1. Foolproof Organization Tips For Your FinAid Office
#TheStudentFinancialServicesPlatform

2. Today’s Presenters Daniel Gonzales Regional Director CampusLogic
Alisha Cederberg Director of Financial Aid Kalamazoo Valley Community College
Each to give background to the room, short one-minute max history.

3. Why Organization Matters
A good system shortens the road to the goal.
Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.
For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.
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We’re here today to talk about organization. How small things we can do can have huge impacts on the day-to-day, week-to-week efficiency of our Financial Aid Offices, and also about prioritizing.
How many people would prefer to reprioritize interactions like student counselling, financial literacy initiatives, and outreach efforts?
Okay, now how many folks feel like time is your biggest hurdle to reprioritizing?
What if we told you that time isn’t your biggest hurdle? What do YOU think your biggest hurdle is… call out your answers....
(Answer is on next slide).

4. Paper: A Major Hurdle
“Literally, the more paper I’ve got, the less chance there is that I know what it represents.” Nick Jenkins, DFA, Lenoir-Rhyne
With digital there’s connection: connection to people, connection to tasks, connections to processes, connections to outcomes.
Paper: Gets lost. Causes accountability issues. Isn’t trackable. Is unreliable.

5. Image Source: Blackmousedesign.com
Does this statement sound familiar to everyone? In Financial Aid, we’re always being asked to do more with less. This year alone we’ve all been trying to manage everything from mandatory efforts like prior-prior-year and early FAFSA to school-specific efforts like raising financial literacy, and participating in educational sites initiatives like the second chance Pell program.
We can also all agree that this sentence will NEVER be flipped. We’ll never be asked to “Do less with more.”
So let’s get into talking about how rethinking how we organize can help us save time, which will free up resources for your Financial Aid Office to do more.

6. Foolproof Tips Know organizing basics key to FinAid
Audit your current strategies
Reorganize people and processes
Analyze data and track success

7. [1] Know organizing basics key to FinAid

8. Organization Is Highly Personal
Maintaining
Sequential/Traditional
Harmonizing
Interpersonal/balanced
Envisioning
Creative/Innovative
Prioritizing
Logical/Analytical
Styles
Can someone tell me about their organizational style in the office? Now, show of hands, who follows that exact style? I’m assuming that if we went around the room, every person in here has a different way… and that way works for you.
No two people organize the same
Organization: in the eye of beholder
Variations: values, brain types
Forcing someone to adopt to your style can cause friction

9. Organize Around What’s Most Important: Students
How many of us organize around what works best for our staff? Or for us?
It’s understandable: we want to empower them for success and we want employees to stay long-term.
But how many of your offices have had turnover in the last year? Your staff will come and go, and ensuring they’re happy and feel supported is crucial, but that shouldn’t be the defining point in your organization strategy. If those people turnover, then it’s harder to find candidates who match that kind of organizing factor.
Organizing around the student means you are ALWAYS keeping them top-of-mind, which will lead to the creation of a better student experience. Today’s students want mobile, easy financial aid. Giving them what they want can lead to better response times, faster delivery of aid, and ultimately improved retention, completion, and NPS.

10. Organize Around Your School’s Goals & Strategic Priorities
Enable Access to Education & Foster Diversity
Provide timely services
Expand Financial Literacy Efforts
Grow revenue & Increase graduation of underrepresented groups
Innovate thru Technology
How many of your institutions have a strategic plan or mission? (All should raise hands).
Are some of these terms in them? Innovation. Technology. Access. Diversity. If so, are you organizing your Financial Aid Office around these ideas, and fostering them?
The Financial Aid office is one of the first touch-point for students, and we should all be providing an experience that aligns with the mission and strategy of the entire university.
If technology can help your office foster diversity by providing a digital award letter filled with relevant, audience-specific messaging delivered to a targeted group, that feels like a win-win for your institution and your office.
Financial Aid Offices do so much more than just file maintenance – even if that’s a perception others have, right?
Let’s talk about your strategic plans, how many of you are involved in their creation and regularly report out on how you drive success of them?

11. [2] Audit your organizing strategy

12. Are the things taking up the majority of your time the most important for reaching your Financial Aid Office’s goals? If not, it’s time to prioritize & reorganize.
Ask the crowd: What takes up most of your day?
You need to know what’s working. Data will help you hold yourself accountable.

13. What takes up most of your day, week, month?
Verification, Awarding, Student/Family Meetings, s, Phone Calls
What should take up most of your day, week, month?
Student/Family Meetings, Long-Range Planning, Technology Improvements, Tracking/Reporting Functions
Speaker: TBD
JUST the two questions start up on the screen, then ask the crowd to answer the first question, then the words will animate in.
Then ask the second question, animate
**By automating verification and packaging now, the SHOULDS are not only done nights and weekends as they used to be.

14. [3] Reorganize people and processes

15. Financial Aid Office
People
Processes
Integrating technology empowers your FinAid Office to reorganize people and processes to:
improve efficiency
increase enrollment
provide the best student experience
One of our partners, Lenoir Rhyne, their DFA often says that Financial Aid doesn’t usually get to be cutting edge. He speaks about how Lenoir Rhyne’s enrollment team has been talking about using text messaging for 10 years, and now we’re doing it in the FA office and we didn’t have to engage in a long process of investigating what those options are.

16. Reduce staff workload: automate low- touch paper processes
People
Reduce staff workload: automate low- touch paper processes
Focus on high-touch interactions with students and families
Questions about student borrowing
Long-term costs
Value
This can hearken back to organizing by student interactions.

17. New technology empowers you to re-think how you do things
Processes
New technology empowers you to re-think how you do things
Prioritize people, not paper
Automate manual processes, where possible
Identify out-of-date processes & fix (User Story)
Get ahead of process change, like Early FAFSA
How many people here represent community colleges? One of the fears we often hear is that there are processes that just can’t change… that need to continue. Such as: If John A drops a class you have to let me know because I have to do A, B, and C.” But the reality may be that in today’s environment you CAN’T send an every time Johnny drops a class. But we CAN do things to ensure that students still feel that their financial aid service delivery is highly personalized.
Process 2: Nick’s team previously collected a W2 for every student and they had to do a lot of talking internally about ending that practice. It was really a ‘change management’ thing.
Process 3: Early FAFSA: Everyone’s talking about the front-end of it. “Get AwardLetters out earlier, etc.’ But we aren’t pushing our dates ahead. When I’m trying to get my students registered for Spring semester, I’m getting AwardLetters out for 18/19 to help drive this kind of traffic earlier- and that involves less human hours from my office.

18. Tool: The User Story
Following a User Story Format is another way to keep your students top of mind.
It’s a simple way of looking at the problem being face by the user.
You follow this outline. Let’s walk through it.

19. Meeting Styles Don’t just meet to meet
Include goals & ‘what to bring’ in invitations
Try to avoid ‘info share’ meetings
Focus on meetings with take-away tasks
Vary meeting styles: Scrum, Retrospective

20. The Stand-up Meeting
Many tech firms and IT teams use what’s called a Scrum. It’s a great tool when you need a quick update.
People on your team attend a meeting prepared to answer these three questions.
Short, focused, effective.

21. The Retrospective Meeting
Take time when a project/event is complete
Discuss a completed project
Generate honest feedback

22. [4] Analyze data and track success

23. Data Guides You To: Do more of what’s working
Do less of what’s not working
Quantify where your time and dollars are going.
BUBBLES ANTIMATE HERE, TOO

24. Foolproof Tips Review Know the organizing basics
Audit your current strategies
Reorganize people and processes
Analyze data and track success

25. Questions?
#TheStudentFinancialServicesPlatform