Catholic schools turn to marketing to survive

Catholic educators are trying to save struggling parochial schools with an MBA's tool kit: capital plans, spreadsheets, and promotional brochures.

They are heeding the advice of financial wizards to update alumni lists and create public relations campaigns that will sell the schools' best side to parents and donors.

"With the . . . financial situation of the church today, if they don't do it, they're not going to survive," said Sister Frances Butler, principal of Mother Caroline Academy, a private middle school in Dorchester. "Candy sales are not going to do it anymore." Butler and other Catholic educators hope that promoting the schools will boost sagging enrollments and build endowments.

The situation is urgent in Boston, where the archdiocese is looking to consolidate and close parishes and schools whose attendance numbers are in decline. Adding to the strain, Catholic parents who are unable to afford parochial school tuitions, which can run as high as $8,000 a year, are enrolling their children in charter schools and suburban public schools.

Just how widespread marketing has become could be seen by looking at the schedule for this week's National Catholic Educational Association convention in Boston, which ran through Friday and was expected to draw 14,000 people. Between seminars on integrating technology and critical thinking, the convention offered sessions on capital-campaign success in elementary schools, raising millions for an urban school, and marketing Catholic schools. There was even a class in business triage: identifying the signs when your school is failing.

Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley of Boston, who addressed thousands of educators at the Hynes Convention Center on Tuesday, acknowledged the emergency in Catholic education. "Today, only one-third of US parishes have Catholic schools," he told the crowd. "The majority of our young Catholics are in public schools."

To stay alive, Catholic schools must attract a new population, namely non-Catholics, said John R. McIntyre, coordinator of graduate programs at Caldwell College in New Jersey. He and his graduate students are teaching Newark Archdiocese educators how to attract more low-income, non-Catholic students.

"What non-Catholic minority families want from Catholic schools is the same thing they want from good public schools," McIntyre said. "Good academic education. A sense of structure and order and an opportunity to go on to postsecondary education. Catholic schools have a good track record in taking students beyond."

Many of Newark's families cannot pay tuition, so the schools have to rely more on donations for survival, said McIntyre, who was to teach a seminar on marketing yesterday at the convention.

McIntyre and others advise Catholic schools to brag with savvy. He touts a sales pitch pointing out that Catholic schools have high graduation rates, with at least 90 percent of students headed to college.

Nothing has more resonance with donors, who want to know they are giving to worthwhile causes, McIntyre said.

Staff members at Marian High School in Framingham are sprucing up the school's image in hope of creating interest, increasing donations, and, ultimately, attracting more students. Marian's principal, Stephen Flynn, created a "road show," meeting with public school parents to boast about the sports, arts, and academics at Marian. He seeks out Latino and black students, who might never have thought of attending, and persuades them to apply.

Joseph Flynn, Marian's director of development, has updated alumni databases and formed alumni committees to get graduates more involved and to increase fund-raising. On Marian's website, a graduate can click on a button and offer a donation. The school had no choice but to move in this direction, the director said, because in September, Marian will become independent of the archdiocese and must survive on its own.

"We are a product," he said. "We have to do a good job with positioning our image and understanding key buyer values." The move seems to have worked. The incoming freshman class will be 65 percent larger than the current one, bringing the school's enrollment to more than 300 students. Using the school's website, alumni have given $15,000 in the last two months.Years ago, Catholic schools relied on archdiocesan appeals and Communion collections. Priests and nuns served as teachers, keeping labor costs cheap. But then white Catholic families fled to the suburbs and enrollment plunged, stripping budgets. At the same time, schools needed to pay lay teachers because priests and nuns were retiring. The only choice was to raise tuition, which taxed Catholic schools' main pool for students, working-class families. Many Massachusetts Catholic schools have signed on with the New England Association of Catholic Development Officers and are learning how to market from schools that have done it for years.

William MacNeill, formerly a development officer with Boston College High School, said he has taught schools how to establish annual appeals. "There's less reliance on cookie sales and cakes," he said.

The sisters at Mother Caroline Academy received pointers from Community Consulting Teams, a volunteer organization that offered to write a five-year plan for the school when it opened in 1992. The volunteers told the sisters they also needed to shoot a video, write a newsletter, and expand their annual fund-raising dinner.

Now the tuition-free school has a $600,000 budget. Said Sister Butler: "We learn fast."

Still, the business phenomenon is not universal. Some principals make only feeble attempts to market because they do not have the time for elaborate campaigns, McIntyre said.

While Marian High's Flynn said he sees nothing contradictory about a Catholic school using marketing tactics, some people affiliated with the school have been uncomfortable with the idea of a religious school advertising for students and donations.

"It's been an interesting time," said Joseph Flynn, the development director. "We've had to create a lot of change quickly."

Suzanne Sataline can be reached at sataline@globe.com.