Private Schools Mine Parents Data, and Wallets

thong tin du lich | school health |

Shortly after she enrolled her 3-year-old son in a prestigious, $21,000-a-year Upper East Side preschool, Rachael Combe, an editor at Elle, received an invitation from the head of the school to come by for a visit. She assumed the meeting was to discuss how her son was adapting to the school’s curriculum.

By JENNY ANDERSON

Published: March 26, 2012

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Robert Caplin for The New York Times

Daniel Boyer, a consultant to private schools, said they researched their potential donors to personalize appeals.

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Instead, the head of school explained that he was laying the groundwork for a new capital campaign, and that he had already received commitments from various families — some up to $1 million. Would Ms. Combe and her husband consider a gift of "even $25,000 to $50,000?"

Relentless fund-raising, be it for the annual fund, the spring benefit or the latest capital campaign, is as much a feature of private schools as small classes and diverse offerings. But with schools hitting the upper limits of what they can charge for tuition, consultants, parents and school heads say the race for donations has become notably more intense and aggressive.

Schools are mining online data for details about parents’ homes, luxury cars, private planes, stock holdings and donations to other charities. So-called development offices, once the domain of part-time administrators and school volunteers, have been elevated along with the titles of those running them, who are now known as chief advancement officers, directors of philanthropy and heads of strategic initiatives. Heads of school report spending much of their time in search of money, according to surveys.

The biggest change is the sophistication of the data available, and how schools can use it. Before a campaign begins, consultants interview 40 to 50 of the school’s top prospects to determine their level of interest in a campaign and how much they might give (a "feasibility study"). The consultants also try to measure a school’s philanthropic capacity (a "capacity analysis").

"It’s not just that we know how to ask for money, but we can figure out more precisely what you can reasonably expect to raise," said Daniel Boyer, director of client relations and a senior consultant at Marts & Lundy, a consulting firm with a large private school practice.

Donors are then wooed with personal touches based on schools’ research. Say, for example, a parent sits on the board of the Museum of Modern Art. "Let the person tell you about their interest in the arts and what they like to support and whether they would like to support a high school student who has an interest in art," Mr. Boyer said.

These efforts are paying off. In New York City, the median amount of annual giving raised per school increased 268 percent over the last decade, to $1.7 million from $462,341, according to data provided by the National Association of Independent Schools . The national median, by comparison, has increased 63 percent, to $895,614 from $548,651 (the New York sample included 20 schools; the national one, 246).

School heads say that raising money is an increasingly important part of the job. Tuition, more than $40,000 at some schools, typically covers only 80 percent of the cost of educating a student. So schools need additional fund-raising to cover financial aid, maintain and expand facilities and broaden program offerings.

"It’s a competitive business in New York City, and if you are missing one of the stool legs you won’t thrive very long," said Steve Nelson, head of the Calhoun School on the Upper West Side. "If you don’t have the additional revenue that comes from fund-raising, you’re out of luck."

Driving the effort is an increasing stratification of wealth, even in the private school population. In recent years, fund-raisers and school heads say, more revenue is coming from a smaller group of parents and what used to be the "80/20 rule" — 20 percent of the parents give 80 percent of the money — has become the 90/10 rule, or even the 95/5 rule.

If the Occupy Wall Street movement focused attention on the perceived excesses of the 1 percent, private schools are leaning on the wealth of their own 5 percent to try to win a bigger piece of their philanthropic pie (the back-of-the-envelope assumption is that families with more than $5 million in assets often give away up to $500,000 annually).

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