Data prove theories, drive strategies, and document outcomes.

Data provide the insights that fuel the important work of advancement professionals.

All of this is an ongoing journey.

“Often people think of data as a destination. They want to be data informed and they want more data in their work. But they are not stopping to ask what they are going to do with more,” says Cara Giacomini, CASE Vice President, Data, Research, and Technology.

To emphasize the data journey so many advancement professionals around the globe are on, in early 2023, CASE introduced CASE Insights℠—a new name for AMAtlas and a new way to access the data, standards, and research benefits available to members.

The new name highlights the vision and deeper understanding found through data—the insights that are available to CASE members and stakeholders no matter the size, focus, or location of their schools, universities, and colleges.

The foundational input for the rebranding and enhanced services came from members themselves, who shared, among other suggestions, they were looking for an improved user experience starting with first point of entry for survey users. The revamped website features survey and research pages with better organized information and products, as well as an easier path to find supporting documents and findings.

“With this intentional rebranding and enhanced service, we are making it easier to use the research and standards we offer. This allows members to better understand and document outcomes, thereby making a clear difference in their work to advance education in every region and across all sectors,” says Giacomini.

Read on to hear from CASE member institutions that have embraced the power of data.

• Royal Agricultural University: A Small Shop with Big Plans
• Palomar College: A Community College Embraces Data
• Wilfrid Laurier University: The Data Two-Step
• University of Melbourne: A Leading, Yet Supporting, Role
• Oregon State University Foundation: Creating an Evolving Data Ecosystem

Royal Agricultural University
A Small Shop with Big Plans

“We are among the smallest universities in the U.K.,” says Hannah Langford, Head of Development and Alumni Relations at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England. So it’s not surprising, she says, “that we might just be among the smallest advancement shops in the U.K. as well.”

She is referring to her two-person office that serves the 175-year-old royally chartered institution with an enrollment nearing 1,200 students. With so many hats to wear, Langford says it’s challenging to find time to collect the data to participate in the CASE-Ross Support of Education Survey for the U.K. and Ireland.

“I have to set aside two to three days to gather all the data. If I’m being honest, I’m not always happy about that,” she says. “But in the end, the process and the results always prove worthwhile.”

She names benchmarking as one of the top benefits. In fact, it is because the survey allows her to compare RAU’s advancement outcomes against other similar U.K. institutions that a third full-time staff position will be added to Langford’s team this year. And the job description for that position (you guessed it!) will include data collection and analysis.

“The way the CASE results are reported makes it so easy to see where you stand among your peers in a multitude of categories,” says Langford. “Our survey report shows that we are doing quite well in the area of funds raised per how many staff we have. The return on investment is strong for two staff members. When we look at similar institutions that are having success with more staff, we were able to make a pitch to our leadership using data to show growing our staff will result in greater return on investment.”

While Langford will soon eagerly hand off primary responsibility for data operations, she has no plans to step away from using data to set strategy for her office.

The data she collected for the most recent CASE Insights survey confirms the strengths of RAU’s advancement efforts—clearly showing the institution’s largest donors are consistently trusts and foundations.

“That’s not always the case for small shops,” says Langford. “We have made an effort to steward those groups in a personal, intentional way.”

The benchmarking data also highlighted areas for greater opportunity in which the RAU advancement team plans to focus greater attention—annual giving and alumni engagement programs. With a larger team, placing a priority on improving numbers in those areas has become a data-informed strategy for Langford. The goal is to see participation and giving increase with more attention. That means more time on the road for Langford.

“Our alumni largely work in agriculture and land management, which is still a bit old-fashioned,” she says. “A banker will still go out to see them on a farm. They are more likely to take an appointment if I’m willing to do the same. Recently, I walked a racecourse with one of our alumni for an hourlong meeting. It was lovely.”

Palomar College

A Community College Embraces Data

At the CASE Conference for Community College Advancement in fall 2022, Stacy Rungaitis, Executive Director of the Palomar College Foundation, made sure to attend one session in particular: “CASE Insights—Using Data to Inform Fundraising and Engagement.” The session description noted, “This presentation will discuss how to deepen your data practices—no matter where you are on your journey.”

Rungaitis’s own data journey led her to a master’s degree in Higher Education Administration with a thesis titled, “Return on Investment of Alumni Associations in Community Colleges.” She readily credits CASE with providing some of the most valuable data to support her thesis.

One of the major sources she cited was the 2016 CASE white paper, “Benchmarking Alumni Relations in Community Colleges.” The paper, which drew on CASE Insights survey findings on the topic, validated that the increased time many community colleges spent on alumni relations in the early 2010s resulted in higher total giving from alumni, as well as more alumni donors. The CASE data clearly validated that those community college advancement professionals who had invested in alumni relations best practices in data management, staffing, communications, and engagement were seeing positive outcomes.

As a result of her thesis work, Rungaitis became a devotee of the power of data.

With more than 30 years in nonprofit and higher education advancement, Rungaitis says working to support the community college mission has given her the most career reward.

“Community colleges are where education becomes accessible no matter your background—formerly incarcerated, first-generation, single mom—that’s the beauty. We accept all and meet them where they are,” says Rungaitis.

Amid those rewards, there are challenges unique to community colleges, especially when it comes to advancement—namely, the very definition of “alumni.” Palomar College serves 25,000 students annually at a main campus in San Marcos, California, U.S., along with three education centers and a military-serving site at Camp Pendleton.

“We have students who complete degrees and certificates. Many transfer to four-year institutions. Then there are those who take just one course to learn a new skill or to advance at their jobs,” she explains.

Rungaitis and her team have made it a priority in recent years to establish an alumni association to enhance engagement and build the donor pipeline. They started with a three-year, phased-in approach. The first step was engaging the newest graduates with an invitation to join the association. In phase two, they will hire an outside agency to help locate those alumni to aid in building the database. In phase three, they plan to engage those who attended the college.

While data helps inform the strategy behind new programs, Rungaitis points out that looking at metrics can also lead to discontinuing existing programs that are putting up lagging numbers. She offers the example of an annual donor gala, which had been in existence for 26 years when Rungaitis joined the college six years ago. As she was signing off on expenses related to the gala, she started to look at the numbers related to outcomes.

“As I peeled back the layers, I looked at months of staff time devoted to planning the event and waning attendance. The metrics clearly showed the return on investment wasn’t there. I took that to the foundation board of directors and the decision to discontinue was made based on the data.”

The advancement team replaced the gala with smaller, more low-key events that engage the community—donors, foundation and governing board members, and other champions of the college—by allowing students themselves to tell the stories of how Palomar College changes lives. At one such breakfast, students from the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning program made it snow. At another, students from the drone technology program provided a drone flight demonstration.

“These new advancement programs showcase both the art—through relationship building—and the science—through research and data—that are the essence of our profession,” says Rungaitis.

Wilfrid Laurier University

The Data Two-Step

The strategic use of data in advancement has been a cornerstone of Jason Coolman’s career. As a CASE volunteer, he served on both the CASE Global Reporting Standards Task Force and the Alumni Engagement Metrics Task Force. Coolman, Vice President, Advancement and External Relations at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, was an early proponent of the importance of measuring alumni engagement beyond giving rates or the number of attendees at an event, and instead understanding who is engaging and how they are responding.

In a 2015 Currents article on alumni engagement, Coolman wrote, “You need just a little bit of data to know which alumni are engaged, but you need a lot of data to entice the disengaged.”

Today, Coolman says data utilization is a two-step process at Laurier, where he has been for the past three years.

“We use data to tell a story of what our programs look like. What are our annual giving rates? What are the response rates to our appeals? Who is attending our events? Who is clicking on our online content? Data, as a comprehensive tool, allows us to get a picture of engagement with our stakeholders. That’s step one,” he says.

The next step, says Coolman, is using that data to set strategy. For example, he says, “Your data might show that most of your donors are coming from one area, such as a certain discipline, age, or geography. The question then is how to expand that, such as offering different kinds of events. Once you make that change, it’s important to reevaluate with the same data set. Did we get more diverse donors? Did we get alumni who had never attended an event before?”

As the model of integrated advancement has become best practice in the profession, Coolman says that extends to the ways data are collected and utilized. At Laurier, each team within the advancement division has data sets they track and evaluate and then share across teams. For instance, alumni relations staff and gift officers sharing information about their overlapping constituents has led to comprehensive strategies and new opportunities.

Benchmarking is another form of analysis and strategy the Laurier team embraced by participating in CASE Insights surveys.

“It allows us to dig deeper into the data,” says Coolman. “By looking at where we are against our peers, we’ll say ‘OK, if we are spending the same and have the same staffing, why are the results different?’ For instance, ‘What makes us better at acquisitions than our peers, while they are surpassing us in retention?’”

Participating in benchmarking is also a bonus when it comes to reporting to leadership and boards, says Coolman.

“When we provide them with data on outcomes, often the first thing they ask is how that stands up to our peers,” he says.

The way in which the Laurier team reports to its Board of Governors, alumni board, fundraising committee, and university leadership is a point of pride for Coolman.

“We’ve moved from reports that show numbers of donors and dollars raised to showing numbers across a series of gift bands,” he explains. “For instance, they can easily look at a five-year average and see how the number of acquisitions has consistently increased in different categories. They are no longer asking, ‘What does this mean?’ It’s clear. Our data is telling a complete story.”

University of Melbourne

A Leading, Yet Supporting, Role

In August 2022, the University of Melbourne announced a new global center for research on pandemic therapeutics. It was headline news, not just due to the timeliness of the center’s mission but because the $250 million gift from Canadian philanthropist Geoffrey Cumming for it was the largest single gift in the history of one of Australia’s premiere universities.

“It took a village of people to bring that gift in,” says Joanna Watts, Senior Director, Advancement Operations. “The gift officers on the front end really recognized the contributions of everyone downstream of that gift—data, research, information technology, legal, financial—both internal and external to our team.”

That wasn’t just a nice thing to do. It’s a formalized philosophy called, “One Advancement,” launched a year ago at the university.

“It’s a holistic approach to everything we do. We are stopping to think about how we appreciate the input of everyone involved in the process,” says Watts.

Rachael Dalton, Director, Advancement Operation, lives and breathes data. She and her team, who fall under Watts’ division, are such “downstream” staff. They are responsible for data collection and analysis, prospect research, business operations, liaising with IT systems, and data cleansing and security. They are currently overseeing the launch of a new customer relationship management system that will serve the university in student recruitment to alumni engagement to fundraising.

Dalton says the “One Advancement” approach suits her team well.

“I love that my job serves my colleagues on the frontline. They are running great programs to engage alumni, stewarding donors, and raising funds to support our students and research. I’m not inclined to do that work myself, but I’m thrilled to support it. We appreciate the recognition that our roles are codependent,” she says.

She takes pride in providing metrics that help her colleagues. Recently, Dalton and her team supplied the data that led to a change in the way KPIs are calculated for fundraisers.

“We used formulas based on what areas of the university they are serving. It can take the same amount of effort to raise $1 million for a medical program as it takes to raise $100,00 for an education program. We used data to make the system equitable,” she says.

That change benefited faculty as well, adds Watts.

“Faculty members can show different levels of enthusiasm in working with advancement. Some academic programs struggle to raise money,” she says. “They don’t have the projects with high appeal to fundraisers, so we’ve built data to show outcomes in both financial and nonfinancial measurements. It’s proven quite helpful to our advancement colleagues to be able to show their faculty leadership teams different measures of outcomes success.”

Following the success of its multi-year “Believe” campaign, completed in 2021, the University commissioned GG&A to do an extensive review of campaign outcomes. The data-driven exercise drew heavily on the input and expertise of advancement operations staff, including Dalton. She says the evidence of the data drawn from the results of the campaign enabled them to build a case for further sustained investment in staff over the next few years, with the aim of doubling philanthropic results in eight years.

Making data “self-serve” is another way that the advancement services team is working to support colleagues on the front line.

“We want staff to be comfortable accessing the data they need to be successful in their jobs,” she says. “We work really hard to present data in illustrative, digestible ways. Data literacy has become a priority for us as we continue to find more ways to support the ‘One Advancement’ model.”

Oregon State University Foundation

Creating an Evolving Data Ecosystem

The Oregon State University Foundation operates with a mantra: “If it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen.”

The Foundation launched a new customer relationship management system five years ago under the direction of Vivek Narendra, Senior Director, Data Operations and CRM Strategy. Joining the team just two years prior, he had the task of converting a 20-year-old customer relationship management system to, in his words, “a modern system that would meet the needs of a 21st century workforce.”

As he delved into the older system, he learned about the kinds of data collected, how it was collected, and where there were shortfalls or roadblocks in the way it was collected.

“I could see that the collection of data had become siloed,” he says. “This is a problem in most organizations, not unique to advancement. Over time, as the data lives in those silos, inefficiencies can become prevalent.” The new CRM allows for seamless interaction and data collection across all divisions within the foundation.

“We all have access to our system, including our academic partners,” says Shawn Scoville, President and CEO of the foundation at the U.S. institution. “This transparency takes the mystery out of data, providing a level of confidence for us to see that we are doing a good job, that we are on the right track in meeting our goals, and to change course when we need to.”

Artificial Intelligence, Data-Informed Strategy

Mark Koenig, Vice President, Technology, and Chief Innovation Officer, has been with the foundation for 15 years and, as his title suggests, his job is to ensure the strategic use of data for optimal outcomes and continued innovation for the foundation.

He says the migration to the new CRM was “the linchpin to creating a data ecosystem that allows us to think about the generation, tracking, and management of data as a strategic imperative.”

The OSU Foundation is doing that through artificial intelligence—or, more simply put, automation. That means moving away from “Monday-morning quarterbacking,” says Koenig. “Instead of asking, ‘Why didn’t we hit this number?’ after the fact, we are using real time analytics and can change course midstream if we are not on target to hit a goal.”

AI is not about replacing humans, he cautions, but about “more augmented intelligence where we can find deeper insights easier and faster than ever before.”

Recently, the team reorganized its research department into two new departments—Relationship Insights and Pipeline Development—to facilitate the use of automated real time analytics. Through AI predictive and prescriptive modeling, these new departments are doing things like providing analytics that help development officers know when to open and close gift proposals at optimal times.

“In the past, we would do an engagement run and it would be stale by the time we got it. The same with wealth indicators. Now our predictive models are constantly updated, and our screenings are highly targeted,” says Koenig.

Preparing for the Future of Data Privacy

As part of the foundation’s data ecosystem, privacy and consent are priorities. Koening says it is “not a matter of ‘if,’ but of ‘when’ regulations similar to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation come to the United States.

“We are already seeing some state legislation in this area. We need to prepare for this now, and automation will play a big role. Machines can manage a wide variety of preferences at a capacity humans cannot,” he says.

Koenig has his own mantra when it comes to data: “You have to collect the dots in order to connect the dots.”

The foundation is in the process of collecting data on its constituents’ interests. Those interest components connect to contact reports and donor portals.

“How do we get people who give to Oregon State to the causes they care about without spamming them?” asks Koenig. “They might be interested in climate change, but that’s not necessarily one department or college. So we need to be thematic without sending them everything from every enterprise of the university. … With or without regulations dictating this, we have a responsibility to be thoughtful and careful in managing data according to our constituents’ preferences. Our digital reputation matters.”