The 2022 CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement was recently released. It measures alumni engagement in four modes: philanthropy, volunteer, experiential, and communication, underlining the immense value of alumni engagement in advancing institutions and the importance of the alumni relations profession.
Now in its fourth year, the survey’s 2022 data show that in-person events are returning to pre-pandemic levels, across all institution types and global regions.
In all four years of the Alumni Engagement survey, alumni with multiple degrees from the same institution engaged in four measurement modes at higher rates than other types of alumni. As institutions use these results, some are beginning to test and measure the effects of further segmentation of their alumni populations.
This year, for the first time, 120 institutions reported on graduation cohorts, examining engagement at zero to five years from graduation, six to 10 years out, 11 to 20 years out, and so on. The data show that in those early post-graduation years, more alumni participate in experiential and communication activities than philanthropy. Giving activity begins to increase once alumni are 11 years post-graduation. Those initial engagements lay important groundwork for lifelong, mutually beneficial relationships between alumni and their institutions.
Since the CASE Commission on Alumni Relations first appointed a task force in 2016 to develop an industry-wide alumni engagement framework, a key goal of the survey continues to be providing a more modern and robust measurement of alumni affinity than is provided by the outdated metric of alumni participation.
The latest CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement survey was open to global participants from September 2022 to December 2022 (and through Feb. 28, 2023, for institutions in the Asia-Pacific region, which operates on a calendar-year cycle). Three hundred fifty institutions across 17 countries, grouped into five regions, participated.
Survey participants receive a complimentary summary benchmarking report, including interactive charts and datasets for select variables for their individual institution and associated peers. The reports can be accessed in CASE Insights Data Portal. CASE members who did not participate in the survey can also access the portal to learn more about the alumni engagement results.
For survey participants, CASE is forming an Alumni Engagement Cohort to allow for active, in-person group discussions with peer institutions. The first cohort will meet in Washington, D.C., in October 2023 with a maximum of 15 institutions. More cohorts may be formed depending upon interest level. Learn more.