CASE Insights Survey

Documentation and Support

New in 2024

Reporting Changes

The optional Alumni Relations Inputs question now collects data on: 

  • Alumni Relations Direct Investment - Personnel who report to and costs that are under the budgetary control of a chief alumni relations officer.
  • Alumni Relations Indirect Investment - Personnel who do not report to and costs that are not under the budgetary control of a chief alumni officer. Includes individuals who work toward any of the engagement goals, including fundraising, communications, and event management where the objects of their activities are alumni.

 

New Survey Platform

CASE Insights surveys including the Alumni Engagement survey will be administered on a new survey platform located at https://insightsdata.case.org/. See Resources below for an updated guidance document, PDFs with the survey questions, and data collection grids for 2024.

The order and layout of the survey sections has changed. The only question that has changed is the optional Alumni Relations Inputs question as noted above. All other questions remain the same.

The new survey website still includes: checkboxes to indicate that you will participate and that you are done with your survey; error checks that you can run manually and that also run automatically when you try to mark your survey complete; the ability to generate a PDF copy of your survey.

New functionality on the website includes: seeing your open surveys and deadlines from the home page when you are logged in; seeing your extension deadline (if you requested one and it was approved) as your official deadline; the ability to switch your survey version yourself; the ability to show/hide which optional questions you want to complete.

Contact the CASE Insights Alumni Engagement staff at aem@case.org if you need assistance or would like to schedule an overview of the new survey website.

Resources

Guidance Document

This document describes the goals of the survey as well as provides instructions as to how to complete it. It should be read prior to gathering and submitting any data. 


Guía de Orientación

A continuación se presentan dos guías específicas para la versión en español de la encuesta.

Metrics Collection Grids with Definitions and Survey PDFs

We are providing you with resources to aid in capturing, organizing, and reporting on the data requested.

Cover image of the Alumni Engagement Metrics white paper

Framework White Paper

The Alumni Engagement Metrics Task Force was created by the CASE Commission on Alumni Relations in the fall of 2018 to address the need for an industry wide framework to measure alumni engagement. 

FAQs

The survey allows only one “entry” per institution, so you should select someone from your institution to be primarily responsible for entering the data, though you may have several individuals involved in gathering and reviewing the data before entering it.  Multiple people from your institution can view your institution’s data – and other institution’s data – after the data has been submitted.

Please join this discussion in the Alumni Relations CASE Community to learn and share tips from other members. You must be a member of CASE to access this discussion in the forum.

As we embark on the second year of this project, we are incorporating some key lessons from the inaugural year, with the goal of increased transparency and of yielding apples-to-apples comparisons:

  • Confidence Levels - Unlike giving metrics, it's likely impossible to count every individual who engages with your institution through communication, volunteer, and/or experiential activities.  Confidence levels are an indication of how confident you are that the counts you provided are a comprehensive representation of alumni activities, and will provide transparency and context to your counts by mode.
  • Required Fields - We now have a better understanding of which fields are integral to benchmarking alumni engagement.  By requiring certain data points, the results will produce richer comparison data, both in your own analysis and in CASE's Summary Benchmarking Reports, Strategic Benchmarking Reports, and Benchmarking Cohorts.
  • Error Messages  - As you input the data, an error message will pop up to indicate if an answer is more or less than expected for that field.  If you are confused by an error message, email aem@case.org for assistance.

These questions can help you determine which version is best for your institution right now.  For detailed definitions, reference the Guidance Document.

Can you separate out alumni categories?  Examples are secondary diploma, associates degreed, undergraduate degreed, post graduate degreed, certificate-holders, non-degreed, and other.  If you answered YES, then continue to the next question.  If you answered NO, then email aem@case.org to request the minimal version of the survey.

Do you capture activities defined as Communication?  See the Guidance Document for a full list of included Communication engagement activities.  If you answered YES, then continue to the next question.  If you answered NO, then email aem@case.org to request the minimal version of the survey.

Can you separate out each mode of engagement by alumni category?  For example, can you capture the number of certificate-holders who engaged in volunteer activities?  If you answered YES to this and to all three questions, then you have sufficient data to complete the full version of the survey.  If you answered NO, then email aem@case.org to request the minimal version of the survey.

Survey length will vary based upon the type of institution you are and how much data you have available.  This year's survey has two versions - the Full Version and the Minimal Version.  Please complete the Minimal Version only if you are not able to provide inputs both for alumni counts and complete the modes of engagement for each category of alumni (see the question above for a decision tree).  To schedule an appointment for an overview of the survey or to discuss which survey version would best suit your institution, contact us at aem@case.org.   We suggest reviewing the Guidance Documentation to help you understand how much data you might need to gather.

The survey is open for data collection from early September through mid-January annually. Institutions in Australia and New Zealand have through late February to accommodate their fiscal year schedule.

CASE anticipates releasing the results annually in data portal in the spring following the survey close date. The creation of Summary Benchmarking Report for each participating member institution follows the data release.