Gathering Advisers, Partners, Supporters and Participants

Beyond the reliable workers on your Founding Team, you will also need to start building a supportive community of parents, partners, advisers, and other types of volunteers. You’ll need the energy, expertise, and credibility that this growing community of supporters will provide.

It’s actually really great to get some outspoken, passionate kids involved in this stage who can speak in groups or at events about why they choose to come to a school like this.

Your growing team will also be one of your main channels for reaching more people in the wider community and spreading the word about your project.

It is important to have parents on your founding team who are committed to enrolling their children in the school. Parents who can speak about why they’ve made this choice are vital to establishing credibility to prospective parents, and are great to have chime in at events.

Finding people who support your vision who bring legal, financial, or organizational expertise is also important. You will have a lot of questions, and you don’t want to have to hire a professional for every legal, accounting or business question you have.These people’s experience, insight and perspectives will enrich your strategy and planning process.

Organizing for Results

If you’ve gathered more than a handful of people who are willing to be active participants in meetings and do some work, then it’s time to organize some workgroups. Be aware that people love to talk, theorize and offer opinions about how things should be done, but those opinions don’t actually accomplish the work of opening a school. Many groups invest hundreds of hours in talking about a school but never manage to open one. We hope our tips will help you avoid being one of those groups and get you quickly to your launch!

Ideally, these workgroups can also function as small collaborative teams between meetings, supporting each other in the work that they need to accomplish between meetings. Whenever you’re creating something NEW, people don’t have their lives organized to work on that thing yet, so don’t be surprised if it initially takes a lot of follow-up and reminders for people to get things done.

Remind people that the workgroups and large group meetings are establishing the cultural DNA of the school. Support them in putting effort into keeping promises, collaborating effectively, empowering each other, and building a healthy culture now, rather than later.

Your growing team will also be one of your main channels for reaching more people in the wider community and spreading the word about your project. Empower them and engage them so their sense of ownership of the project increases and their authentic connection to it deepens. This will greatly increase their excitement to talk to others about it.