Our Services

Admissions Development

Admissions is the lifeblood of every independent school. Those schools that have effective, structured processes in place prosper both short-term and long-term. ISPG offers a complete package of services for your school designed to:

• Deliver significant increases in enrolment
• Increase the effectiveness of your admissions office or person
• Reduce the cost of student outreach and marketing
• Bring structure to your admissions process
• Train your admissions personnel on the use of strategies and tactics that will enrol more families
• Leverage other school functions to enhance the admissions performance

.......more on Admissions

 Head Search: Find Your New School Leader

The leadership of a school is responsible for all of the day-to-day operations as well as planning for the future of the school. Your students, teachers and school community are relying on the new Head of School to lead them educationally, professionally and personally. ISPG's Head Search package is designed to bring you the candidates that best fit with the culture of your school, or where a change is desired, those who can create the kind of culture you want in our school. There may be no more important task than the hiring of your new Head of School, the inspirational and educational leader that you will trust with the welfare of the students, teachers and school relationships. We have structured our services so that your school can choose the right person with the vision, values, training, and skillset  that your school needs.

• Head of School search
• Leadership Review
• Assistance in creating a working description of the School, its goals and the role of the next Head and/or other Senior Executives
• Search planning, preparation and implementation
• Preparation of ads and pro-active, effective outreach
• Screening, shortlisting and interviewing candidates
• Head of School Assessment & Evaluation
• Head compensation
• Contracts

We believe successful searches are the result of both hard work and in taking all of the steps necessary to ensure success. We attribute our record of success to the diligent application of our proven process for identifying, screening, evaluating, and recruiting quality candidates. For quality results, filling a position must involve establishing a good relationship, not just a hiring transaction.

Board Organizational & Leadership Development

Having an effective governance model that fits for your organization can increase productivity, reduce incidences of conflict and bring the school community closer together. A tight-knit community fosters growth, prosperity and financial stability.

ISPG offers a variety of processes, methods and tactics that can significantly enhance your governance experience and the experience of those who are on the Board and related committees.

Some of these are:

Board Chairs typically have some valuable skills that assist them in leading the organization. We can enhance that skill set and provide structure and situational options through experiential processes for a Chair that can expand their ability to lead the school.

We can bring appropriate definition to what role the Chair plays in your governance model and provide individual leadership development techniques to cultivate that role.

Starting from vision and values and working towards roles and responsibilities, goals and objectives, finding/electing/appointing board members, size of the Board, code of conduct, meeting protocol, committees, communication, and measuring results, ISPG Associates can provide assistance with some or all of these important functions.

Whether you are a well-established Board or a new Board, the cornerstone of a school's success is usually directly related to the Board and its effectiveness.

Is your Board functioning effectively? Are you attracting quality people to serve? How about your new members? How will they know what to do? Do you have an effective communications model? How does your Board resolve conflict?

These questions and the answers can be found in ISPG's assessments, workshops and retreats.

• New Board member orientations - held in the fall of each year.
• Board development workshops - held in the fall and spring of each year.
• Retreats - held in the summer of each year.

Who runs the school and who makes what decisions? Does the Head sit on the Board? When does the Head interact with the Board? Who is responsible for what functions?

The Board - Head of School relationship is an important piece of the governance model and ISPG Associates bring clarity to how it might best function in your individual circumstances.

Is your Board in turmoil? Board members unsure of what their responsibilities are? Is your Board involved in operational activities? Are contentious issues polarizing your school community? Is parking lot chatter the official sport in the school?

ISPG associates can facilitate conflict resolution sessions for your Board and provide advice around how to structure Board activities so that conflict can be minimized in the future.

Long Range and Strategic Planning: Planning designed specifically to meet the organization's needs

What is Strategic Planning?

Strategic planning is a process where key individuals in an organization participate in articulating a vision of a "desired future" and a blueprint for attaining that future is defined, focusing on the next three to five years.

Benefits of a Strategic Plan

• Articulates shared mission and purpose
• Creates a framework to guide decision making
• Develops organizational effectiveness & commitment
• Foundation for fundraising
• Tool to monitor performance
• Allocation of resources to opportunities
• Determines school priorities
• Strengthens Head-Board partnership
• Defines measurements of success
• Forms the basis of Head/Board evaluation
• Builds energy & momentum
• Analyzes critical issues
• Improves finances & projections
• Greater accountability

ISPG Associates have been integral in keeping schools sustainable by helping management and school staff to:

• Make better decisions
• Manage change
• Feel less isolated
• Individualize your school, its philosophy and ethos
• Avoid crisis situations

The results that you can expect when your school community has developed a Strategic Plan and is working together executing upon it are:

• Higher student retention
• More admissions
• More successful fundraising
• Acceptance of tuition fee increases
• Financial stability
• Perception of good value amongst families and the community
• Stable teaching staff
• High student morale and achievement
• Greater philanthropy
• More volunteer involvement
• No vocal, polarized minority

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Facility Planning and Design

Many school underestimate the impact facilities and future plans for facilities may have upon prospective students. ISPG works to ensure that facilities are well located, well designed and welcoming, and that the future facilities plan can accommodate growth in both student numbers and program development. Our lead facilities associates are architects who have constructed new schools, planned and built additions on schools, converted buildings into schools, and developed entire modular campuses on an on-time, on-budget basis.

ISPG Facilities Development Services:

• Negotiate a Purchase or Lease
• Campus Master Planning
• Development/Feasibility Studies
• Project Financing
• Refurbishment or Conversions
• Architect Briefs for Remodeling, Extensions and New Building Projects
• Rezoning and Permitting Process
• Construction Project Management
• Space Needs Analysis

Financial Management

Fiscal stewardship is central to the success of an independent school. A financially responsible school is attractive to parents and contributes significantly to their enrolment decision.

ISPG associates have assisted numerous independent schools to find better ways to manage their financial obligations, typically resulting in a stronger organization with clear financial goals and objectives and a strategy to achieve them.

Strategic Financial Planning

• Are your current decisions being directed in accordance with your strategic five-year financial plan?
• Have you deviated from the plan?
• Are there pieces missing from your plan that will impact negatively on the school's future?
• We can help you to create your individual strategic financial plan in accordance with the vision and values of your school or work with your existing plan to make it current, relevant and forward looking.

Business and other program assessments

• Does your fee structure reflect your vision and values?
• Are your programs cost effective?
• Are the business fundamentals underpinning your school sufficient to meet your future needs?
• We can evaluate you against other schools and other businesses that demonstrate strong fundamentals and provide options for enhancements to your school.

Budget development

• Is budget time pleasant or can it be tedious?
• Is balancing administration's needs with the Board's challenging?
• Identifying and managing the various revenue items that contribute to the income of a school and then consistently matching these with the required and discretionary expense items requires thoughtful consideration, planning and structure.
• Clearly outlining who does what and when increases efficiencies and reduces cost.
• Recognition and proper use of resources can enhance communications, build community and free up funds for education related programs.
• We can provide a structure that makes the best use of time and resources and provides timely accurate reporting to the Board and administration.

Accounting services

• Wondering if your accounting practices could be better?
• Unsure of whether to hire in or hire out for the service?
• We will evaluate your financial needs and provide recommendations and strategies to make the accounting function as efficient as the rest of your school operations.

Identify/develop school revenue generators

• Are you fairly charging for the services that you deliver?
• Could there be areas that can produce more funds for your school without bringing undue hardship to your families?
• Are there hidden profit centers that are being overlooked?
• ISPG can evaluate your funding platform and operational model to ensure that your school is offering an equitable and fair package to both parties.

...more on Financial Management

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Philanthropy: Friend Raising and Fund Raising

Does your school receive donations annually from all of those families who are in a position to give? If you answered no, then you need program that can unlock those thousands or even millions of dollars for school projects, programs and future growth. ISPG has raised over 80 million dollars for schools and non-profit organizations. From schools that are only a few years old to the most established, your commmunity will give if they are approached with the right proposition.

• Financial Feasibility Study
• Annual Fund Consulting & Campaign Management
• Capital Campaign Consulting & Management
• Annual campaign development
• Major School fundraising events
• Endowment Growth Planning
• Development Program Audit

........more on philanthropy

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Curriculum, Programming, and Professional Development

• Program Assessment
• Curriculum Development
• Scheduling
• Technology
• IB, Montessori, AP, International/ESL
• Alternate programs (e.g., Learning disabilities, daycare, preschool)

Human Resources - Faculty and Staff

• Faculty Recruitment
• Human Resource Management
• Implementing personnel policies
• Faculty Evaluation
• Compensation Consulting
• Policy development

Executive Coaching

It's lonely at the top of an organization whether you are the Chair of the Board or the Head of School. Who to talk to about the high level decisions that need to be made, how to initiate or manage change and who will follow up are all issues facing an organization's leadership.

Staff may not provide the quality and frankness required to make a good decision, colleagues are your competitors, other Board members are looking to you for the leadership, what is available as a resource to address this dilemma?

ISPG offers experienced executive coaching services with specific expertise within the independent school community. We have the questions that can sufficiently challenge you to move up to the next level and the support to mitigate your feelings of isolation.

Monthly or bi-Monthly Sessions for Board Chairs, Heads, Senior Administration

• Call it a lifeline, a resource, or someone to hear your thoughts and ideas. These one hour sessions can re-focus you on the tasks at hand, provide solutions for the challenges you are facing or discover other issues of significance that need to be addressed.
• In person or by telephone.

Annual Executive Sessions

• These one-day sessions put you and your Board/staff together for a day of discovery, review, issue processing and professional development.
• The team leaves focused and refreshed with an energy that will infect the rest of the community.

Specific Accountability Tools

• Who makes sure that you complete on a timely basis?
• Could you use some assistance to ensure you are meeting the expectation?
• We can "hold your feet to the fire".

Conflict Resolution Assistance

• Conflict is present is some form in every organization.
• Recognizing it and then addressing it before it creates discord can be challenging.
• We can facilitate a process to resolve conflict as it occurs before it starts costing significant time and energy within your school.

Assists Chair/Head in Making Better Decisions

• Think you have the answer? We may have a few questions that cause you to reconsider your initial decision in favour of a more productive one.

Assists Chair/Head in Managing/Starting Change

• Change can be a difficult process. Step by step we are there to support you in a "carefrontational" manner.