London — The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is pleased to present "Engaging for Excellence: Generating Alumni Support for Higher Education 2018," which for the first time streamlines data collected from three international surveys of alumni relations programs to offer comprehensive insights into how institutions in Europe and Asia-Pacific engage their alumni and what can be learned from those efforts.

A compilation of the International CASE Alumni Relations Survey (ICARS), the International CASE Alumni Relations Survey for Business Schools (BICARS) and the Asia-Pacific Alumni Relations Survey (APARS), this report synthesizes responses from 140 institutions based in 27 countries in Europe and Asia-Pacific, providing valuable information on a key constituency: alumni.

"Alumni are critical partners for universities, powerful advocates who open doors and build bridges," says Tricia King, vice president of global operations for CASE. "Maintaining strong relationships with our former students is a fundamental part of the work we do in advancement. This report represents a significant step forward in understanding how best to work with our alumni."

Among the more significant findings to come from this broader examination of alumni engagement efforts:

• Library (94%), career support (83%) and alumni merchandise (77%) are the top-three most implemented alumni benefits and services across participating institutions.
• Seven out of 10 alumni events are organised in an institution's home country and three of 10 alumni events are organised internationally.
• E-newsletters have a higher implementation rate than printed magazines across the participating institutions with 99% of participating institutions providing e-newsletters, while 69% offer printed magazines.
• Speaking engagements (94% of participating institutions), mentoring (77% of participating institutions) and student recruitment (67% of participating institutions) are the top-three most-offered volunteering opportunities to alumni.
• A robust alumni relations strategy with senior leadership buy-in is the first building block of a successful alumni engagement campaign. Just under half (46%) of participating institutions have a strategy in place while 49% hope to adopt one in the short-term.

The report is part of CASE's recently launched AMAtlas initiative, which aims to be a global resource for advancement professionals by providing quality research, data and analytics to help institutions make informed decisions and ultimately achieve their mission. Earlier this year, AMAtlas released a white paper on alumni engagement metrics, a set of definitions and framework for understanding and engaging alumni that will be field tested for validity.

"A task force of senior advancement professionals created a common framework for measuring alumni engagement with clear definitions that all educational institutions can adopt," says Fred Weiss, who heads AMAtlas as CASE's new chief research and data officer. "This way of measuring engagement combined with programmatic studies like what this inaugural report provides, helps to ensure the ability to have comparative metrics supported by the context of what institutions are actually doing."

While CASE maintained editorial control of this study, the Aluminati Network Group supported the production of this report as it provides greater understanding of the impact of alumni engagement and alumni relations work.

"We are witnessing a move towards institutions leveraging technology to generate new connections, support sophisticated mentoring programs and grow student recruitment," says Daniel Watts, Aluminati's founder and managing director. "Start-up programs can learn from more mature alumni programs and see the value of investing in alumni relationships."

Read the report here