (or change) an impression about the firm. Our team teaches that anywhere in the paragraph above, that you see words like “company”, “sales force”, or “firm”, that those words can be replaced by “SCHOOL DISTRICT”!

For the purpose of this discussion, a “moment of truth” or as it is commonly referred to today as “touch point,” is, any time a student or parent comes into contact with ANY aspect of your school district, and thereby has an opportunity to form an impression.


Some examples of touch points include:
• Your School District’s website.
• How timely and in what manner your telephone is answered, and calls are returned.
• Cleanliness and orderliness of classrooms, hallways, offices, gymnasiums, restrooms.
• Maintenance of school grounds, athletic fields, and parking lots
• The courtesy and empathy displayed by personnel in every function, like teachers, teaching assistants, food service, janitors, transportation (bus drivers), security, office assistants, administrators and school board members.

The number of these touch points it takes to reinforce this evolving opinion varies significantly by individual. After enough positive or negative impressions are repeated in the same way, the student and his or her parents will form an opinion about your schools and the attitudes that shape your district’s approach to education. Ultimately, the way students and parents feel about your school district becomes, to themselves and anyone they share it with, your “brand.” What they “think” about your school district becomes your reputation. The perception they walk away with becomes their reality. When a client service culture is embraced properly throughout your district, you will project the right kind of brand and the right kind of reputation that creates “life time clients” and financial supporters.

As we tell all of our clients, the time to begin their “friend raising” activity, is the first time the student and the parent visit the school district’s web site. Whether this first contact is to enroll a young five (a future alumni) or a high school student that just moved to town, every moment of truth, or touch point after that, either adds to, or detracts from, the school district’s brand, reputation, and approachability.

It is absolutely critical that all staff and school representatives be mindful 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, of the important role they play in creating a favorable and lasting brand and reputation. Whether they are on or off the job, they are being judged by the discerning eyes of the public and each other, as individual representatives of the schools.

The school teacher that makes a cynical remark about the quality of food in the school cafeteria to her next door neighbor is sending out a message whether or not she believes in the school district where she or he works. The school board member, who makes a flippant remark to a questioning parent at a school board meeting, is giving out an impression that can incense the parent to the point where he or she will pull their son or daughter out of the school district and send them elsewhere. Sensitivity to encountering a touch point, only to turn it into a “tripping point”, needs to take precedence over personal feelings and opinions in every case.

To create a positive brand and reputation on which to build a lifetime relationship with all students and their parents, takes a lot of careful forethought and planned work. If done properly, loyal and lifetime alumni can be created and nurtured.

If you are creating an alumni association for your school district for the first time or trying to improve and expand the one you presently have, you must do everything possible to create a cooperative and supportive relationship between your alumni board and your foundation board. These two entities must work together to achieve two goals. First, it must create the opportunities for your alumni to feel part of your school district. Second, it must create the right circumstances and environment for alumni to willingly contribute back to their former school district.

Despite the politics and competing priorities that are always present in these large organizations, the leaders of the community school district need to provide every resource possible to insure that both the alumni board and the school board communicate openly and continually in order to support each other on a regular basis. When this connectivity is successful, your school district will become enabled to maximize the opportunities that a solid and thriving alumni association can offer.


Tom Borg Consulting, LLC., is a consulting group that specializes in outside the box strategic planning, leadership training, team building, and customer culture transformation, for public school systems in Michigan and the United States. For a free E-copy of this complete white paper or for more information please call 734-404-5909 or visit our website at www.TomBorgConsulting.com

How Public School Districts Can Thrive in Today’s Economy-Part II.

A Special White Paper by
Tom Borg, MS; Keith B. Elliott, RA, CSI; and Katherine Pinard ©2011

In Part II of this paper we continue to discuss how American public school districts continue to be hit hard by cutbacks from state and regional funding. Most districts immediately look for areas where funding and staffing may be cut to reduce overall expenditures. This is the first logical step with any budget, but when the proposed reductions get to the point of cutting so deeply that curriculum variety, quality and class sizes will suffer, it may be time to create a flexible and unique strategy for the development of new funding opportunities to help offset the future reduction strategies.

We recommended that the first step that administrators, teachers and school boards need to embrace is to change the way they think. Once that is accomplished all things are possible. The simplicity of that statement is intentional; the actual process takes time! We presented concepts and structured guidelines on how to create and use Action Groups, composed of representatives from teachers, administrators, transportation and food service personnel, as well as other pertinent groups that represent stake holders in any part of the school district team.

In this section of the white paper we would like to discuss how you can leverage the opportunities that exist when the action group process is applied to marketing your school district. This means marketing not only to the present client base of students, parents and community members, but also to potential students and parents who are not yet part of your school district.

Today, it is a necessity, that public schools develop an effective marketing plan that promotes their school district in a positive and proactive light. With one recent public school client we were able to assist them in creating and facilitating an ongoing Marketing Action Group that continues to produce impressive results. One key factor for this team’s success was the recruitment of representatives, from all pertinent sectors, who could amplify its success. A representative from the school board, administration, teachers, business community and other entities came together to form a powerful and action oriented group that gained impressive marketing results.

The reason for this success stems from a team process, where participants are empowered to contribute their own broad range of ideas to a consolidated, stake holder based marketing approach that is sponsored by the Action Group, and then rolled out to the rest of the district. Remember from Part 1 of this paper, “People don’t argue with their own data.” When they can contribute their own ideas, they usually support them.

Direct advertising by school districts continues to rise in the formats of direct mail, newspaper ads, radio and cable television spots, and more recently, lawn signs. Individual schools, as well as entire districts, commit to promoting themselves as the school of choice over their nearby competitors. The unfortunate mistake being made is these school districts advertise to the universe and other school districts and not to their established base of students and parents. We all need to be aware that current market research suggests that it costs six times more to attract new clients than to satisfy and keep present client base (students and parents). It makes sense to invest the majority of the dollars spent on advertising, on services that exceed the expectations of the present student and parent base.
If a school district effectively services the currently enrolled client base of students and parents in a caring and professionally flexible culture, most parents would not consider moving their children to another school district, private school or homeschooling environment.
Barring the inevitable moves away from the area due to the parent’s employment challenges, the school district needs to commit to retaining current students and parents support for the entire thirteen years of schooling.

In the past, many school districts actually have engaged in some form of marketing, however subtle. Unfortunately, these commonly disjointed efforts have lacked an organized or centrally coordinated plan. The soccer team solicits for donations for its athletes, the high school band promotes its’ spring concert to a certain audience, and the following week, the drama department promotes its’ spring play to a whole different group of people. The high school football team boosters will involve themselves with some form of fundraising just before a different group of students moves in to raise money for their class trip. Then the administrators and school board go to the voters with the hope of passing a millage to support the new school facilities.

These types of marketing efforts never seem well coordinated (if coordinated at all) with the myriad of student activity clubs, sports team fundraising, and millage efforts. This is a good example of where all the entities within a school district must work together, if it wants to survive, let alone thrive, in the years to come. A coordinated presence, a uniform presentation, and the well-timed “Ask” or request for funds from prominent individuals or corporations, will become a key survival tool.

We have found the most critical element that must be analyzed, enhanced and maintained is ongoing internal and external communication. The administration, teachers, assistant teachers, coaches, food services, transportation, and all other parts of the school district (internal clients), must have clear and concise ongoing communication between all departments. Observing what happens when staff members learn to actually talk to each other in terms of what they need for improvement, can be an amazing revelation.

Simple, ongoing communication is commonly hampered by internal politics, union concerns, and lack of communication structures that are designed to encourage “open and often” communication.

Once a solid communication stream is either re-found, or created anew and continuously supported from the top-down, the school district and all departments aforementioned must use it to communicate clearly and concisely with the students and parents (external clients) on a regular basis. It never ceases to amaze us, how easy it is, for all departmental staff, students and parents to NOT effectively communicate with each other. Talk, communication, a two-way flow of information; how simple yet so effective!

By implementing solid communication processes between all departments and stakeholders, a marketing plan can be established and a specialized Action Group, representing both your internal and external clients, can be implemented. You will find that there are multiple ways you can market your school district for little or no money.

We recommend that your Action Group use a 12 month look-ahead calendar to schedule the marketing activities. By plotting out the entire school year, it is easier to strategize and coordinate the different marketing approaches you will employ. You will also find that your marketing efforts generate the highest return on your investment in both materials and staff hours.

As a general summary statement: “It is all connected!” Not one part of this puzzle stands alone. When your school district teams create and maintain ongoing internal and external communication, coupled with a solid and continuously updated 12 month marketing plan, you will be able to leverage your marketing Action Group’s creativity and develop an effective marketing structure to promote your school district in a uniformly positive and proactive light.

In Part III, we will highlight the opportunities that arise when the Action Group process is applied to a school district’s creation and growth of an alumni association.

Tom Borg Consulting, LLC., is a consulting group that specializes in outside the box strategic planning, leadership training, team building, and customer culture transformation, for public school systems in Michigan and the United States. For a free 30 minute consulting session or for more information please call 734-812-0526 or visit our website at www.TomBorgConsulting.com

How Public School Districts Can Thrive in Today’s Economy - Part I.

A Special White Paper by
Tom Borg, MS; Keith B. Elliott, RA, CSI; and Katherine Pinard - Copyright 2011


In this and future sections of this white paper, Tom Borg, Keith Elliott, and Kate Pinard of Tom Borg Consulting, LLC., will share concepts, processes, and strategies they use with their public school system clients that are designed to bring about the necessary changes to help them survive and thrive in the 21st century.

All of our American public school districts continue to be hit hard by cutbacks from state funding. Most districts immediately look for areas where funding and staffing may be cut to reduce overall expenditures. This is a logical first step with any budget, but when the team gets to the point of cutting so deeply that curriculum and quality will suffer, it may be time to create a different kind of strategy for future funding opportunities to offset the reduction strategies. The key is to remember the statement, “People don’t argue with their own data.” We will talk further about this approach in getting “naysayers” to become part of the solution as opposed to being part of the problem.

The first factor that must change is how you think. All of the school staff: educators, administrators, and school board members, need to shift the entire realm of past paradigms by beginning to think the way successful businesses do. The well-worn, but not well-applied phrase, “Think outside the box,” becomes the part of a vital strategy to identify and capitalize on new and successful funding opportunities. Albert Einstein is often quoted: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Invariably, as you explore new approaches to solving your current funding dilemma you will have administrators, board members, teachers, union representatives, parents, and those whom you have never heard from before, question and condemn (not necessarily in that order), the suggestions made. It is true that when one door shuts another one opens. What many struggling teams simply don’t realize is they have to knock on that next door of opportunity to make it open for them. It does not necessarily seek them out.

The next step to take is to work with a training and facilitation consultant to initiate a planning session for all staff and stakeholders in order to ask some specific and possibly difficult questions that would include but are not limited to:
• What are your district’s areas of limitation?
• What are your district’s areas of unlimited opportunities?
• What makes your school district different or better than competing school districts? And at what?
• What are some of the strengths of your competing school districts?
• What are some of their weaknesses?
• Who are some of the key people in your community, and on your payroll, that can serve as resources to implement growth and retention strategies?
• What are some the initiatives you can take to become, not only another school of choice, but the school that is Chosen?


This will most likely play out as a multi-session effort and careful attention should be paid to capturing every fact and comment brought forward. Once those questions have been answered, and distilled into brief action oriented statements, you are ready to enlist the assistance of school staff and volunteers from the community. With our school district clients, we call these teams “Action Groups”, as we do so for a reason. Where a quick and loosely formed “committee” would spend most of its’ time pondering and pontificating, action groups get results through their specific and focused actions. Each action group selects a leader and an alternate leader and begins the pursuit of a specific and coordinated problem area or initiative on which to work with.

The action group leaders are part of the “Action Group Leader Council” which meets monthly to discuss their specific action group’s progress, stuck points, and solutions. It is at this time the members of these team’s will share resources, ideas, and action concepts that coordinate with each group leader as an aid to reaching conclusions on proposed action steps.

A “Central Team,” composed of: Administrators, School board members, Technology department heads, among many others meet periodically. It is at this time, when the Action Group Council Leader and the outside consultants report to the central team. Updates are given, requests for assistance are made, and action is authorized to implement the ideas generated by Action Group teams.

What is critical to this process is that the Action Groups develop a critical solution and experience successes early in the process; we call this reaching a milestone. We always recommend a celebration event for each milestone that has been obtained. Once action groups can see the positive results of their efforts, they can then begin to realize the power they have to make things happen, thus adding to the motivation in taking on bigger, more advanced projects.

In part two, we will discuss the opportunities that exist when the action group process is applied to marketing, alumni groups, and in developing your web marketing strategy.

Tom Borg Consulting, LLC., is a consulting group that specializes in outside the box strategic planning, leadership training, team building, and customer culture transformation for public school systems in Michigan and the United States. For a free 30 minute consulting session or for more information please call 734-812-0526 or visit our website at www.TomBorgConsulting.com