Board Structures and Fundraising at International Schools
Is the current structure optimal for Fundraising?
As I said in one of my prior posts, “the success of the fundraising program very much depends on the Head and the Board,” regardless of who is hired as the Advancement Director. So let’s take a look at the structure of the Board at international schools, and the potential impact of that structure on the school’s ability to become a Fundraising School.
To radically oversimply for the sake of making this a blog rather than a book, let me say that there are Public School governance models, and there are Private School governance models. Yes, there are hybrid models that have developed over time, and there are schools that have to follow local laws, but perhaps you’ll recognize enough of your school’s structure in the description below to find this to be of some interest.
Many non-profit international schools were founded decades ago by embassies (for simplicity, I’m going to refer to US-related schools in this post) to provide an education for the children of diplomats, corporate executives, and missionaries. The goal was simply to provide a decent imitation of a good US public school, until those families rotated back to the US (or the children were old enough to be sent to boarding school). Many of those schools have since grown into globally renowned independent schools.
US public schools are governed by elected school boards, so as these non-profit international schools grew, that’s the model many of them adopted. Even at those schools that have long since come out from under the economic protection of an Embassy, and are subject to the pressures of the open market, you’ll see vestiges of this original structure, with the US Embassy automatically having a Board seat, and one or more seats still being elected positions.
This is different from the US Private School model where the Board is almost always entirely self-perpetuating. In addition, Public School board meetings are open to the public, while Private School board meetings are not. Even for those international schools that have taken steps away from the Public School governance model, we may still see a heightened sense of responsibility to provide a level of Board transparency not seen at US Private Schools.
One other difference relevant to this blog is that US Public School Boards do not fundraise, while almost all US Private School Boards do. True, some Public School Parent-Teacher Associations (PTA) are quite successful at raising additional funds, but this formula creates its own headaches by creating ambiguity in the locus of fiscal control: school administrators do not have direct control over how those funds are budgeted. By default, then, the funds must remain as, “nice to have,” rather than as budgeted, “must haves.” Some international schools have experienced this themselves; in these instances, there can be additional problems with issuing tax deduction forms, maintaining separate accounts, and perceptions of favoritism. This doesn’t mean it can’t be a productive relationship, but anyone who has worked under these circumstances for long enough knows that things are collegial until they’re not.
For better or worse, it makes sense that Public School Boards are elected, and that their meetings are open to the public: taxpayers must pay for the school regardless of whether they actually send their kids there, and you can’t withhold your taxes if you don’t like what the Board is doing. This is not the case, obviously, with a Private School, where customers can choose to simply not buy the product at all. US Private School Boards, therefore, feel no more obligation to give their customers a seat on the board (let alone access to Board meetings or the minutes thereof) than IBM.
The question, then, is whether it makes sense for the governance of your international school to be more like a Public School, or more like a Private School; depending on the goals and mission of the school, there are pros and cons to each model (the link I gave above to an article by Judith Schechtman and Marc Frankel gives a great overview of those pros and cons). However, given that this is a blog about fundraising at international schools, I’ll give my opinion on how each of these models affects a school’s ability to become a Fundraising school.
Given that they are elected to their position, Public School Board members should (theoretically) be expected to represent the concerns of those who elected them. In the case of international schools, the electorate is generally current parents, and in general, current parents are primarily (and understandably) concerned about the here and now, not 20 (or even five) years in the future. They’re concerned about the cost of tuition, quality of education, academic results, college acceptance, social-emotional issues, diversity, learning support, mother-tongue language acquisition, hiring and retaining the best teachers, or any other issue that is of immediate concern. You’ll notice that fundraising is not on that list, so it’s not usually part of the platform of someone (successfully) running for election.
Whenever someone is elected, therefore, we should expect that they come with the agenda of the people who elected them. The current board and administration will provide professional development for the new Trustee on the best-practices of a Trustee, background on all the strategic work that has been done to date, the goals of the Board, and all its policies and procedures, but the new Trustee is under no obligation to subscribe to any of it before they join the board… they have already been elected. Incidentally, those of us who have worked with elected boards know that it’s extremely rare that a Trustee is elected on a burn-it-all-down issue (and actually proceeds to do so); however, the opportunity is there, and we’ve all heard (if not experienced) the stories.
Staying on the topic of fundraising (which is generally not a burn-it-all-down issue), it is not a prerequisite for any elected Board member to accept the importance of fundraising before assuming their Board seat. This means that every time a new member joins the Board, we must go through the process of convincing that person of the why’s and how’s of fundraising after they’ve already joined the Board, in the hope that they’ll not just tolerate fundraising, but embrace it. If there is already a strong culture of philanthropy at the school, this task is much easier because the elected person is already fully aware of this deep-seated tradition. But if this is a school that is just starting a fundraising program, the elected person may be wholly ignorant of the initiative, or even sceptical. They may not view it as their responsibility to give meaningfully to an unrestricted Annual Fund, or to give financially at all. This then leaves us in the position of having to spend limited bandwidth on trying to convince our ostensibly closest supporters of the worthiness of our cause, rather than pointing at their generous example as a reason for others to give. It also means that those Trustees who originally pushed to launch the fundraising program can be quickly replaced by new Trustees who question the importance of it at all, with predictable results.
For a self-perpetuating board, if rigorous checks and balances are in place for the nominating committee, all of this can be avoided. They have the ability to screen and educate candidates before they join the Board. For those who haven’t read it lately, here are the National Association of Independent Schools’, “Principles of Good Practice for Independent School Trustees” from which I’ll highlight point #4 (out of 10, on page 5):
The board accepts accountability for both the financial stability and the financial future of the institution, engaging in strategic financial planning, assuming primary responsibility for the preservation of capital assets and endowments, overseeing operating budgets, and participating actively in fundraising.
For a self-perpetuating Board that has once subscribed to these principles, there are no if’s, and’s, or but’s regarding fundraising. There is no question as to whether the school should be fundraising. No Trustee who joins the Board of a US Private School is shocked to hear about their obligation to participate actively in fundraising. There is no range of Trustee, where some see their value add as limited to providing opinions in their range of expertise, while fundraising is the responsibility of others. Out of passion for the institution, a Trustee gives meaningfully to support its mission. And while a Trustee passionately voices every relevant concern at Board meetings, if they ever decide that the school is not worthy of their financial support, they realize that they cannot fulfill the expectations of a Trustee, and they step down.
Of course, elected Boards can also decide to follow these Principles of Good Practice, with the hope that they will be followed, but they cannot guarantee that newly elected Board members will adhere to them. The likelihood is that they will participate (especially if fundraising is already part of the culture), but it is equally unlikely that they will be removed (or feel the need to resign) if they don’t.
It is certainly possible to improve fundraising at schools with either elected and self-perpetuating boards, especially if the school with the elected board has already created a profound culture of fundraising. However, elected Boards add a level of complexity and chance that make launching and maintaining a fundraising program more difficult than with a self-perpetuating Board. Given the importance of the leadership of the Board in the success of a fundraising program, those schools must be aware of this added hurdle, and especially vigilant in their onboarding process as they attempt to build a lasting culture of philanthropy.