Tracy M. Sweet, Chief Communications Officer, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, U.S., talks shop about her school’s approach for when and how it responds to world events.

Whether it be a crisis on campus or a volatile world event, communication officers are under pressure to respond. The stakes of these statements have never been higher. Hear from seasoned education communicators on best practices and strategies, and the need to take a deep breath and fully assess the situation at hand.

Advancement professionals share stories of data in action. They are using the metrics and insights that come from participating in CASE’s industry-leading surveys to set strategy and goals, benchmark against peers, target constituent groups, enhance programming, meet campaign goals, and add new staff.

Hundreds of decisions advancement professionals make each day are data-driven. When we are functioning at our most strategic, we use the significant data at our disposal to make informed decisions that will improve our institutional advancement outcomes. We bring these outcomes to life with the stories of impact we tell.

In fall of 2016, the CASE Commission on Alumni Relations created the Alumni Engagement Metrics Task Force to address the need for an industry-wide framework to measure alumni engagement. The result was the Alumni Engagement Metrics survey, CASE’s first truly global survey. Now, with results from three years of AEM, advancement professionals who work in alumni relations are benefiting from measuring their results in four areas: volunteerism, experiential, philanthropic, and communication. The ability to document positive outcomes is already elevating the profession. In this article, we hear from CASE members who participated in AEM and how it is changing their work for the better. 

Good data can be used to make the case for support and to chronicle trends so we can better navigate changing environments. Here, Ann Kaplan, Senior Director of the VSE, sheds light on how using survey data and understanding giving trends can help institutions grow and thrive.

Engagement leads to giving, but until recently we knew that only from anecdotal evidence.

Many agree that collecting, storing, and analyzing qualitative data is vital to advancement’s growth and an important balance to departments’ continually growing quantitative data capabilities. But is there a method that’s scalable? How can advancement professionals work with data that is, by its definition, difficult to measure? 

Make sure you didn’t miss any of the AMAtlas reports and publications.

Following a year of extreme variability, community colleges can learn from 2020’s fundraising data to further explore valuable aspects of advancement—including online/mobile giving, donor-advised funds, alumni relations, and institutional benchmarking.