About MISF

Mission

Member Values

Strategic Plan:
Renewal and Focus

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MISF’s values serve as the foundation for the core strategies and initiatives. Developed in dozens of meetings attended by over 200 staff from member schools, the strategies were approved by the board of trustees and member schools in May 2005.

Core Strategies

• Reinvent our fundraising program to achieve unprecedented performance.
• Strengthen our public policy and advocacy roles.
• Enhance the associative and networking opportunities available through MISF membership.
• Focus on program opportunities driven by members’ needs, while maximizing the value of current programs through creative marketing and execution.

Strategic Initiatives

Fundraising

• Create and communicate a new MISF message to be used with current and prospective donors, incorporating the MISF strategic plan.
• Execute a project to identify, in collaboration with member schools, potential new donors composed of either individual entrepreneurs or small businesses; make initial introductory calls; share the MISF message; and ask for support.
• Schedule and visit each current major donor, present the MISF strategic plan and ask for increased support.
• Develop special fundraising initiatives that meet the needs of all schools.
• Develop a regional fundraising strategy.
• Build and maintain a database on all current and prospective donors, corporate, foundation, and individual, to include donor-specific data, past giving, summaries of communications contacts and planned visits.
• Create a formal donor-reporting process that includes tasks, responsibilities and timing.
• Assess grant request information needs, identify gaps in available information, and create an action plan to provide and archive all information necessary to submit grants.
• Create a donor recognition program.

Advocacy

• Build and maintain an information base of all current and emerging public policy issues, complete with maintenance procedures.
• Create a process for analyzing policy and developing policy positions that includes members and stakeholders.
• Identify sources of research and information relevant to MISF initiatives, maintain a structured archive of pertinent information, and provide access to staff and members.
• Create a plan for streamlining and improving the Statewide Census of Private Education survey (SCOPE).
• Identify the top people who have or could have the greatest impact on independent education in Minnesota, request personal visits, and share the MISF strategic plan and advocacy role.
• Formalize MISF as the sponsor of a Minnesota affiliate of the Council for American Private Education, or CAPE.
• Evaluate growth opportunities in the K–8 school segment, develop a strategy for penetrating this segment, and submit a formal marketing plan to the board.

Associative Opportunities

• Launch a program to design, build and maintain a knowledge-base on MISF member schools.
• Perform a communications audit to determine consistency, gaps, opportunities and potential segmentation.
• Analyze opportunities for segmentation of communications based on affinity groups’ interests.
• Design and implement a quality assurance procedure to ensure that all published and electronic communications have been read and reviewed prior to public dissemination.
• Create a long-range schedule of conference topics of interest, including potential affinity group topics, and identify potential speakers.
• Perform an assessment of all MISF meetings and attendance obligations to determine opportunities for conserving members’ time and travel.
• Develop exclusive event opportunities for member school heads.

Programs

• Design and incorporate into the MISF member knowledge-base appropriate information to determine member program interest, participation and perceived value.
• Conduct market research of current MISF members to identify future program interests.
• Create a new program development process.
• Refine program costing and cost-sharing policies.
• Prepare a marketing program for the relaunch of multicultural services.

Management and Control

• Submit policy update for assessments and distributions to the board.
• Submit proposals for rolling average distributions and fair assessments.
• Formalize the process and systems for calculating, communicating, and archiving all assessments and distributions information.
• Include year-end summary of all member school assessments and distributions into the year-end financial summary and audit package.
• Assess opportunities to increase parent and partner involvement in supporting the MISF mission.