The long haul

To ensure the long-term viability of your school, school leaders must make decisions about what the future holds and how they respond to it. Corey McIntyre sets out a systems approach to financial sustainability

Any school can improve its chances of survival by developing systems and organisational capacities for sound decision-making. Before you embark on a process to improve your school’s financial planning systems, there are several guiding principles to bear in mind.

1. For the school to sustain itself indefinitely, its systems should function effectively regardless of the people in them. The term “systems” here means all the established norms, schedules, processes, protocols, language, structure, and tools that people regularly use to do their jobs. Getting the the right people is just the first step; having those people build self-sustaining structures, habits, and values is the real work.
2. Commit to a controlled and orderly approach of continuous improvement. Do not try to fix everything at once. Measure your current capacities rationally and address the gaps in a developmental sequence. Master basic skills before moving to advanced.
3. Make time for reflection and systems improvement. Fixing broken systems in a school can be like fixing the car while you are driving it. The fact that most of us barely have the time to keep up with our daily emails makes the task appear daunting.
4. The effective system must capture the right information and present it to the right people at the right time. This requires a system that is thoughtfully designed to mesh with the daily life of the school so that data flows naturally and efficiently to decision points by default. Leaders should have to struggle to avoid useful data.

The right mix
Strategies that lead to effective information systems should include the following qualities.

Data capture:
• data needed to support key decisions is captured;
• capture processes build in steps to verify accuracy of input; and
• data from relevant activities are captured in real-time, when the activities are happening.

Storage and retrieval:
• data is protected from accidental deletion or invalid changes, yet is open and widely accessible to all decision-makers;
• data is indexed, mapped, and referenced so leaders know what they have and where to find it quickly; and
• storage media supports detailed research and analysis. Users can drill down into details and carry out flexible ad hoc enquiries.

Standard reporting:
• reports are relevant to goals and common decisions;
• reports consistently alert leaders to potential issues and opportunities in a timely manner;
• reports tell the story of the school as a whole. Interrelationships are visible;
• reports give current information meaning with a context of external comparison, historical trends, or expected results; and
• reports are standardised, system-generated, and created and distributed with minimal manual effort.

Global strategies:
• leaders value information and model that to the school;
• basic information management skills are defined and developed among all staff;
• technology infrastructure is appropriate for systems’ needs;
• the community has a shared understanding of the systems; and
• external trends and data are gathered through formal scanning processes.

The challenge for many schools lies in enlisting the school community in collecting and sharing information. A commitment to financial sustainability is the foundation, but schools must also engage staff in the design of the information system, underlining the usability of the tools as well as an understanding of their purpose.

Schools that develop these capacities will be equipped for change to sustain themselves for generations to come.

Corey McIntyre is CFO of the National Association of Independent Schools in Washington, DC. This article is based on a chapter in the NAIS book Affordability and Demand: Financial Sustainability for Independent Schools, available at www.nais.org/go/bookstore.

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