Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category
Stories Matter
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
As a person who went to Catholic schools at almost all levels of my education, I get a lot of fundraising material in the mail, and it is always interesting to read through and evaluate.
I went to college at the University of Notre Dame, and as you might expect, they are at the top of the pile when it comes to their fundraising efforts. They raise an unbelievable amount of money (their latest capital campaign raised well over $1 billion), so they must be doing something right!
Connecting with Alumni Through Sports
Thursday, March 17th, 2011
Catholic high schools are in a constant state of trying to get more contact with their alumni, and for good reason. Making alumni feel connected with the institution that played a large role in their formative years means they are more likely to share some of their success with their high school alma mater later in life. But the big question is how do schools make and keep a connection?
To me, one of the most obvious answers is through sports. Catholic education has a long, storied history with sports. From the CHSAA, to Rudy, there has definitely always been something special about Catholic sports. Basketball and football are the big ones, but soccer, swimming, and even smaller sports like fencing all have great histories when it comes to Catholic education.
So it really amazes me when even Catholic schools that have great sports programs keep them within the walls of the school and instead insist on updating their alumni with SAT scores. For the right audience, providing a feed of information about the comings and goings of a school’s sports program can get people really involved.
Will you have legions of alumni following your programs every move? Well, probably not. However, in the last 3 or so years with the spreading of smart phones, many people (young and old), keep tabs on a dizzying number and variety of sports. They are seeing tons of institutions flow through their sports update stream, so why not your school? And how? Here are some tips to get started:
A Venn Diagram
Monday, February 14th, 2011Like many nerds on the internet (like me), I’m a fan of XKCD, a popular web comic. I recently came across a certain XKCD comic that seemed pretty appropriate for Catholic Schools:
Source: XKCD.
Obviously this should be taken with a grain of salt (we still need to communicate to people to “sell” the idea of the school to them), but it makes a very important point: keep your basic information accessible to those who are looking for it.
Email Etiquette for Catholic Schools
Thursday, January 6th, 2011Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2011! We took a little bit of a hiatus in December, but we’re back now.
This post isn’t about basic email etiquette (like not hitting reply all to a message to 200 people) – it’s about the need for Catholic schools to more professionally manage their email marketing using the proper (and legal) techniques that are in standard usage in the rest of the industry. Many schools are doing this already, but a surprisingly large portion are doing it in a way that violates laws and annoys subscribers.
A Tale of Email List Woe
A few months ago I had a conversation with a development member of a Catholic school, and then several weeks later I realized something: I was on her development email list. This was actually fine, but I was getting emails on a regular basis about development projects that in no way remotely applied to me, and there was no way to unsubscribe. These emails were coming directly from this development officer and BCCed to this list. Short of being rude and emailing them directly, I was stuck.
Obviously this isn’t the end of the world. We all get forwards and things from friends and relatives that are mildly annoying, but we put up with them. The problem here is that this is indicative of a larger problem in some Catholic schools: a lack of knowledge of modern email standards. Not only are these standards just good practice and professional, many of them are mandated by the US government’s CAN-SPAM act, which specifics rules for email marketing.
Personal Stories Over Kids with Test Tubes
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010The title of this post is a little odd, but I’ll explain below.
One thing you notice when looking at a lot of Catholic school websites is the fact that they are all very different, but they all have very distinctive repeating patterns.
For instance, one of my favorite patterns to spot is the types of images used to show students. There are a lot of students playing music, a lot of them just smiling at the camera, but there is a bizarrely high number of images of students with test tubes in the school’s science lab.
A lot of them.
Beyond the Franchise
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010The majority of people reading this are probably familiar with franchises, but here is a very short overview. A franchise allows someone to start up a business that has all the tough branding and central organization done for you. For example, if I wanted to start a sub shop, I could start from scratch and start a sub shop. Or I could franchise a Subway.
The difference is, people already know what Subways is. They know what there favorite sub there is, what it will look like inside, and the general experience. All that is figured out for you, and it takes care of all the work and risk that is associated with starting up a business from scratch.
The Great Home Page Debate
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010One of the great things about Catholic schools are the diversity within them. You’ve got all sorts of different departments, clubs, and teams under the same roof as part of the same larger organization.
They have one thing in common, though, they all want resources, and they all want visibility for they do. The office administration wants to get the calendar in front of as many people as possible because it makes their lives easier. The soccer coach wants to promote the soccer team because, well, that’s his team. Each group needs something.
Information vs. Communication
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010Catholic school websites have to do a lot of things. I’d say many more things than your average website. Catholic school sites face an ever-growing demand to deliver to a pretty wide-ranging group of visitors.
For the purposes this article, however, we are going to break down visitors into just two groups: the sold and the unsold. First, let’s define these groups.
