On a fall evening, about 30 school communicators gathered for fellowship and some DIY professional development.

This was a meeting of NYC Independent Schools Communications Professionals, an organization with more than 100 representatives of schools throughout the five boroughs and beyond. Among the group’s offerings is a series of in-person panel discussions with subject experts.

The topic this night was “Choosing the Right Communications Firm for Your School,” and the organizers’ good questions sparked lively discussion among three consultants and the audience.

For example, one question asked how communicators could justify to school leaders the need to call in outside help, especially when everyone in a school is vying for limited resources.

As we listened to the insightful responses, an issue came to mind that underlay the question: How do we as communicators persuade school leaders to value our work, and then to invest in it?

In this blog post, we will dig into both the asked and unasked questions.

Value proposition

It’s true: School leaders are more likely to balk than not at a request for outside help. In stewarding donors’ money and tuition dollars, administrators often seem profoundly allergic to any new expense.

To the communicator, it can feel like anything worth doing must be done in-house.

At the same time, schools rely regularly on off-campus support, for everything from physical plant to technology to admissions to security to audits. Even at financially struggling schools, heads and chief financial officers will sign contracts and checks — perhaps really big checks — in certain situations.

Why these projects but not communications ones? Because, in spite of the expense, they offer clear value to the school.

Warren Buffett puts the matter this way: “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” So emphasize what your project delivers: the problem it addresses; the pain it takes away.

That’s our first tip for communicators interested in outside help: Focus a request on what the school will get — the payoff, not the bill.

In a budget-sensitive workplace like a school, everything is a trade-off. Communicators know this well: Should we commission a photo shoot this year, or do we instead invest in digital marketing?

Such decisions are forced by budgets, but ultimately they are decided by how much value they return.

Measurement by inference

Of course, evaluating communications work is no simple task, given how few of our co-workers understand fully what we do and why.

Staff roles with self-descriptive names — fundraising, admissions, counseling, nurse — have outcomes that are quickly measurable: Did the office achieve its goal? Are students physically and mentally healthier?

Communications, by contrast, is often the means to an end. This makes our outcomes much harder to objectively assess.

Are we more likely to attain our goals through publishing two magazine issues or with a set of videos? Did the redesigned website prompt more prospective families to visit campus? How much trust from readers and donors will the school retain by copy-editing this appeal? The only honest answer is, it’s hard to say without a lot of research.

That answer can be hard for heads and CFOs to hear, and it certainly doesn’t invite further investment: How confident can they be that a new expense will produce the result everyone wants?

But this is not to say that communications’ value can’t be measured. Rather, the value shows up inferentially: the admissions metrics that improved following a drip email campaign; the alumni giving that jumped shortly after a magazine issue reached mailboxes; the tagline that became a community-wide form of self-identity.

Then there are the dogs that didn’t bark: the parents who meet deadlines because they read the weekly newsletter; the volunteers who show up after seeing a social media appeal; the crisis communications that tamped out a smoldering issue.

Each of these successes contributes value, helping the school fulfill its mission and meet key goals.

School leaders coming to value communications relies, then, on 1) their recognizing our inferential contributions and noticing the issues that didn’t arise, and on 2) their seeing these outcomes as intentional, not a happy accident.

Rooty toot toot

Ultimately, the duty for helping administrators reach this point must fall to the comms leader. No one else in a school will care as much in developing this understanding.

Here’s what we suggest: Have communications own the outcome before it ever starts the project, making clear to the boss, “We meant to do that.”

How do you do this? That’s our second tip: Toot your own horn in advance through a well-crafted communications mission statement that you bring to your boss.

In four sections, tied to the academic year, this two-page document lays out your department’s big-picture plans:

• Your purpose: Remind the boss why your school has a communications office. Aim to tie the language here directly into the school’s mission statement. (This section should not change from year to year.)
• Your goals: The most important ways the office will fulfill its purpose this year, including in coordination with other departments. (This section may change annually.)
• Your actions: The most important activities in the coming year to meet or advance the goals. (This will change from year to year.) Here is where you subtly prompt the conversation about how outside expertise or additional hands will be crucial to meeting the goal.
• Your timeline: When the actions will begin and end. (Some actions never end but most will, so this list will need annual updates.)

This doesn’t have to be a solo project: Meet with team members and even other departments to solicit their communications ambitions for the coming year, too. Only the communications leader, though, gets to decide what goes up the chain of command.

Closing thoughts

When the mission statement is done, share it with your boss ahead of a 1-on-1 meeting. Explain that you’ve created a departmental roadmap for the work to come and that you’d like to run it by the highest levels for input and blessing on the goals and actions — the deliverables.

Getting executive buy-in on those is the whole point. This is why you want to connect everything on your list to the school’s mission statement and strategic plan; that will ease your way.

The 1-on-1 meeting is where you talk through your vision for the year, answer questions and work for that buy-in. Help your boss — ideally, the head — come to understand how communications can help the school achieve its key goals.

Channel your inner development director: Don’t jump the gun and ask too soon for money. The point of this meeting is to excite your boss and help them understand the opportunities.

Once you’ve closed that deal, realizing your plan’s payoff begins to become everyone’s focus going forward. Price tags — including bringing in outside help — are now just details in how you get there.

Here’s our final tip: Play the long game. Allow these conversations to take their own pace, rather than pushing for a particular schedule. Sometimes good ideas need time to take root. Anyway, with budget season starting in the late fall, it’s not unusual to see a project approved in one academic year but to wait until the following year for funding.

If starting quickly on a goal is important, your timeline will highlight that. You can reinforce the bullet during your meeting. Just don’t get pushy.

This post is adapted from the November 2024 issue of Refill, a newsletter published by Fine Point Communications.