What Does the Development Office Develop?

We have a new recruit in AISG!

Ms. Chen has just been appointed the communications coordinator for our school. She was born and raised in Guangzhou, and later on she spent years studying and working in England. Her previous job was recruiting students globally to participant in a program based in Oxford and Cambridge, where she was in charge of the online strategy and choosing contacts. She is highly qualified for the job, holding a Bachelor in English and Business and a Masters in digital media.

The Development Office is actually overwhelmed with work. “My main focus in the morning will be to prioritize all the tasks and then probably the rest of the day, just get the tasks done. I rarely have any long lunch breaks.” To sum up, she helps come up with the right strategy, contacts appropriate people, and implements the strategy.

The Development Office has been a term that is thrown around by people in our campus, but a lot of students are unclear about what exactly Development Office does. Ms. Chen breaks it down for us by saying that the office has extreme flexibility and is in charge of a variety of jobs, some of which will be explained below:

Advertising
They advertise our school through local magazines such as Urban Family, Thats PRD, and various magazines in Hong Kong and Shanghai. In the past, that has been the main form of advertising, but due to the decrease in readership for many magazines, the office is considering the gradual move towards online advertisement.
That will include developing digital newsletters, working with the magazines online, and EDM (E Direct Marketing). Ms. Chen remarks that online advertisements are easily trackable, so they know which advertisements have high traffic.
The school also has an official Twitter, Wechat, and Facebook account, and will continue to post on these three social media platforms due the diversity of the school community.

Communication With Parents
Even though PTA is the first point of contact for parents that have questions, the Development Office cooperates with the PTA to write newsletters as well as plan school-wide events such as the upcoming Holiday Bazaar.

Interactions With the Local Community
They facilitate interactions with the local community. For instance, a project in the works is an outreach program with Yucai Middle School. They are also in charge of relationships with the government.

And there you have it! We finally know what the “develop” in Development Office actually constitutes of.