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Strategic Plan

Five Year Strategic Plan

The opening sentences of our new Vision Statement captures the intent of the Strategic Plan: The Hamilton-Wenham Education Fund will be a dedicated advocate committed to enhancing educational excellence in Hamilton and Wenham. We will be a leader in harnessing community involvement and collaboration to advance our public schools.

The Edfund Board has agreed to reorganize itself internally to implement the six strategic initiatives developed under this Strategic Plan. We will implement these initiatives as quickly as possible and will involve more members of our towns in these efforts to continue providing educational excellence to the children in our schools.

The initiatives from this plan are as follows:

1. Launch and sustain a communications initiative to raise visibility of, generate interest in, and celebrate accomplishments of the Edfund.
2. Develop the fund-raising program to expand resources for program enhancement, endowment, and capital projects.
3. Broaden grant making to improve the "product" -- substance and quality of the student experience, encouragement of curricular development/innovation, quality of teaching, and long-term good health of the schools.
4. Collaborate with the school district to advance educational excellence.
5. Involve and engage more stakeholders: townspeople, volunteers, donors, etc.
6. Strengthen the Edfund's knowledge about the schools, the larger educational landscape/trends, school reform and school funding reform, and best practices for education foundations.

The Edfund looks forward to leading these efforts to ensure that our children get the kind of education that they need for the 21st Century. The challenges of public schools today are not just in Hamilton and Wenham but across Massachusetts and the nation. We want to be in the forefront of meeting these challenges and making a positive impact to solve them.

The Planning Process

The Edfund embarked on the Strategic Planning process to determine its role in developing a public/private partnership for funding public education in the regional school district of Hamilton-Wenham. To this end, in February 2009, Edfund President Cathy Lanois appointed the Strategic Planning Committee, co-chaired by Gardner McCormick and Rick Moseley, with committee members Deb Evans, Dan Gaquin, Sue Herlihy, Nancy Hughes, Cathy Lanois, Laney Makin, and Ken Wilson. Bill Jaques of Jaques & Company, non-profit development consultants, was retained to help design and facilitate the planning process.

The Committee began its work in March 2009 and completed its task in December. The multifaceted planning process included: a visioning exercise; interviews of HWRSD personnel, leaders of school support organizations, Hamilton and Wenham town officials, State Representative Brad Hill, representatives of educational foundations/organizations in other communities, the North Shore Coalition for School Funding, and educational experts; a review of the history of the Edfund since its founding in 1990; environmental study using SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) and PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analyses; review and amendment of the Edfund's mission; and vision formation, strategy development, and implementation plans. Numerous committee meetings and other small meetings were held to complete the work.

We welcome comments and inquiries on this new Strategic Plan from the community and actively seek community involvement in these initiatives. Please contact us at hwedfund@comcast.net if you would like more information, or to offer your support, ideas or services.