Independent schools raise money in two crucial ways:
1. Tuition
2. Fund Raising
Cardinal Rule #1:
Independent schools always run in the red.
The money independent schols take in - tuition - never exceeds the money that goes to their operation.
(In business terms:
Income never exceeds expenditures -
about as business-minded as I care to get)
(Notice the subtle, but insidious substitution of "income" for "tuition".
This is not merely a monetary shift; it is a philosophical metamorphosis with serious implications for the integrity of the independent school.)
Independent schools are not (and should not be) money-making operations.
(They're tax exempt for a reason.)
Cardinal Rule #2:
Fund Raising must always be employed to close the fiscal gap created from the environment of Cardinal Rule #1.
During the last twenty-five or so years, independent schools and their boards have understandably focused particularly upon getting their institutions financially solvent, and then keeping them that way. Their fears and justification are real: many schools go under precisely because of monetary mismanagement.
"The Lord Will Provide" mentality, when the headmaster or headmistress could focus solely on the task of the shaping of young lives, and the "If you build it, they will come" approach was no longer compelling,
There is sense.
There is sensibility.
And then there is reality.
"The Lord Will Provide" is fine and good. But the people to do the Lord's work - raising money - had to be in place. Else the only thing that "The Lord Will Provide" was disaster.
And then there would be no more independent school.
To save the independent school, a change had to happen.
The power structure shifted.
Find a Fund Raiser.
Find a White Knight.
Find someone who can tap into Alumni treasure troves or create the environment where that would happen as a rule of thumb.
And So It Dawned:
The Age Of The Monetary Administrators