All of us in the charter school industry know that our schools raise the bar of education excellence. However, we’re not the ones that need convincing about this. The ideals that charter schools nationwide are guided by are only as real as the success in harnessing the components that support them and communicating them to an unaware audience.
If your school wants to improve enrollment, attract talented teachers, and increase fundraising efforts, the key will come from communicating targeted messages so that the right audience listens.
Branding is the art of telling your story - the reason you exist - using any means possible and necessary. If you want to experience less resistance in convincing families, attracting and keeping talent, and increasing your fundraising efforts, schools must give more time to communicating their story using tangible assets that people can relate to and grasp quickly. The assets communicate compelling stories.
If and how you tell your story will mean the difference between failure, complacency, or success in your school.
What’s Your School’s Story?
When we begin working with a school, it’s impossible to know their story on the first day. Why? Because stories are evolving. However, through a relationship, we can understand the all-encompassing story and bring it to the forefront of the school’s brand.
Although schools mainly call us because they want a new logo, a brand is not a logo. Sometimes schools think their website or brochure is their brand. They aren’t. These are simply tools to communicate something much bigger - the story you’re telling of what your school was born to do. Your story should repel people that don’t fit, and conversely, attract the ones that can relate and join forces with your school’s cause.
A brand has a life of its own, and it’s why it needs to be managed. The story belongs to the world, and it’s a branding agency’s duty and responsibility to harness that story and tell it in a way that leaders, teachers, students, parents, accreditors, your local government, and the community can clearly understand what you’re here for.
Everything from the colors represented in uniforms and collateral to the tone of voice you use to communicate is the leaves of your story tree.
The roots of your story start with the calling of the creator of that school. Why did this school come about in the first place? Did government officials create it? Did an entrepreneur dream it up? Were a non-profit organization’s goals being transmitted through a school?
The trunk of the tree is the principal and administration and staff are the branches. Understanding the principal’s purpose and passion in the world of education is will reveal what the school does, who the school exists for, and why the school exists. With a strong, intentional brand, principals (the truck of the tree) are equipped to break through obstacles and grow into opportunities where the story can bear fruit.
Ultimately, students are the number 1 priority. Educational branding is storytelling that fights for the future of students’ minds. The right story will create the buy-in, support, and encouragement your school needs to succeed as a charter school.
Educational brands comes alongside charter school brands to tackle storytelling and communicate messages that are inviting, genuine, and establish trust. We help charter schools avoid casting a large net to a wide audience, and instead, we help them create stronger nets being thrown to a very specific area.
It’s our job to help you create communication that sends the right message to the right audience at the right time. This focused approach helps schools overcome hurdles of enrollment, staffing, and fundraising.
Through a strong, clear message, your school can use the power of storytelling to accomplish its strategic objectives.
The 3 Strategic Objectives of Brand Storytelling
We ended the previous chapter with the 7th pillar (your brand story) on purpose. We’ll spend the rest of this book on this pillar because it’s the vehicle in which you activate the previous 6 pillars.
While working with charter schools managed by for-profit management organizations, we have identified 3 main strategic objectives paired with 3 specific audiences. Are there more objectives? Yes. These are the main 3 we, as a brand management agency, focus on so we can align our services to their needs.
​Strategic Objective | Target Audience |
Fundraising | Parents and Local Businesses |
Staffing | Teachers |
Enrollment | Parents & Students |
When telling a story, it’s important to know what the objective is and who we’re communicating the story to so that we clarify a school's message so that people listen. That’s the power of storytelling.
Educational Brands guides schools with a wide range of brand strategy and marketing communication challenges. Partnering alongside charter management organizations and their networks, we work closely with school principals and their staff to provide expert insight and practical day-to-day guidance to ensure they develop achievable plans, stay on track and achieve their strategic goals.
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