The CASE Global Reporting Standards represent the long history of CASE being at the forefront of providing professional standards for the advancement profession. The CASE Standards provide the ethical and practical guidelines for counting and reporting fundraising performance at educational institutions. These standards promote consistency and transparency among institutions and make possible the process of global benchmarking. 

The foundation of the CASE Standards is the definition of educational philanthropy. By explicitly stating this definition, CASE is emphasizing the voluntary nature of philanthropy. 

Educational Philanthropy is the voluntary act of providing private financial support to nonprofit educational institutions. To be categorized as philanthropy in keeping with CASE standards, such financial support must be provided for the sole purpose of benefiting the institution’s mission and its social impact, without the expressed or implied expectation that the donor will receive anything more than recognition and stewardship as the result of such support. 

It also reminds the profession, our institutions, our donors, and our communities that the intent of this philanthropy is to steward these gifts appropriately. The CASE Standards go so far as to outline specific scenarios to avoid in the areas of donor control and donor influence.  

A group of volunteers gathered during 2023 to examine the current edition of the CASE Standards, looking at topics that may need additional clarification or changes based on feedback from members. 

The current definition of New Funds Committed limited the counting of documented committed multi-year pledges to only five years. CASE heard from many members having a hard time operationalizing multi-year pledges or pledges without a defined end date. 

CASE is changing the New Funds Committed metric to include the entire documented committed value as a part of the metric. This includes counting the full documented committed pledge value of multi-year pledges. This does not affect the counting of those pledge payments. Pledge payments—be they for one year, one month, or for years 1-3 or 1-20—are all counted as pledge payments as part of Funds Received as those monies are received by the institution. The CASE Standards go further to provide more explicit language around various pledge types, be they annual fund pledges, regular pledges, or multi-year pledges. Those details can be found in both the digital edition of the CASE Standards and on the CASE website. 

This change eases the burden on institutions who previously needed to split multi-year commitments and provides clearer guidance on the handling of pledges of various time durations. 

The CASE Standards also provide recommendations for campaign counting. This is especially useful when institutions are completing the relaunched CASE Insights on Campaigns Survey in partnership with Marts&Lundy. Focused on completed campaigns, this survey takes into account fundraising in alignment with previous editions of the CASE Standards as well as the current edition. CASE is collecting campaign benchmarks for all institutions globally who completed a campaign between 2019-2024. Sign up to learn more here. 

If you want to dive deeper by becoming a CASE Standards Scholar, check out the CASE Global Reporting Standards online training course. This on-demand, self-paced course covers all major areas of the CASE Standards and provides information on making the most of your data in CASE Insights surveys. 

More information on the 2024 update of the CASE Standards can be found in the digital edition as well as on the CASE website. The site also includes an updated “frequently asked questions” page. 

For questions about the CASE Standards, email standards@case.org.