Dear Friends,

I am writing to share some exciting news about the Donovan Group.

I started the firm 10 years ago with the hope of leveraging what I knew about education and communications to provide communications-related consulting to public school districts in Wisconsin. As the company grew, we added two more services: administrative coaching and, with the launch of our sister company ProPRcopy in 2010, content development.

The Donovan Group now serves schools and districts from offices in Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, and is the largest education-focused communications firm in the country.

Among the most significant challenges facing school district leaders is the handling of crisis situations. These situations—from the merely embarrassing to the truly tragic—require quick, accurate communication with parents, community members, board members and the media. This is an area in which even experienced K-12 leaders require assistance. It is also one of the areas in which we believe we’ve provided great value over the years.

We have worked with districts in Wisconsin through our statewide arrangement with the state superintendents’ association, WASDA, and the principals’ association, AWSA, to provide 24/7/365 crisis communications counsel and custom talking points, parent letters, news releases and other written content for school crisis communication.

I am pleased to announce that we have scaled up and are going national.

Today, we will formally launch the first-ever national public school crisis communication service. Districts that become Donovan Group Crisis Communication members will have the peace of mind that comes from having 24/7/365 access to crisis communications services, including:

• A hotline staffed by the experienced Donovan Group team
• Live crisis communications counsel by phone and email, delivered by skilled crisis communications professionals
• Custom talking points, parent letters, news releases and other written content, as needed

For the next six months, this offer will be available exclusively to organizations or firms that can provide this service, on a sponsored basis, to every public school district in one or more states. After the initial six months, we will sell the service to individual districts in those states not being sponsored.

You may find more information on our new national school crisis communication service at www.donovan-group.com/crisis.

We are thrilled that, through this new service, public school leaders across the United States will have the same top-notch crisis communications services currently provided by the Donovan Group through our relationship with WASDA and AWSA.

As always, I would like to thank you for your support of the Donovan Group and of me personally over the years. I am so very grateful.

Joe Donovan, President