About
EdPro Communications
Helping education innovators navigate K12 market complexity with content that speaks to education stakeholders.
Who We Serve
Nonprofit Leaders who need competitive grant proposals, compelling donor reports, and storytelling that secures funding.
EdTech Marketing Teams who need credible case studies, white papers, and thought-leadership blogs to differentiate in a crowded market.
Foundations & CSR Programs who need reports and communications that highlight outcomes, align with mission, and resonate with stakeholders.
Benefits We Offer
Sector Fluency — Frontline experience and in-depth research drive our insights into K12 settings and K12 policies, innovations, and market trends
Proven Results — $1.5M+ in secured grants and 500+ published articles
Mission Alignment — Exclusively serving education and mission-driven sectors
Long-Form Craft – Specializing in formats that build authority and are harder to commoditize: white papers, case studies, proposals, and high-value informational and editorial digital content
As a digital copywriter and nonprofit grant proposal writer, published academic writer, and member of the Grant Professionals Association and AWAI’s Professional Writers’ Alliance, I focus relentlessly on ongoing professional development, high ethical standards, and best practices—providing clients a collaborator they can trust along with flexible services at competitive rates.
—Keith Nickolaus, Ph.D., Owner-Operator, EdPro Communications
Helping Education-Sector Innovators Navigate Complex K12 Challenges…
EdPro offers research-driven insights to help education innovators connect with K12 prospects and stakeholders and their challenges, navigate K12 market complexity, and understand adoption and implementation risks and how to avoid them.
Are educational organizations really that hard to understand and navigate?
We think so, and we’re in good company.
Many education observers, researchers, and reform experts characterize K12 settings as highly idiosyncratic, organizationally complex, and, for lack of better way to put it, hard to change:
“School reformers imagine that the lessons of a successful school are obvious and can be easily transferred to other schools, just as one might take an industrial process or a new piece of machinery and install it in a new plant without error. But a school is successful for many reasons…When a school is successful, it is hard to know which factor was most important or if it was a combination of factors.”
— Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System
Sound familiar?
Most likely it does.
The problem for EdTech and other K12 sector offerings is that these challenges are not just a headache for educators. They also can make it difficult for education innovators and service providers to unlock and demonstrate the real value of their offerings in action.
As education researcher and front-line education reform practitioner Michael Fullan put it, a product’s features are no absolute measure of it’s likely benefits in action, unless you factor in lots of local school setting dynamics:
“Never think of technology without worrying about teachers and mentors. It is teachers with technology who will make the difference.”
— Michael Fullan, Stratosphere.
This means the quality of your offering may be less of a predictor of its value and impact than you’d want it to be.
Even after adoption, implementation pitfalls and roadblocks are the rule…
One school observer put it this way:
“What reformers dead set on transforming traditional institutions often forget is that complex organizations have plans for reformers as much as reformers do for organizations.”
— Larry Cuban, Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice
This means education leaders and innovators need a focused approach to getting better results.
And, in addition to great products and services, they need to build trust and credibility within this complex market environment.
A study conducted by Glimpse K12 found that even though EdTech spending can exceed many billions of dollars annually, a sizable proportion of overall EdTech spending is wasted — with products left unused or too poorly integrated into school systems or into teaching and learning practice to deliver a meaningful return on investment:
“On average…67 percent of software licenses remained unused, though in some cases the number was as high as 90 percent…Underutilization/Non-utilization is the number one culprit that drives up education costs and weighs on student success.”
Glimpse K12, “Analysis of School Spending Shows that Two-Thirds of Software License Purchases Go Unused
Clearly education-sector businesses and nonprofits in the K12 sector are navigating irrational market dynamics…
The good news is that, your organization can position its products and offerings in ways that exceed the norm, to achieve
deeper integrations
better outcomes
longer engagements
increasing credibility and adoption
… all while forging school-based collaborations — the kind that your organization can leverage to…
enhance thought leadership
improve offerings and product designs
and be better equipped for partnering with new groups of educators as they —and your offerings — face new implementation hurdles
“You can never go wrong by investing in communities and the human beings within them.”
–Pam Moore, CEO of Marketing Nutz
“Sending a rocket to the moon and extracting a brain tumor are complicated, but getting children to succeed in school … is closer to the flight of a butterfly than the flight of a bullet”
"In a nonlinear, dynamic world, everything exists only in relationship to everything else, and the interactions among agents in the system lead to complex, unpredictable outcomes. In this world, interactions, or relationships, among its agents are the organizing principle."
— Michael Fullan, Leading in a Culture of Change
Simply stated, school systems are complex organizations, and that matters…
One result is that almost every K12 leader struggles in their effort to turn new adoptions — innovative services and products like yours — into real solutions, solutions that transform school culture and truly and measurably improve teaching and learning, including reducing persistent learning disparities.
It also means that decade after decade, innovations in services, programs, and education technology far outstrip overall gains in teaching and learning, with schools, educators, and students often experiencing limited benefits — something that’s equally true for many public schools, charter schools, and private schools…
Whether you’re a K12 B2B marketing and product lead, or a mission-based educational nonprofit, your marketing, funding, and outreach efforts will face challenges school leaders face all the time:
skeptical or burned out teachers
competing views of educational progress and value across school communities
tight budgets and unpredictable revenues
an persistent effort and urgency around school change and a persistent struggle to get results, even as leaders adopt more and more “solutions”
difficulty achieving meaningful and lasting integrations between innovative products and services and the underlying educational model
Ready to get started?
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Submit the short inquiry form provided.
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Research Rich, But Solutions Focused.
If you’re an executive, director, product developer, or marketing lead, you need content that drives results, but likely don’t have the time and focus needed to give your content creation the attention it merits.
EdPro Communications exists to close the gaps, helping organizations solve crucial communication challenges
Your Challenges… Our Services…
Many education nonprofits struggle to keep up with grant deadlines or lack the staff capacity to turn program outcomes into funder-ready narratives.
EdTech companies face a trust and credibility gap — skeptical educators, crowded markets, and not enough case studies or thought leadership.
No one has a stronger mission focus than an engaged education foundation, but foundations and CSR teams often have unrealized potential in the form of impact stories buried in data.
EdPro focuses only on turning your organization’s strengths, mission, and assets into a compelling and responsive narrative — unlocking your organization’s value proposition and getting funders’ attention, while you focus on what you do best.
White papers with the right narrative format can reveal deeper layers of implementation insights that help engage prospects by building trust and credibility, before the sale.
Case studies are ideal for providing strong social proof, documenting tangible impacts and other intangible client benefits, after the sale and after implementation.
EdPro can help foundations and CSR teams clarify target audiences and communication goals to create a more effective communications blueprint and craft more readable, actionable, and shareable content.
Many organizations have content created by semi-siloed departments or personnel — over time these organic efforts result in messaging that lacks consistency and optimization.
EdPro helps organizations fill messaging gaps, with brand-aligned messaging platforms that sharpen your brand profile and voices, guide content and website messaging audits, and help streamline content creation.
A Strategic Approach
We strive to guide content creation with a strategic roadmap unique to each of our clients, with four goals in focus:
Unlocking the value and impact of our clients’ offerings
Aligning content with customer journeys, stakeholder profiles and needs, and practical strategies for getting results (increasing leads, grant funding, adoption…)
Tailoring content decisions to each organization’s short and longer term goals and objectives
Raising visibility and building greater trust and credibility with key stakeholders
Contact Us
Hours
Monday–Friday
9am–5pm Pacific Time
Phone
1+510.684.2935
edprodesk@gmail.com
Location
P.O. Box 2045
Berkeley, CA 94702
EdPro knows the language of K-12 professionals…
EdPro offers education-sector experience you won’t find with many other content marketing and communications professionals…
✔ Classroom pedagogy & instructional routines
✔ Understanding of whole-system leadership frameworks supporting change-oriented school governance
✔ Curriculum innovation and EdTech implementation
✔ Implementation dynamics in complex organizations
✔ Student-centered classrooms and social-emotional learning strategies