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CASE All Districts Online 2023
Using Metrics to Drive Your Engagement and Fundrai ...
Using Metrics to Drive Your Engagement and Fundraising Strategy
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Video Transcription
Good morning everyone, and welcome to day two of the all district Conference. I hope you all enjoyed the sessions yesterday. We're starting today off with using metrics to drive your engagement and fundraising strategy. We'll take as many audience questions as we can at the end of the session, so please use the Q&A box to send in your questions. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Cara. Thanks, Kristi. And I am delighted to be here today and to talk to you about one of my favorite things, data. But more importantly, really how to put data into practice. And I'm going to talk a lot as we go about a variety of things that we traffic CASE and ways that you can use them at your institution to make your engagement and fundraising more successful. But first, a little bit about myself. I am the vice president of Data Research and Technology at CASE. I joined in 2020. So I had three years now at CASE and I started in the midst of the pandemic. So I actually worked with colleagues for about a year before I saw anyone in person. So it's been a really interesting time to have joined CASE and to see the opportunities as we've emerged and brought a lot of our conferences back in person and also celebrated the tremendous online cousins we've been able to develop during this time, which we see today in this all district conference. It's great to see so many of you here. Before I was that CASE, I was the director of Advancement Analytics at the University of Washington. I had a variety of previous roles in I.T. data. Really looking at that data and benchmarking across educational technologies and I.T services before moving to advancement. About five years or so ago. I spent 25 years working in education and I have a study in English and textual studies. It's an interesting journey from that to data. But it's one that's happened gradually over time. And the main thing is I really bring a learning mindset to everything that I do, and I think it's something that really helps me communicate about data and help all of, you know, the ways that you can engage with data, even if that's not the first thing that you are trained. And there's so much that can be done as we think about the ways to connect our data into our strategies. And I live in Seattle, Washington, and that's where I'm conducting from today. So the things I want to highlight today, I want to introduce you to CASE insights, which is our data. And we can start arm at CASE. I want to talk about some of the recent data we've collected and what the relevance it has for you, and then to talk through some strategies for how you can act on the insights from those data. I welcome you to a comprehensive view of every single survey that we capture because we have huge, large reports. You can look at for that. But I'm going to highlight key pieces that have come out of a lot of our surveys and some of the ways that they provide effective measures for the work that you're doing. So first, I want to introduce you to CASE insights. Many of you may have known the work that we did that CASE in research and data previously. As an atlas, we went through a rebranding exercise this last year and have we named all of our work as CASE Insights. And this encompasses a variety of different pieces of our work at CASE. But some of the reasons for this is we were really responding to a lot of feedback from members. We were finding people were confused by the name Atlas and really didn't understand the close connection with CASE. So as we moved into our new strategic planning CASE, one of the things we've been doing is really tying our research and data work into all of what we're doing and CASE insights really highlights that relationship. But the thing that's most exciting to me about this new name is it also talks about the end result of what you're doing when you're capturing data. You're not just capturing data so that you can say you've done that and check that box. You're moving on to the next thing. But you can think about how data are put into practical applications in the work that you're doing. What are you learning? How are you growing? How are you continuing to refine? And so this is what is encompassed under CASE Insights CASE. We focus on data standards and research. And you will see at the heart of our constellations, like here on the CASE global reporting standards, they are foundational for everything that we do in all of the ways that we are tracking advancement activities. And they also provide an ethical foundation for the profession and really smart principles and practices for how to measure what you're doing and also approach your work. So I really recommend everyone review them if you haven't already, and then make for a nice light. Reading about 300 pages of definitions and examples. So things that get me really excited, but they also have a lot of practical import from the work that you're doing. So the things that we track them are philanthropy alumni engagement campaigns. We're starting to do some tracking in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. And we've had a variety of pilots there and our exploring how we expand into marketing and communications. So we're really looking at data that serves the entire advancement enterprise at the heart of this are the CASE global reporting standards. They were recently updated and released in March of 2021. We're continuing to update and refine. You'll see some updates happening later this year as we're working on some additional clarifications and new examples based on what we've learned as we put them into practice. But that first global edition of the standards that previously existed, some of the seven years in a very focused mainly on the U.S. and we've really expanded them to encompass everywhere that we're touching around the globe and thinking about what we do as a profession versus what what is happening in some specific regions. On there are regional chapters. So one of the things they do is provide a common foundation for everyone working in advancement. That includes everyone who is on this call. They guide ethical decisions that reflect our global perspective and they ensure our transparency and consistency. And those are two of the most important things. When you're thinking about data and how we tell the story of the effectiveness of your work. And they also enable benchmarking, and I'll be sharing results of benchmarking surveys today. So I'm going to jump in to our data and how what I'm going to do here is I'm not going to try to be comprehensive about everything that we capture that would need to be like a 45 hour presentation. And you probably get a little bored by that. But instead I'm going to focus on a few key highlights from different surveys and some of what they mean for you in a practical sense. So first off, I want to think about our philanthropy data. And the philanthropy data we collect from CASE insights comes to us from a variety of different surveys, and we've been working over time to align these surveys more fully. You'll see continuing efforts on that going forward, whether some similar questions across all surveys and whether it's also all of them coming into alignment with the new reporting standards. So we have the voluntary support of education in the United States, which has been running for over 50 years. And that's something that CASE acquired in 2018. We have philanthropy in independent schools, which is new this year in the United States, and that's conducted in partnership with NEA. That's the National Association of Independent Schools, and has dramatically increased the amount of data that we are collecting and reporting on from the independent school sector. And we're looking to expand that globally in the coming year. We're also collecting data on philanthropy and we have done so for the past five years in Canada in partnership with CTA And that survey, this was the fifth year anniversary of the survey, this last data collection report that came out. So that's very exciting news. I've seen a commitment to benchmarking in Canada for quite some time. We've been doing the philanthropy United Kingdom Ireland survey. We're shifting the name from that with the next data collection. It informally been called the CASE Ross Survey. That name Transition is still, still underway as part of our rebranding. And then we have a survey in Australia, New Zealand, focusing on philanthropy as well. So we collect philanthropy data from a variety of different sources and I'll highlight some of that today. Now the first thing I want to do is focus in on U.S. higher education and highlight that in fiscal year 2022, the last year for which we've collected data, we're just about to start collecting data for fiscal year 2023, since that's still underway for a couple more weeks is looking at that giving from all sources increased in that year. And this is a breakdown for U.S. data in higher education. And you see alumni, non alumni, individuals and organizations between 2022 and 2021. And that kind of growth that you're seeing across all populations. We also announced big headlines like this one or at least reports that giving reached 59.5 billion in fiscal year 2022, up 12.5%. And in advancement we left big numbers and big numbers are exciting and that is certainly a number to celebrate. But sometimes when you see data like this, you feel very disconnected from your day to day work. So what are some of the things you can do at these really large trends? Well, the first thing I'd recommend is when you're looking at the results from your own institution and your own giving, looking at the breakdowns and seeing did we actually have giving from all sources increase in fiscal year 2018? Do we batch these trends? Do we exceed these trends? Is there an area where we didn't see that growth? How can we compare and look and see how our individual progress kind of matches with that? And are we seeing this similar type of breakdown of sources? So that's one of the first things to do with trend data is to understand where you fit in that. And if there's an area where you're doing very well, kind of exceeding the trend or an area where you're lagging behind, you start to dig in more fully to the variety of other measures that you have in that space. So rather than just looking at the big number and stopping, starting to ask some questions, the other thing I want to highlight here, and this really is important for thinking about the practices we're tracking, what we put in place is if you look at U.S. higher education over the last decade, 1992 to 2022 fiscal year data collection, you will see three different lines here. The Aqua organizations, the Red huge trend, not alumni, individuals, and then the dark blue alumni. We tend to focus in on alumni in a lot of our measures and reporting. But we'll notice is that these number, the alumni anomaly among individuals as a proportion of the total dollars raised has been going down over time. And we've been seeing organizations pull away. If you look at the first point of that chart applying in 1992, you're looking at about 50% of all giving the proportion that's coming from organizations. And in 2022, that's up to 61%. Why that matters is that a lot of people, even individuals, are giving through different types of vehicles that become classified as organizations. We're looking at foundation, getting donor advice funds and a variety of other places where we've really broken out what that looks like, as well as the growth in the percentage coming in from other types of foundations and corporations in their giving. But it's mainly a reflection of a changing and giving vehicles. So it's important for you to look at where are people giving, where what types of organization, what makes up that organizational bucket for you as you're looking at your own data and thinking about the ways that you're stewarding donors? One of the changes we've made in the survey recently is really to give more opportunity is to give soft credit to alumni for different kinds of vehicles where they're giving through so you can start to steward and recognize them regardless of the format of where the gift is coming from. So it's important to note these larger trends and think about how your practices are reflecting those opportunities and some of the challenges of connecting and stewarding donors. Given this trend. The other trend that we track in higher education that I find fascinating, and this is looking at largest donor tables and we have four years in the voluntary sort of education survey, pulled out the three largest gifts in various categories. And over the time, those categories have changed. So one of the things that we've done here is we've taken the we've asked each institution to report the donor totals for the sorry, the giving the dollar totals for the largest gifts from various from the three largest gifts from living individuals and the proportion that they make up of the overall amount that was received in that category or the three largest gifts from bequests and the percentage they represent of the total giving in that category. The three largest corporate donors as as as the proportion that they make of all giving in that category. So this is really looking at the total amount of money that came in in these various categories and what percentage is represented by the largest three largest gifts. And what we're seeing across this is you're seeing things like 28.6% of gifts from living. Individuals are coming from those three largest gifts. You get two bequests and it's 60.3% coming from the three largest that people are reporting. And that's looking at those averages. Bequests as a percentage of all personal giving. You're getting to those largest gaps being 11.1%. So when you start to look at this, you're seeing this greater reliance not just on major gifts, but on the biggest gifts that are coming in to your institution. So one of the key things to do with a trend like this and to look at these type of patterns we're getting this coming from is to think about what do we know about those largest gaps and who's making them, What is the history of connection with the institution that led to those large gifts? We did a deeper dive into principal guests a while ago where we asked institutions to provide data on some of the largest gifts they received, and we found things like 11 over 11 years of giving before someone makes their most significant transformational gift. We found a deep connection to the institution and a variety of different ways and the use of these kind of gifts multiplying over time. So it's really important to have measures in the fact to be able to track pipeline and to think of the long history it takes to get to these big gifts, but also to knowing that the influence that they have on your totals and they have a huge impact on the overall numbers that we report in our surveys to understand when you have when you look at your largest gifts, what is the history, what is led to them, what are the repeatable practices there? I also want to give another view of this, which is that we have tracked something similar in our United Kingdom Ireland survey on higher education and this is looking at the gifts committed. So it's not looking just the funds received like the Volunteers Board of Education data they highlighted before, but it's looking at the pledges and the the gifts that came in as a result of money raising activity in a given year. And here you see them broken up by the largest, the second largest and the third largest gift, and then all of the other funds combined. And one of the things we do differently with the United Kingdom, Ireland survey as we separate types of institutions into the maturity of their advancement program. So that's what that that labels across the bottom indicates. And I'll have you look at the all column at the end here and you will see the largest gift accounting for 30% of fundraising totals. So that's really important to look at those kind of average figures that people are reporting and that that that influence of those large gifts. And think about what you're learning about your largest. Yes. The other thing we've introduced recently, and we do this in a variety of surveys, I've highlighted it here for the US Higher Education survey is giving by graduation cohorts. And this is a new measure that we've introduced. I think it's a really useful measure in the work that you're doing to really think about who is giving in. You're from your alumni population and how many years out from graduation are they. And what you see is that the percentage of alumni who give in dollars and in number of donors dramatically increases the further out you go from graduation, where you see those largest percentages of money, that 37.8% at 50 plus years out, that 14.6% of a percentage who gave at 50 plus years out. And it kind of grows and ramps up over time. But there's a long lag here. You're lucky you're seeing those numbers really jump for the percentage who are giving at 20 years out. So there's a lot of connection and maintaining engagement that needs to happen. In the meantime, one thing to do when looking at data like this is to see if your own data matched this pattern we've seen for most institutions, it very much does. And to think about what are your strategies for keeping alumni connected in those years where there's a much smaller percentage who are giving as you went through those decades? We also track this for engagement. Interestingly, there's a similar pattern, but the drop off is not as extreme. There's more connect types of connection that happen often non philanthropic in those early decades. So there's some opportunity there to bring those two types of data together. We also track gift bans looking at the percentage of money that's coming in from what percentage of donors and I'm showing this data and it's a preview from some of what we've collected in this last year from U.S. independent schools. And this is looking at the CASE members who participated in that survey, although we have data from a larger population as well, and this is a pattern we've seen in numerous populations, the percentages very slightly, but they don't. But the pattern does not. The column that's mostly read is showing dollars coming in and the total donated and the proportion that's coming from gifts of a certain size. When you get the million plus at the top down to 999 or below at the bottom. And so you can see that 36.6% of the total funds donated coming in are coming from gifts of over $1,000,000. One of the highlights you can say here is a 2.2% of all donors gave 76.8% of all the funds received. So you really see that huge amount of revenue of donations coming in from a very small percentage of donors now. So usually donors that have a very long history to years of engagement and giving with an institution. And we look at some of our other studies. We also see, though, that 74.5% of donors are giving less than $1,000. So when you start to look at where these ratios are for your institution, it's really important to think about what's your strategy for those giving at those very high levels? What's your strategy for that large population that's giving at that lower level where you have so many donors and those people connected to your institution? What do you know about those different populations beyond just what they're giving about who they are? What's that how the people progress at your own institution through this giving care? Another thing that we highlight with our independent schools data and again, this is very new data for us is looking at different types of institutions between boarding and day schools. The median funds receive coming in based on enrollment and not surprisingly, you see that those institutions with higher enrollment do tend to have higher number, higher amount of funds going coming in. We see a pretty steady growth. When you're looking at the day school side, you see a really large leap at that 500 to 700 point at the boarding school. But thinking about this is important to look at when you're considering who your peers are. And this matters not just for independent schools, but any type of institution thinking about what are some of those characteristics that put your institution in the category and similar peers with other institutions, But you can compare more apples to apples. What they're doing with what you're doing. It would be unrealistic for a school that has a size of 200 to 300 students to expect to bring in the same amount of funds as a school with over 700 students. So thinking about how you're making those comparisons, how you're setting those goals, how you're measuring your own success, it's really important. And these types of breakdowns can be really helpful for that. Another data point I want to highlight from our school survey is our funds received by a source from fiscal year 22 and partially because it challenges some of our common misconceptions about schools. One of the things I've heard since I started an advancement was that parents are the primary givers at schools and alumni are second and alumni, and it is more important to have a parent strategy or an alumni strategy, although of course you need both. And these data raise some questions here. One of the reasons we're seeing here is that if you look at the median per school that recorded from money received from parents and guardians of current students, you will see that number is substantially higher than it is from alumni. You see that 626,514 compared to 233,563. Those two boxes in the upper I won't say directions because everything's reversed on my screen, but and then when you look at the total money received, you see a different story where you actually see the total dollars coming in from alumni reported in the survey exceeding those from parents. So there's a few larger gifts that are really driving that. But thinking about that connection that alumni have and the really importance of looking at both of those populations really carefully. There's also a really interesting piece coming through here with foundations and foundations. Again, looking at hard and soft credit is important because often those foundations may be coming from parents or from alumni and kind of knowing where to give some of that stewardship and recognition credit and the importance of paying attention to those populations. I'm going to highlight a couple more pieces of data and then go into some strategy, some additional strategy pieces beyond kind of how to use these various programs. One thing I want to highlight is looking at when we're tracking an advancement outside of the United States, which has had a much longer advancement history than a lot about the other regions, where CASE has a presence. We've been seeing that in advancement in countries. We've come in over over several years. And I think our latest Canadian survey, where we looked at five years of the survey participation and we have over 50% of students that's going back to my teaching days, institutions that participate in Canada at a given year. But we had 29 who participated since the very start of the survey. And so we tracked their funds received over that five year period. And what we are seeing is this steady growth in advancement performance over time as there's been more focus and more investment. We've also tracked two lenses of fundraising that we were trying to do in all of our surveys. You'll see this become much more prevalent in future years in our U.S. independent school survey, as well as the dominant in our surveys in other regions for some time, is looking at new funds committed, which also includes pledges and a larger percentage of what the fundraising activity in the year is been. And there you'll see also we had the biggest year that we recorded in Canada, although there had been a previous year, It doesn't have that same kind of stunning graph that we've been seeing that growth over time and the new funds committed. Again, when you're looking at these really large numbers for a region, it's important to think about how your own institutional growth has been matching with these trends. And if you see, one of the things we sometimes see is that there's a few institutions in a region, especially a region that hasn't had as long history of fundraising where they're performing in a way that's really outpacing others and that other institutions maybe haven't had that same commitment of resources to have that similar growth. So looking at those trends, to look at your own resourcing and staffing and some of the other measures in the survey to know what's possible and what the with them, what the models are and where that growth can be achieved. That's really helpful. I want to tell a similar story with our Australia-New Zealand survey. We did a deeper dive into specifically the Australian institutions that participate and you can see this overall growth in advancement in Australia in 2013 to 2021, where you're seeing in millions going from 495 million up to 792 million in less than ten years. And looking at eight years of growth here. So what you're really you're really seeing some substantial investment and growth and where you're seeing that growth, it's really important to kind of look at what are some of the factors that are leading to where have you seen the biggest percentage change in particular areas? So these are some of the ways to look at those larger data points. I'm going to highlight very quickly some of our engagement data. As I said, we collect philanthropy data from these variety of different surveys around the globe. We have one survey for engagement data, and if you're not participating in it, I encourage you to jump in with this next year's data collection. We have a short and a long version. It's very valuable and it really provides a much more comprehensive view of what's happening with your alumni. We have we launched the survey four years ago. We, after the first year, made some significant adjustments. We kept it very similar for the last three years. The last year we had 349 submissions across 17 countries. We would like to see that grow exponentially because we think the survey is tremendously valuable, especially as we've been seeing the value it brings to those who've been participating for several years. What we're starting to do is measure alumni engagement in four modes. We're looking at volunteerism, philanthropy, where everyone doesn't have those data communications, which is an optional section, but it's very valuable for those who can provide it to look at those data and experiential, which is the types of events and activities alumni are engaging in. We use this to come together and really has an alumni engagement. So we're looking at your legally contactable alumni and people who who engage in at least one of the four categories in the past year to really get to a much more robust engagement rate of how people are connecting with your institution. And you can start to see those points of connection that go beyond fundraising. And that's really important because since you've been doing the survey, we have found that of those engaged alumni, they're tracked in the survey, 81% of that engagement is non philanthropic. That means four out of five are engaged alumni engagement, That's where modes are engaged in a way that is not giving or is not giving yet at this point, especially when you look at those graduation cohorts and how long the lag time is for it for philanthropic giving, it's really important to kind of think about these measures. And so this is a much more inclusive outcome than just looking at private philanthropy. And so here so you get 19% of overall engagement that we track as non topic. When you look at the data, you can see that that varies by region. With the United States having 22.5% of overall engagement being philanthropic, that's partially because the United States has had advancement fundraising programs particular in place for longer than a lot of the other regions where we track. So one of the things you get out of these data is being able to really look at what your engagement looks like by these various modes. People who are connected in any of the four modes, connected in a communication and communication connection required, or some active engagement with communication vehicles. It's not just receiving an email but doing something with it or engaging in various other channels experiential volunteering and philanthropic philanthropy and knowing kind of how you are connecting. One of the key things to look at with these four buckets is if you're not already tracking this, think about how could you start to capture those data? Don't you have a lot of resources, a CASE to help you with that? So it really tells a much more complete story. That's often the starting point when you're looking at versus thinking about what are all the ways you're capturing volunteerism at your institution right now. What stories could you tell if you capture that more fully and even if you already are participating in the survey, we found people over time have been able to have much more robust tracking in place. By paying attention to this, you tend to move what you measure. And so if you really want to know how alumni are staying connected to your institution and to think about the ways in which you can boost that engagement, how it connects to overall giving in time, how it connects to advocacy and other amazing outcomes for your institution. It's really important to start to put the methods in place to track it, and looking at this framework can really be a useful model for that. We also have found, as you've looked at some of the trends we're seeing in the last few years, that we're seeing a growth in contextual alumni. We're seeing a lot of institutions have just more alumni, but also better means of finding some means of connecting with them. That's it. We saw a 4% increase this last year, a 3% increase the year before. We also saw an increase in alumni relations staffing this last year, which was refreshing to see after a huge decline the previous year we had, there was something we tracked during the pandemic as a pretty significant decline in alumni relations staffing, and that has bounced back and then some in this previous year. However, the combo of those two things is that with the increase of alumni that are contactable, with the decrease of online relations after the kind of regrowth of it, but we're still seeing that the contactable alumni per staff ratio grew in this in this past year, so that you're getting about 10,700 staff at that staff. That's amazing. I what we do with all of that might be hard to work with actually probably alumni to person, remember. So think about what your ratios are. Think about what your patterns are with staffing. Think about then how does this connect with the alumni engagement theory have? Also, however, we have found that institutions that kept their staff in a place maintained their engagement measures much more strongly. This is the percentage of engaged alumni who also give where you're seeing through these various modes. And it's really interesting to see that looking at the high bar in the United States of those who attended that said that 35.9% also seeing volunteerism. But you can see if you just track across like in Canada, you see a pretty high rate at 10.6% for those that are volunteering. So really thinking about how you can use this to compare no matter where you are. But thinking about that there is a close connection and these data start to build to tell that story, which is something that's really important and advancement. This is the percentage of volunteers that gives to various at various populations. Interestingly, on the independent schools that 53%, primarily undergraduate, 60%, pretty low on community colleges. So be interesting to kind of look into some of those pieces. Some of it could be what data is actually able to be captured. But this is another piece that's really important to keep in mind with these data. And what I want to do in the last bit of this presentation is to say, well, what do I do now with all of these data that I've highlighted? And like I said, I told you a story of interesting data points we have from CASE that go beyond the big headline numbers and some of the practical ways to look at them and think about them in your own work. But it's really effective sometimes to have a model to use that with. I really believe our data CASE are most effective when they're a starting point rather than an end destination. Now I want you to complete every survey we ever put out all year to the best of your ability, because it's really helpful for you and for the trends in the industry. But the way that the work really matters the most and the way that I get most excited about it is when you start to take some of what you're able to measure with your CASE and to put that into your evolving goals and strategy. And when you use it as a starting point to be able to collect additional data, we talk with members all the time and find out the new things we should be capturing in our survey. So that's part of why we have a more robust system now for breaking out different types of organization and different types of credit is coming out of the conversations we're having with members about what you need to be able to track. We've introduced measures like alumni graduation cohorts through these conversations, and there's a lot you can be doing at your institution that goes beyond what we're measuring at Chase or that takes or matching a CASE and really embeds it into the specific problems and challenges that you have. So one of the things I really like to give is a fairly short framework on how to think about integrating data into your daily practice. And this is these are the first four steps. The first thing is thinking about what is your goal, what is the problem that you're trying to solve? And this can be a big problem or a small problem. It could be how do I get more people to come to events? Or it can be this particular segment of alumni population. I'm not connecting with as much or we're seeing a decline at this gift ban. What should we be doing about it? We want to have more people giving for certain types of activities, but thinking about the big or the small goals that you could be pursuing? Well, starting with that goal, rather than starting to make the data, what will change when you meet your goal? How will you know that something is better? What is the impact? Where are the stories you'll be able to tell? What is the CASE for making that change? That is just as important as what you're measuring, because this is what makes people get excited about it and this is what helps you really use the data that you're collecting is to be able to make that CASE for change. Tell the story of success. When you're able to take a goal, meet it and then measure it. Where are you starting from? Tends to be what are you measuring? And then how will you know if you've made progress? So you'll notice these four steps Do not start with data. They start with the goal. They start with the story and the impact and the reasons you want to change that goal, the stories of those help, and then you start to land some of the data and then it gets more refined from there. And I walk through really quickly some of the details of what this means. And I used a one night engagement as an example here because of the last set of data that I showed in this presentation. But you can do this with any type of measure, and I'm just going to walk through the details and let you read the examples. So the details here, your strategy thinking about what is your goal. You need to align with your institutional priorities, define a target to reach in a specific area. And I really encourage you to think about how are you building up a particular area of strength or shoring up a weakness. What are some of the goals that you have at your institution that you want to make a change with impact? What will change? What story will you be able to tell? How will you know that the strategy that you're working on this can be a big strategy or a small strategy like large or small, ask what problem will diminish as a result of the change that you're making or the area you're paying more attention to the project that you're introducing? Then I want you to think about your baseline where you started. This is where data comes in after you've got that strategy, that impact, What can you count right now? What direction are things moving? What are the patterns you've seen over the last few years in this area? Are there external benchmarks that apply? Is there a point in one of our CASE surveys, is there something else you have on one of our systems that starts to tell this story? What are the different pieces that you that help you know where you're starting from? And I'll go into a little more detail on some of the challenges with this as well. But this is really where you're starting from, but you can quantify it and then how will you know that things are getting better? And I would go with better because if you're setting a goal and paying attention to it, that's your intention. You could also be reducing the decline is another way of approaching this. But are you looking at a time period of comparison? What are all the possible indicators? What influences that rate of change? And I encourage you to think about all the pieces that play in and not just one measure. What are the earliest signs you would see that something is changing? Which of those can you capture and start to to look at? And I encourage you to take this a look at this from any point, any area where you're looking to make a difference. Are you looking to better understand what's happening with your largest gifts? Are you looking to understand what's motivating alumni to come to events? What type of events are most successful? Kind of use this framework to start to track in these various ways. So there's far more pieces that I won't walk through in detail, but I can add some larger versions I have of this presentation. But they then get to really looking more closely at what you can measure given the larger goal that you've set up, what data do you have now? What need are missing? Is there anything you can start to collect and what are some of the resources that can help you? So really taking all of those pieces and then walking all of these steps, those first four and then these four can really get you to a robust strategy to be able to try something, measure that change and really understand the impact that things are having. And I would encourage that any of the data points I highlighted today could be the start of an issue or a topic or an area you'd want to pay more attention to. I want to highlight some of the resources we have from CASE. We have our CASE Insights data portal, previously called Data Miner, and this has data to our voluntary It's part of education survey and our alumni engagement survey. We also have other means of connecting with data for regions outside of the United States. But we're working to eventually bring all these together. We also have our CASE Insights Summary Benchmarking report, and that really looks at our this provides a any participant in any survey gets a basic report that shows compared to some selected peers. How are you doing? This is a great starting point to have an easy entry point to your data, and we can also do a much more deep dive with a customer report. Our strategic benchmarking reports that are available for an additional charge and have some consultation with them. So these are some resources from CASE for any survey or participating in. We also have our course on global reporting standards, which I encourage everyone to take. It's online, very approachable and really walks through in a lot of detail. A lot of the things that I wish I'd known when I started advancement. And right now you can participate in our campaign survey if you have a recently completed campaign. So reach out to us as we're relaunching this in a new format with in alignment with the new standards in partnership with Marks and Mundy, really looking at campaigns that have closed recently and with that, I think I left 5 minutes for questions and stay well done. I'm impressed that there's a lot of data to cover in a short period of time, so thank you for still leaving us. Time for questions. We do have a lot of questions coming through. Some of them are very specific about survey. So just right off the bat, I want to let everybody know there is a CASE insights booth. And many of our CASE Insights staff are hosting office hours to answer your questions. So please stop by the exhibit hall in between sessions to check that out and talk to them about some of your very detailed questions. A lot of people want to know when they're looking at giving parents of current students and alumni how you would count alumni, where parents of current students, they fall into two categories. I don't know if you can answer that off the top of your head. Okay. Alumni who are parents of current will Actually, one of the things we've been moving away from in our surveys is having a very specific hierarchy. So we're starting to ask people to do is actually to count them in both categories so that you start to see alumni, your total numbers, parents, your total numbers within that population. And rather than looking at, you know, obviously the hard credit only shows up in one place, but that's part of why we're doing a lot more soft credit type of counting so that you can start to see and in various breakdowns, it's okay to have things attributed to more than one category because what's most important is that you reach that population in that's entirety perfect. That actually answered, I think, several other questions specifically about how to count people who fall into multiple categories. So someone else asked, has there been a survey of those largest donors? They think it would be interesting to survey someone like Mackenzie Scott and get her input on where she lives and why. Yes, everyone would love to do the survey of one of Mackenzie Scott. We'd have to see if that trend really carries across the industry, but he definitely has a huge impact. We've actually been able to see her specific gifts really changing some of our overall titles is part of why we have those largest gaps so we can back them out and look at them in different ways. We did do a survey sponsored by Bank of America that I was that a couple of years ago that really took the top 10% of the gifts that we'd had reported in the voluntary part of education survey over a period of time, and then asked institutions to provide detail on some of those gifts. So we heard we got detailed responses on seven different gifts about the team that went into them, what they were for, the history with the donor. A lot of those pieces and I think a lot of the questions we asked there are just amazing framework for institutions to look at and that report is available on our website. We did it as a one time deep dive as part of our sponsored research, but it's definitely that's in our minds of how do we actually take that framework and expand it because we found it so useful. Thank you. And I know you covered this in your in your presentation, but where can people find the CASE insights surveys. And I know that Q Fiber is also in our chat. If they can pop that link into the chat again, that would be great, but that help people find our surveys and these research reports. But one of the beautiful things with our rebranding is if you now go to the CASE website, you will see insights as one of the choices you can pick from the very start. We've also reorganized all of our survey pages so that you actually see all of the things connected with a particular survey. And one place that you can see when it's open for data, when it's if it's closed for analysis. When the last report came out, all the reports from previous years connect it in. So it's so I'm sure that library opened in the chat but it's if you go to the CASE website and then go to CASE insights you will see that. So that is really helpful. All right. And we are almost out of questions. We have a lot more questions coming in. I will also say to everyone those questions we didn't get to in addition to the CASE insights Booth, we do have a CASE library booth. You can stop by and send them a chat message to ask. They can point you to these resources on our website, so we will get that information to you. And also, I know that the slides aren't working. We're getting a lot of comments about that. We are working on a fix for that. So so that is coming soon. We will get that fixed just as possible. And then just one final word. Someone wanted clarification at the end. I asked, data is only for K-through-12 schools or if it applies to higher education. The NDIS data, the CASE advanced data. That's collected in the Dazzle survey platform where Infinite splits are reporting a lot of other pieces, is only for K-through-12 schools in the United States. We are lucky to have a similar survey. We piloted some of the questions globally for schools, but it complements what we are collecting with the philanthropy surveys that are in the various regions. So we're looking to have similar questions across all of those. So it's really important to know what type of institution you are and where you are, and we can tell you where to provide data and look at that. Perfect. Thank you so much. We are out of time. There were a lot of questions we didn't get to, so I'm sorry to everyone, but please do stop by the library and the insights booth to get your answers. Our next session will be kicking off in about 15 minutes at the top of the hour. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.
Video Summary
The video is a presentation about using metrics to drive engagement and fundraising strategies. The speaker, Cara, is the Vice President of Data Research and Technology at CASE. She discusses the importance of data and how it can be used to make engagement and fundraising efforts more successful. Cara highlights the various data sources and surveys conducted by CASE, such as the voluntary support of education in the United States, philanthropy in independent schools, and philanthropy in Canada, among others. She presents key findings from these surveys, including trends in giving from different sources, the impact of large gifts, and the engagement levels of alumni. Cara emphasizes the need to set goals, measure progress, and use data to inform strategies and decision-making. She also discusses available resources from CASE, such as the CASE Insights data portal and benchmarking reports. The video ends with a framework for integrating data into daily practice and using it to track progress towards specific goals.
Asset Caption
CASE Career Level: 1-6
CASE Competencies: Strategic Thinking, Business and Financial Acumen
Keywords
metrics
engagement
fundraising
data
survey
voluntary support of education
philanthropy
CASE Insights
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