Ari Betof Doctoral Dissertation Defense University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education April 27, 2011

1. Leading in the Light:
A Study of Financial and Organizational
Sustainability of Friends Schools
Ari M. Betof
Doctoral Candidate
April 27, 2011
Educational Leadership
University of Pennsylvania, GSE

2. 1. How are the heads of well-established, organizationally
mature Friends schools thinking about, planning for, and
adapting to the challenges and opportunities of financial
and organizational sustainability?
2. How does the identity of the cohort schools as Friends
organizations influence their understanding of and actions
related to financial and organizational sustainability?
3. How do issues of financial and organizational
sustainability affect the cohort schools as Friends
organizations?
Research Questions

3. • Exploratory mixed-methods design
• Incorporating the cyclical nature of action research
• Draws upon focus groups consisting of the heads
of the school as practitioner–experts and
quantitative data about their schools
• Goals:
- Inform the practice of senior leaders and trustees
- Add to the limited relevant and rigorous literature
Study Design

4. • Financial Sustainability
• Organizational Sustainability
• Organizational Stewardship
• Organizational Capacity
Key Concepts

5. Cohort of Participating Schools
“Well-established and organizationally mature”
bounded by three criteria:
1. Ongoing FCE membership
2. Roots extending at least twenty five years
before the start of the Great Depression
3. Enrolling at least two hundred students in the
upper school

6. Sustaining the Spirit in Quaker Education
85 Member Schools in 22 States
20,560 Students
4,260 Faculty and Staff
1,250 Trustees /Board Members
16 Nursery Schools
40 Elementary Schools (PreK-6, PreK-8)
19 PreK-12 Schools
10 Secondary Schools (7-12, 9-12)
8 Boarding Schools

7. Schools Meeting Selection Criteria
• Abington Friends School • Friends Academy • Friends’ Central School
• Friends School of Baltimore • Friends Select School • Friends Seminary
• George School • Germantown Friends School • Moorestown Friends School
• Moses Brown School • Sidwell Friends School • Westtown School
• William Penn Charter School • Wilmington Friends School
Additional Schools Considered
• Brooklyn Friends School • Carolina Friends School •Oakwood Friends School
• Olney Friends School • Sandy Spring Friends School • Scattergood Friends School

8. Eight findings…

9. 1. Financial capacity provides the fuel for
the cohort schools to carry out their
mission

10. 2. An underlying challenge for the cohort
schools is to cultivate adequate
organizational capacity and agility in a
manner consistent with Quaker values
and Quaker-based decision making
practices

11. Components of Organizational Capacity
Institutional Capacity Programmatic Capacity
Adaptive Capacity

12. 3. The schools need better facility with
accurate, precise data to inform mission-
driven decision making

13. 4. The schools are profoundly influenced
by the varied understandings of what it
means to be a Friends school

14. 5. Tension exists between offering a
premium service at a premium price and
being rooted in values embracing
simplicity and rebuking luxury

15. 6. The evolving missions of the cohort
schools have produced challenges,
threats, and opportunities for financial
and organizational sustainability

16. Range
(min to max)
Mean Median
Percentage of Student Body 1.2% to 15.4% 3.9% 5.0%
Percentage of Faculty 2.6% to 32.9% 7.5% 10.5%
Percentage of Administrators
(including the Head of School)
0.0% to 64.7% 9.2% 16.9%
Percentage of Trustees 33.3% to 66.7% 52.2% 50.2%
Key Quaker Demographics at the
Cohort Schools
% Quaker of total, 2009-2010 academic year

17. 7. The Friends school brand is a shared
strength, but the cohort schools have
struggled to leverage this brand

18. Why do Friends school
matter?
I have never seen a time when the values that we have
held since the inception of the Society are more relevant
and more pertinent—our commitment to sustainability,
our commitment to diversity, our commitment to ethical
conduct, our commitment to community, our
commitment to the commonweal—everything [in the
broader society] is slid on the end of the continuum after
the individual and personal well being. We have got
such profoundly important values that are right there
that are so desperately in need of informing the life and
conduct of our society writ large.
~Head of School, Focus Group 1, 2009

19. 8. Varied perceptions of wealth and its use
foster largely unacknowledged conflict
and strain for the cohort schools.

20. • For the cohort schools
• For Friends schools
• For the Friends Council on Education
• For independent schools
• For future research
Implications and Recommendations

21. Financial Crisis as an Opportunity
• “Way opening”
• A fundamental, multi-decade concern about
the revenue paradigm
• Being better prepared when the next
downturn inevitably occurs

22. Lifting Up Relevant Discourse in
Friends Schools
• Positive history of leaning into difficult issues:
slavery, race relations, sexual orientation,
war and violent conflict
• Processes of discernment and seeking
clearness
• Requires time paid up front

23. Leveraging the Friends School
Brand
• Hedgehogs
• Peacock feathers
• Purple cows

24. Promoting Mission-Driven,
Data-Informed Decision Making
• Appropriate use of benchmarking
• Other options for analysis
(my personal Holy Grail quest)
• Leveraging the spiraling nature of action
research

25. Picking the Right Tool from the Toolbox
Accessibility Flexibility
Broad Applicability
Organizational Specificity
NAIS Financing
Schools Calculator
Where is your school’s
modeling sweet spot?
Factors:
✔ Audience
✔ Task specific goals
✔ Available data
✔ Human capacity
(expertise, time, energy)

28. Potential FCE Projects
• Friends Schools Financial Sustainability
Taskforce
• Friends Schools Sustainability Consortiums
• Advanced Governance Training

29. Paths for Future Academic Research
For independent schools:
• Further developing conceptual framing of financial
sustainability and organizational capacity
• More refined systems modeling tools for assessing
financial sustainability
• Evaluating the appropriateness of using
benchmarking as an analysis approach
• Rigorous study of paradigms of affordability,
access, and demand

30. Paths for Future Academic Research
For Friends schools:
• Rigorous historical research:
- Changes in Quaker representation at Friends schools
- Evolution of mission for Friends schools
- The perspectives of wealth changing role of
accumulation, storing, and use of wealth among Friends
• Similar studies for other cohorts
• Tensions about branding of Friends schools
• Friends education as a premium (versus luxury)
• Varied perceptions of wealth within Friends schools

31. Questions

32. Acknowledgements
• Dr. Peter Kuriloff, Dr. Earl Ball,
and Dr. Jerry Murphy
• Dr. Irene McHenry and the
Friends Council on Education
• Riklis Family Doctoral Fellow Scholarship