Advancement, admissions, and the business office, connected
An independent school carries an annual fund, an admissions funnel, hundreds of family relationships, a business office, and a board, usually on Blackbaud or Veracross, FACTS, and Google Workspace that do not talk to each other. LUR Growth connects the work that already happens, keeps a person in every workflow, and hands the school a system its own staff run. For an assistant head of school, that can also mean turning strategic priorities into owned work, keeping accreditation evidence ready, aligning communication channels, and giving faculty practical AI guidance.
The direct answer
It looks like the four jobs below running on a schedule instead of on memory. The gift, the inquiry, the family message, and the board packet each start from data the school already holds, get drafted once in the school's voice, pass through the person responsible, and land where they are supposed to. Student and family records stay in the school's own systems.
Every workflow keeps the admissions director, the advancement director, or the head of school as the reviewer before anything reaches a family or a trustee.
A close cousin, already built
A nonprofit in North Carolina runs bilingual after-school tutoring, family engagement, and educational support for Latino students and their families. LUR Growth built the program infrastructure: a bilingual youth and adult curriculum library, family engagement workshops, implementation guides, evaluation frameworks, a participant tracking system the program coordinator runs every day (participants, attendance, outcomes, compliance, volunteers), and the monthly reporting to the county funder. Every monthly draw was approved, and the county grants administrator wrote that the reports looked great and the program was getting a good level of participation. Students, families, tutors, a calendar, a funder, and a board. It is not an independent school engagement, so every school starts with the diagnostic, which names the platforms, the family-data rules, and the one job to fix first before anything is priced.
Where this work becomes useful
Lives now in Blackbaud or Veracross and a thank-you letter template. Gathered once: gift, giving history, the family's connection to the school. Drafted in your voice: the acknowledgment and the next touch. Human review: the advancement director. What lands: no donor family unthanked, no lapsed family unnoticed.
Lives now in inquiries, visits, and the admissions calendar. Gathered once: who came, who applied, what is due next. Drafted in your voice: the next touch for each family, on time. Human review: the admissions director approves. What lands: no family left waiting.
Lives now in the school calendar, the student information system, and a dozen email threads. Gathered once: what changed this week and who it affects. Drafted in your voice: the update each family actually needs. Human review: the division head. What lands: fewer surprises, fewer repeated questions.
Lives now in FACTS, the enrollment report, and the head's inbox. Gathered once: enrollment, budget to actual, advancement, program notes. Drafted in your voice: the packet, on schedule. Human review: the head of school. What lands: trustees read it before the meeting, not during.
Lives now in committee notes, department files, surveys, calendars, and the assistant head's inbox. Gathered once: the measure, the owner, the evidence, and the next review date. Human review: the leadership team. What lands: visible strategic-plan execution and accreditation evidence that is ready when the school needs it.
Lives now in informal conversations and individual experiments. Gathered once: approved uses, student and family data boundaries, review expectations, and escalation paths. Human review: academic leadership. What lands: practical guidance faculty can follow without replacing professional judgment.
What the engagement includes
Best for independent schools with a small advancement and admissions staff, a business office running on FACTS or a similar platform, and an assistant head or head of school who wants strategic-plan execution, accreditation evidence, communication, advancement, and admissions to hold together without adding headcount.
How the work moves
Sit with advancement, admissions, the business office, and the head. Write down where each job lives, who holds it, and what breaks when they are out.
Build on Blackbaud, Veracross, FACTS, and Google Workspace. No new database of record. Student and family data stays where it is.
The people who own each job learn to run it. Admin rights, documentation, and recordings go to the school. No retainer required.
Who this is for
Questions leaders ask
No. Systems are built in accounts the school owns, on tools it already pays for. FERPA-covered records stay in the school's own systems; an AI tool receives only the fields a specific workflow needs, never a student's full record, and the school's own records officer signs off on each workflow before it runs. A staff member reviews every output before it reaches a family or a trustee, and every engagement includes a written AI use policy the board can adopt.
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT and Education Management, Veracross, FACTS, and Google Workspace are the usual set. The build connects to what the school runs rather than asking it to move. Integration goes through each platform's own door: the Blackbaud SKY API, the Veracross API, FACTS exports, and Google Workspace. The LUR Growth technical lead on the engagement builds those connections with Latoya, inside accounts the school owns, and the school's own Blackbaud or Veracross administrator approves every permission before it is granted.
The closest engagement is a bilingual after-school and tutoring program for Latino students and families: curriculum, family engagement, evaluation, and funder reporting. The same four jobs a school carries, at a smaller scale. A school engagement would be the first of its kind, and the page says so plainly. Latoya has not yet built inside Blackbaud, Veracross, or FACTS for a school. That is why every school starts with the diagnostic: it names the platforms, the family-data rules, and the one job to fix first before anything is priced, and the first build is scoped to that one job.
Yes. The diagnostic can map each priority or standard to an owner, measure, source of evidence, review date, and communication rhythm. A later build can make progress and missing evidence visible without creating a second reporting system staff have to maintain.
Yes. The work can define approved uses, student and family data boundaries, human review expectations, documentation, and escalation paths. Faculty guidance is built with academic leadership and the people expected to use it, so it supports professional judgment rather than replacing it.
The Capacity Diagnostic. Two to three weeks, $2,400, and a board-ready read of which of the four jobs to fix first. It stands on its own and it does not commit the school to the next step. After that, one job on one platform is the $6,500 Focused Build. A school-scale build, all four jobs across the school's platforms, starts at the $24,000 three-workflow tier and is quoted exactly after the diagnostic names the platforms and the family-data rules. The diagnostic fee credits in full toward it.
From Latoya’s perspective
The same rule holds for a school. When the annual fund lives in the advancement director's head, every transition is a crisis.
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