The CASE Library has developed a resource collection on advancement in independent schools. The collection offers information on general trends, advancement, alumni and parent engagement, communications and marketing, and fundraising. This collection also includes a guide to all the CASE Library's sample collections that feature sections for independent schools samples. We encourage you to visit the Schools hub for additional resources and news from CASE.

This sample collection includes material on parent councils, such as brochures, applications and role expectations, as well as material on parent giving campaigns, parent newsletters, parent welcome and orientation guides and material specifically for parents of international students.

The Universidad de Colima won a 2023 bronze Circle of Excellence Award for its Cara Amiga campaign that provided 172 food scholarships to students in 2022.

In 2019, Mid-State Technical College launched a multiyear capital campaign that would raise nearly $23 million for the benefit of its rural Wisconsin, U.S., community. The creation of the new Advanced Manufacturing, Engineering Technology, and Apprenticeship Center is a direct result of community support and will be fully operational for the 2024 fall semester.

From tracking alumni engagement to presenting fundraising data to leadership, dashboards are creatively solving problems and making day-to-day work more efficient for advancement professionals. Here, five Circle of Excellence Award-winning dashboard creators provide a deep dive into the origins, execution, and successes of these projects. 

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.

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. 

There may be no better group of supporters than alumni. Alumni know their alma mater and have benefited the most from your institutional offerings—education and social connections. They’ve formed relationships with each other and your faculty and staff. They have a life-long affinity for your school, making them a prime group for successful fundraising. 

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? 

What is race equity as it applies to education institutions? How are advancement teams approaching this work, which experts say involves a wholesale transformation of organizational cultures? How are institutions and individuals moving forward in the name of equity?