1. Foolproof Organization Tips for Your FinAid Office

2. Today’s Presenters Gail Muse Beggs, Ed. D. Jordan Nischan
Director of Financial Aid
Holmes Community College
Jordan Nischan
Regional Director CampusLogic
Each to give background to the room, short one-minute max history.

3. Let’s play a Game
Rick Dwyer developed the game and can explain how to host it in your session.

4. 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.
Why Organization Matters
BUBBLES APPEAR ONE BY ONE ON MOUSE CLICK
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).

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Foolproof Tips Know the organization basics of efficient FinAid
Audit your current strategies
Reorganize people and processes
Analyze data and track success

8. Know the organization basics of efficient FinAid1.
Know the organization basics of efficient FinAid

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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 Through Technology

12. Audit your organizing strategy2.
Audit your organizing strategy

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. 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.

15. Reorganize people and processes3.

16. provide the best student experience
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.

17. 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.

18. 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

19. 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.

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

21. 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 or DRT outage
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 17/18 to help drive this kind of traffic earlier- and that involves less human hours from my office.

22. 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.

23. Analyze data and track success4.
Analyze data and track success

24. 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

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

26. Questions?