For those of us in the U.S., it’s spring. The world around us is renewing and hopefully starting to bloom. And campuses are bustling with activity as well. This may be the busiest semester for many of you as we race to finish campaigns and projects while preparing for commencement and all the pomp and circumstance of the end of the school year.
Things are changing at CASE as well. This month we bid a fond farewell to our Senior Director of Communities and resident schools enthusiast, Ann Snyder. Ann has been at the helm of the schools community for CASE for the last five years. In that time, she has diligently worked to expand the programs and offerings for our independent and international school members. Many of you know her for her thought-provoking presentations and her zeal for helping schools optimize their advancement practice to take their programs to new heights. During her tenure, Ann reimagined our Schools Advancement Institute, established our Fundraising for Heads program, and grew the CASE-NAIS Independent Schools Conference to more than 1,400 attendees and three years of sold-out conferences. We are grateful for her impact on the schools community at CASE and wish her the best in her new role. Don’t worry, she will remain a thought leader in the sector and be partnering with us through her new role with Huron GG+A.
Upcoming Programs
Speaking of community, here are the upcoming programs for schools at CASE you do not want to miss.
These digital forums are conversations digging into one topic for, you guessed it, one hour with professionals from around the world and CASE experts. They’re a great way to get questions answered and to flex your knowledge on a topic. We hope you’ll join us for the conversation. The next session is Wednesday, April 23: Admissions and Advancement: An Important Relationship.
Schools Marketing and Communications Virtual Conference
Tuesday, April 1, in Asia, Europe, and U.S. time zones
Marketing and communications are vital parts of a school’s ecosystem and the marcomm department is charged with a broad range of responsibilities. This virtual conference will highlight the strategic, creative, and practical skills needed for your team to help your school program thrive. Sessions will be held online over two days, providing in-depth learning opportunities and time to connect with practitioners from schools across the globe. Topics will include writing for your head of school, yield marketing campaigns, strategic alumni outreach, and much more.
The conference is designed so that individuals in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America across multiple time zones can all participate. Sessions will also be recorded and available to registrants for a window following the conference date.
CASE Asia-Pacific Advancement Conference
May 14–15, Hong Kong
APAC will feature a Schools Forum exploring topics facing the region as well as robust schools content throughout the conference. If you are living in the region or have alumni, parents, or other potential donors in Asia, then I recommend this conference as an opportunity to more deeply understand the community and the work schools are doing in Asia-Pacific. I hope I will see you there.
This month, I am excited to introduce a new feature of Inside Schools written by Kyle Aldous, Executive Director of Communications for the Singapore American School. Kyle will be inspiring us with questions to help reframe or challenge our approach to marketing and communications on our campuses. Give it a read; I know you will enjoy it.
Until next time,
Crickett
Asking the Right Questions with Kyle Aldous
This is a brand-new advice column for marketers, comms folks, and all my advancement and alumni friends.
I know what you’re asking yourself right now. Why should I read this?
How about I start by telling you what this isn’t. An advice column filled with… advice.
No, we’re going to take an entirely different approach here.
I love what Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, once said: “We run this company on questions, not answers.”
What would happen if we did the same in our lives?
That’s what we’re here to find out.
I’m here to share questions that can help us make better decisions, strengthen our relationships, or maybe even approach our work differently. Along the way, I’ll share stories from my time at Singapore American School, examples throughout history, and other figures who might offer a unique lens through which to approach these questions.
So, why the obsession with questions?
In 2020, I was asked to speak to a group of high school juniors about “life skills.” I decided to crowdsource my presentation so I asked the students to tell me what life skill they believed would bring them the most value.
Over 250 students told me—taxes.
Sure, there’s some great stuff you can do if you understand tax law. Unfortunately, I’m a communications major which means my understanding of taxes is limited to downloading TurboTax or hiring someone else to do it for me. So, I tossed my crowdsourcing idea out and began my own search.
At the time I was reading Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing where he asks this question: “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” His belief is that inside every to-do list is an item that, if done well, can make some of the other items on the list easier or unnecessary. This question shifted my approach to the presentation and led me to a new guiding question: “What’s the one skill you can learn that will make everything easier or unnecessary?”
I was searching for the first domino—the skill that if mastered would set off a chain reaction that would positively impact everything that came afterward. And then I came across a quote (wrongly) attributed to Albert Einstein: “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would use the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask. For once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
Einstein may not actually have said it, but the idea hit for me—asking the right question matters.
Inquiry, curiosity, asking. Whatever you want to call it, this is the first domino. Asking thoughtful questions positively impacts everything that comes after.
We live in a world where answers are pushed on us all day, every day. Many times, the answers appear before the questions are ever asked. And before you know it, you’ve jumped into action, trying to implement the guidance you pulled from the latest “top 10 tips” article you found online.
That moment kicked off a multiyear obsession with finding the most valuable questions and, just as importantly, making enough time to reflect on them so I could get past my default response.
And now, we get to do this together in the weeks and months ahead. I can’t wait to talk more about the questions that have changed me over the last few years and hear from you about the questions that have had the most impact on your life.
Looking forward to seeing you back here next time.
Keep asking,
Kyle