In my role as communications and marketing manager for the Office of Catholic Education, I assist all of the diocesan Catholic elementary and high schools with various marketing and communications efforts, including their enrollment marketing and fundraising, or advancement, efforts.
Over the summer, I was fortunate to join more than 400 fellow Catholic school professionals at the Partners in Mission Conference held in Quincy, Mass., a suburb of Boston. Partners in Mission is described as “a full-service consulting and professional education firm focused exclusively on developing excellence in Catholic school advancement and leadership.” Each year, its members hold a five-day conference focusing on enrollment and advancement for Catholic schools across the country. The conference was a perfect opportunity for me to learn from some industry experts and bring back some best practices for the 2023-24 school year.
During the “Introduction to Enrollment Management” session, presenters reinforced key elements of what is known as the “enrollment funnel,” Partners in Mission’s key visual tool to help others understand how each marketing technique fits into a potential Catholic schools family’s journey. For example, the top of the funnel starts with creating a branding strategy that helps a school create an identity – which is of key importance to our potential parents – and ends with graduation. Because I am generally familiar with the enrollment funnel, I focused on the concrete examples for each step and how our schools could use them. I found interesting how one of the steps called for creating opportunities to foster relationships with new families. The session leaders suggested sending out baptism, communion and birthday cards.
Another session titled “Goodbye School Auctions and Hello Galas” focused on the importance of data and fundraising. I found the communications strategies presented of important significance to our schools. Led by the founder of Partners in Mission, Larry Furey, the presentation helped map out an ideal event calendar and how to engage with potential participants, vendors and sponsors. One’s local business community and its relationship with the school plays an important role in the success of fundraising events, so proper two-way communication is key. Furey provided examples of specific letters that can be sent out to vendors and sponsors that detail not only the importance of the event, but what it means to be a good partner with a local Catholic school.
One of the most robust conversations at the conference centered around the increasing use of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Bard and others. During the “AI Is Here to Stay: What Is It and How Can We Begin Using It?” talk, attendees were astonished by how easily ChatGPT could compose an enrollment acceptance letter or an entire presentation. As a matter of fact, at the end of the session, the leaders revealed how they used ChatGPT to help create their presentation, while stressing that human effort was still needed to make it engaging.
Questions were raised during this session about what impact this technology is having now – and can have in the future – as well as whether it will make society lazy. The presenters pointed out the currently limited capabilities of various AI technology, and the importance of using it as one of many tools to further one’s own creativity and work. The reality is that AI, for the moment, is here to stay. Advancement directors in Catholic schools across the country are often a team of one. Used correctly, AI can be a brainstorming and time-saving tool.
The final day of the conference allowed time for reflection on how to tie the sessions together. One of the sessions offered first-time attendees like myself to how to take the information from the last few days and create a plan around how we will use it for our own schools. With my “to-do” list easily multiple pages long, this will be an ongoing project. That being said, my first goal was to download all of the presentations from the conference app and create a folder for our principals and advancement directors to use.
I write a bi-weekly email to the advancement directors and enrollment managers at the elementary and high school levels, and my goal is to share these presentations and the insights I gained on a regular basis. I returned home with two of the largest binders I have ever seen, which includes samples of different tools like donor letters, press releases and more. I look forward to utilizing these binders in my own work as well as with the schools!
Michael Bress is communications and marketing manager for the Office of Catholic Schools.
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