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June 2008 Issue
Charter School Service Center to Establish Advisory Board Over the past year, the CSSC has seen significant growth in its programs. From creating two charter school insurance consortia to putting on a statewide spelling bee, the CSSC continues to serve Indiana charter schools and their students. To move forward, we are interested in establishing an "advisory board" consisting of school leaders and leading service providers. Are you interested in serving? We believe we will have at least one formal "advisory board" meeting per year to discuss big picture goals and objectives and then monthly meetings during the year for members to meet with legislators, leading thinkers, perhaps receive professional development, visit with vendors and others. Let us know if you are interested in serving by emailing Melanie. Department of Education Representative Kristine Cohn Visists with Indianapolis Leaders CSSC Launches Bridge Loan Program Well, at long last, the Charter School Service Center’s Property Tax Bridge loan program is ready to launch. As a new product in the state of Indiana, it took a little longer than we would have liked to get up and running, but the good news is, at this point, we can move quickly, and can probably get funds turned around to an applying school within a week. The program will essentially be set up as a short-term loan (max six months) to bridge the cash flow gap until the property tax dollars arrive. Details are:
Please contact Dana Johnson to indicate interest and the dollar amount requested. Marketing Sense with Jeff Schafer By Jeff Schafer Remember When Tom Sawyer Had Everyone Whitewashing That Fence for Him? Gee, Wouldn’t It Be Nice if Someone Did Our Marketing for Us? Smart guy, that Tom Sawyer. He convinced all the neighborhood kids that whitewashing a fence was the cool thing to do, so they did it for him. One of the most cost-effective ways to market your charter school is to get someone else to do it for you for free. Word of mouth is great – and effective – but usually it’s one mouth talking to two ears at a time (maybe four or six ears if we’re lucky). Want larger numbers of ears? Sure you do. Actively seeking and securing publicity gets that done for you. Publicity gets your message out to large numbers of people without the cost of advertising. Let’s talk about what publicity is and is not. Suppose you’re watching a television commercial and a car maker includes news that their new model won a prestigious car-of-the-year award. You think to yourself “that’s some good publicity for them.” Or you notice in your billing packet that Indianapolis Power & Light has partnered with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful and you nod and think, hmm, associating with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful is “good publicity” for IPL. Actually, announcing in your own commercial that you have won an award is simply sharing information about a feature or benefit of your product – a fundamental principal of advertising. And when a large corporation partners with a not-for-profit with whose purpose and mission they agree, that’s smart positioning. The car maker and the energy supplier have control of their message and they are communicating the message themselves. That’s not publicity. Publicity is only partially-controlled marketing. Publicity is the practice of providing information to the media and hoping the information will be disseminated by them, not by you. You control how you present your message to the media; you can’t control how or if the media uses your message. Perhaps the first medium that comes to mind for school coverage is newspapers, but don’t forget about television (morning and noon talk shows, as well as human interest segments at 6 and 10), radio (talk radio, too!), magazines (parenting and family magazines), online magazines, and websites for all the above. Consider smaller, more specialized publications like educational journals and business or entrepreneurship magazines – after all, we are businesses struggling with start up issues, market share, human resource issues, and a hundred other business-related problems. The information you share with the media can take many forms – news releases, press releases (in the next issue, we’ll discuss releases), fact sheets, and even complete feature stories you will submit directly to magazine or newspaper editors – but any information you share must be engagingly presented. Call and introduce yourself to newspaper education writers and magazine editors and news directors. Their job is to fill dozens of pages or hours of broadcast time with interesting and informative content. Help them out. And for crying out loud, do your homework. What is that weekly newspaper’s target audience? Does the parenting magazine prefer a conversational tone? Does the educational journal allow submissions from non-educators? In what format does each medium prefer submissions? What kind of lead time does each need before running a story? This may sound like daunting work – and it is a competition (that’s what makes it so fun). Lots of organizations are scrambling for coverage just as you are. Yes, coverage must be earned, but if you can allow yourself to relax and speak/write honestly and enthusiastically in a natural voice, your information will come across as interesting, newsworthy fare. Remember, the “sale” you’re making is with the editor of the publication or news service. Once you have established your relationships with editors and they know that when you send them something it is reliable and interesting, you’ll get some coverage. Then you can sit back, relax, and watch them whitewash the fence for you. Jeff Schafer is the Director of Communications and Marketing for GEO Foundation. He Water purification, spreadsheets, nanotechnology, planets, Escher, and trail diaries (1850s-60s) are among the topics of new resources at FREE, the website that makes teaching resources from federal agencies easier to find: http://www.free.ed.gov/ Ball State Charter Schools Summer Institute Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad Program - Deadline 9/08 Indiana Youth Institute Fall Training Opportunity Juneteenth: A Celebration of Freedom Book It! Garfield Education License Plate US Department of Education Small, Rural School Achievement Programs |
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