5 minute read
Advancement is a team sport
School NEWS
Advancement is a team sport
James McMillan
Richard Wills
Mary Ann Cloherty
Irina Kondratieva
Cindy Morton
By James McMillan
The purpose of the Selwyn House School Advancement Office is to support the mission and vision of the school. We achieve this by focussing on two major areas: friendraising and fundraising.
Friendraising
Friendraising makes the school stronger by keeping Old Boys informed about the school by mail as well as through email, social media and the Selwyn House website. We also create social and athletic events where Old Boys can meet, renew friendships and create new ones.
Now that the class of 2016 has graduated, there are 3,030 active Old Boys living in 44 different countries. To view a map showing where the Old Boys live, go to www.selwyn.ca / Old Boys / Old Boys and Friends.
In Montreal, where the largest number of Old Boys (82 per cent) list their residence, there are 19 events scheduled for 2016-17. Two of these events are weekly occurrences, the Old Boys’ Pick-up Basketball on Wednesday nights has 30 evenings booked, and the Old Boys’ Blues Band has 25 evenings booked. These commitments to the Old Boys mean that in Montreal there are 72 evenings booked between midSeptember and mid-May.
There are five other events across Canada, four in the USA, one in Paris and one in London. These 83 commitments to keeping the Old Boys informed about the school are extremely important. Members of the Old Boys’ Association Board of Directors work tirelessly to increase Old Boys’ involvement with the school and to develop new opportunities for them to interact and stay in touch.
Fundraising
The second focus is to encourage all Old Boys, parents of Old Boys, current parents, friends of the school, corporations and foundations to participate in the fundraising efforts that support the school’s vision and programs.
Through Annual Giving, our constituents enable the school to create new programs, hire additional staff, and remain committed to the professional development of all staff.
Many thanks to everyone who participated in the 2015-16 Annual Giving. As of the date of this publication, we raised a record $467,473.46 to be used in 2016-17.
Advancement Team
The key to being able to successfully manage over 80 events each year and coordinate all the school’s fundraising efforts is to have dedicated, professional Advancement Office staff who understand everyone’s role on the team and can assist each other when needed. Everyone on the team also fully understands the importance of our relationships with other departments of the school, such as Business, Admissions, Athletics and Administration.
As director of advancement, I am very fortunate to have three other full-time and one part-time staff on my team.
Mary Ann Cloherty is the director of annual giving and Advancement Office manager. She coordinates every aspect of the Annual Giving Campaign and, through statistical analysis and a focus on personal appeals, has been able to significantly increase participation and annual income from this appeal. As the advancement office manager, she is key to the running of the office and ensures that all the parts of every job are handled efficiently and effectively.
Advancement Assistant Cindy Morton is our
database manager. All information—including receipts and updates—is entered into our database by Cindy, who processes all donations and makes sure that each is fully documented before handing everything to the Business Office. She also researches the Web for information on our Old Boys and all of our constituents to make sure that the database is as up-to-date as possible.
Richard Wills is the school’s publications editor and webmaster. He is a member of the advancement team, but also creates publications and internal documents, such as diplomas, handbooks, etc. Richard is a talented interviewer, writing most of the articles and contributing much of the photography for both Veritas magazine and the school’s website.
Irina Kondratieva is our part-time archivist and handles the cataloguing and storage of all of Selwyn House archives, including the external storage of Admissions and Business Office documents. She is instrumental in soliciting the help of Old Boys, staff
School NEWS
Through Annual Giving and major gift campaigns, the school has:
• Built an endowment for bursaries that enabled the school to award $700,000 in needs-based bursaries to 15 per cent of the students in Grade 7-11 for the 2016-17 school year
• Renovated and updated all of its campus and facilities
• Rebuilt and refurbished the
Westmount Athletic
Grounds to give the school access to a first-class athletic field
• Negotiated a longterm contract with Westmount
Recreational Center to secure all of the school’s required icetime for its programs
• Remained debt-free
Advancement Department
From left: Justin Peress, Brendan Keefe and Simon Altman (all 2010) with Headmaster Hal Hannaford at the 2015 Montreal Reunion
and parents to identify the subjects in each photo. Irina’s next project will be to start the upload and identification of the tens of thousands of digital photos stored over the past decade.
The Advancement Office team helps to plan each event, publicize it, set it up when it is in Montreal and make sure that everything goes smoothly throughout. Mary Ann also attends outof-town events, such as Toronto, Boston and New York Old Boys’ reunions.
Another key member of the advancement team is our headmaster, Hal Hannaford. Hal has 27 years of experience as a headmaster in Canadian independent schools, and not only does he understand the role of the Advancement Office in supporting the schools’ mission and vision, he understands his own role in that process, and participates in every event possible.
His support and encouragement to develop and improve advancement at Selwyn House has been inspirational. Whether Hal is speaking to the Board of Directors, the staff, parents or Old Boys, he always talks about the value of advancement at Selwyn House and how the relationships that are cultivated by advancement have allowed the school to grow, improve, and stay at the forefront of boys’ education in Canada.
Every August, when I have the opportunity to address all the Selwyn House staff about what we do in advancement, I always tell them that I have an amazing advancement team and then I display a group photo of every teacher, administrator and support staff at Selwyn House. They are my advancement team. They are ones our Old Boys, current parents, and parents of Old Boys remember, and they are the reason that Selwyn House has been— and will continue to be—a successful independent day school for boys.
James McMillan has been at Selwyn House since 1979. He was Director of Music from 1979 to 2011, and has served as Director of Advancement since 1987.
