Paul is Prizmah’s founding Chief Executive Officer. Learn more about Paul here.

Message from CEO to Heads of School About Day School Investor Summit

Friends,

I am so excited that the registration for the Head of School Retreat and the Day School Investor Summit will be opening in the next few days, and I hope you’ll be able to join us. Before it goes live, though, I wanted to take the opportunity to send you some great language to use to invite your major donors to represent your school at the Day School Investor Summit in February. The event is by invitation only, and we need your help to ensure that you get the biggest possible benefit from this important gathering.

One hundred of the top investors in our schools will join us to consider how they can partner with their schools and communities to make real change for the day school field. Our first Investor Summit, in 2018, can be traced to several major programs that have made significant change for schools: from Toronto’s Generations Trust Scholarship to Atlanta’s recently announced Jewish professionals tuition discount, these seeds were planted at Prizmah’s Investors Summit.

In order to make sure the right people are in the room, we turn to you, our day school partners, to help us identify the change-makers for your school. Typically, we think about those who have given $50,000 or more to your day school for at least two years. Since many of you have close relationships with these investors, we would love for you to consider inviting them to this unique gathering directly, giving you another engagement opportunity and the ability to offer something special to your top donors. We plan on sending out invitations to a select group that we are curating with your input, but we’d love for the initial invitation to come from you. If it’s useful, I’ve drafted the email below that you may customize to use as your invitation. Feel free to use the contents for any of your outreach, or visit this website for more information and to add someone’s name to our invitation list.

If there’s someone you’d like us to add to the invitation list, please let me know ASAP. Only investors with a pre-approved, individualized code will be allowed to register, and I don’t want any of your participants to have to jump through extra hoops.

I’ll add one more thing… I imagine many of you are asking yourselves, “Are they going to solicit my donors?” So let me reassure you that there will be no solicitation at this event, and that--as always--Prizmah’s first goal is to encourage more resources to go to our schools, never to take them away. The donors that attended the Investor Summit last time returned home feeling inspired and well-connected to other major givers, and many even increased their gifts afterwards. It was a major success for schools.

We can’t wait to see you at the Head of School Retreat, where you’ll overlap with these investors for a few purpose-driven hours on Monday afternoon. We expect the outcomes of both gatherings to be exceptional.

Thanks for all you do to make your school amazing.

Paul

Draft email to invite your investors:

Dear [Donor Name],

[Insert personalized greeting.]

I’m wondering if you’ve heard yet about the Day School Investors Summit being hosted by Prizmah this February 6-8 in Ft. Lauderdale. This will be the second time they are hosting an event like this, and I would love for you to be there to represent our school. There will be around 100 people from the US and Canada who are deeply invested in day schools attending, with the goal of learning from other philanthropists, thinking about ways to advance our school and community, and to advance the cause of Jewish day school education on the whole. (Optional: There is also a Head of School Retreat that overlaps on the final evening of the program, and I plan on attending. I’d love to have you as my partner for the work we’ll be doing during that time.)

Would you think about attending? It’s by invitation only, so you’d just need to add your name to the invitation list at this link, and then they’ll send you more information when registration opens in November. I’m happy to talk about it more, or to connect you to Hannah Olson at Prizmah, who is working on this event.

Thanks so much for considering. I look forward to hearing all about your experience when we get back.

Warmly,
[Your Name]