Improve your crisis comms, all year long - Fine Point Communications

As we look ahead to a new school year, how would you assess your school’s preparedness to message through an on-campus crisis? Have you lined up the plans, systems and team that will be needed?

If these questions cause you to hesitate, check out Hotline, a new model for crisis communications. This service from Fine Point Communications puts school leaders more at ease about this important need.

Difficult issues are inevitable in a school, in spite of everyone’s best efforts: an unexpected and perhaps unwelcome departure; trouble online; weather disruptions; community disgruntlement; campus safety; and more.

In these moments, bad news travels fast. Still, schools tend to put off anticipating how they’d share such news — only to be caught short when things suddenly get hot.

Procrastination carries a cost: Poor crisis communications can damage relationships with parents, faculty and staff, alumni, and donors, a situation that can be hard and time-consuming to repair.

The right partner for the job

Some schools plan to lean on legal counsel to write their communications. That’s not only expensive but less than effective: The school can end up with messaging that feels, well, lawyered. Crisis communications must strike a balance between careful and candid, and attorneys typically care about only one of those goals.

A better solution for schools is to have an off-campus crisis communications expert at the ready, one who can quickly produce messages that inform and reassure a community.

Fine Point Communications helps school leaders communicate with confidence, sustaining reputation and community trust in times of crisis. Even before the firm’s founding, our staff has dealt with all of the situations listed above, along with several cases of what we sum up as “adults behaving badly.”

We work solely with independent schools. This focus means we clearly understand the needs and goals of schools, as well as the interplay between head of school, board chair and communications director. And we work easily and cooperatively with legal counsel.

Fine Point offers crisis communications both as an on-call and a year-round service. The latter promotes the best outcomes, allowing relationship and trust to deepen over time. Cost-conscious heads may recognize the potential but still hesitate, reluctant to pay for a service that, in the best case, goes unused.

Our new Hotline service

Hotline resolves this quandary. Schools get the crisis communications partner they need: Our firm is immediately available to address any situation that threatens reputation, financial well-being or operational security.

Hotline also eliminates the financial risk of the service. In fact, a school that doesn’t use us for crisis comms gets nearly all of its money back!

Here is how Hotline’s innovative pricing model works:

We invoice $1,500 monthly for the service, as a deposit against future work.
When the school calls us, those funds are applied to cover our time on its matter.
Any Hotline balance at the end of a month rolls over, to be used for future work. We recognize that, while some months will be busy, others will be quiet.
In late June, Fine Point returns 75% of unused deposit funds to the school — in time to be credited toward the fiscal year’s final accounting.

Hotline brings school leaders peace of mind — knowing that the right communicators are in place, ready to respond whenever dark clouds start to gather.

Engaging Free Point for crisis help also frees up on-campus communicators to continue meeting their everyday, business-as-usual duties.

As we roll out Hotline for 2025-2026, we are capping the number of schools who may sign up for the service. This will maximize our availability to clients without unintentionally overcommitting ourselves.

If Hotline sounds like a useful way to improve your school’s crisis communications, let’s talk! Schedule a Zoom call with our principal, Scott Butterworth, through Calendly to walk through the particulars. Or send us an email with any questions.