Four Key Takeaways from CASE’s FY23 Insights on Alumni Engagement Report

Nicole from CMAC here. Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of attending a fantastic CASE webinar with Jenny Cooke Smith and Nicholas Campisi previewing the findings from their FY23 Insights on Alumni Engagement Report. (Fun fact: Cooke Smith and CMAC’s new partner Melissa Schipke did a deep dive on engagement data on our 50th Alumless episode – check it out!)

Here are my key takeaways:

1. Alumni engagement is becoming more important both as an advancement metric and as a way to gauge the overall “health” of an institution’s alumni network. With tuition continuing to skyrocket, the strength of an institution’s alumni network is also increasingly important for prospective students and their parents. Alumni engagement data is still, as Cooke Smith put it, a “directional tool.” We’re all getting better at capturing data from across different parts of our institutions, but it’s unlikely that we will ever know everything…and that’s ok! The degree of difficulty or ease you experience in collecting data is a good proxy for institutional collaboration, and that in and of itself is worth measuring.?
2. The engagement curve continues to be U-shaped. Alumni 0-5 years out are engaged at a higher rate, then we all tend to lose them for a good 10-15 years before getting some of them back when they’re further out. “Communication” engagement - a measure of whether alumni are clicking through on emails - falls off at a particularly sharp rate. Cara Giacomini from CASE said in a recent interview, alumni “are engaging in different ways based on evolving interests.”?
3. Volunteering continues to be “rare” among all age and stage cohorts, but it’s absolutely key to building depth of engagement. Admittedly, volunteering is one of the toughest areas to accurately measure across campus, particularly if your institution is decentralized. For example, you may not be able to track when alumni are speaking in a class or advising a student club, but focusing on building what Cooke Smith calls “multi-modal engagement” is the key to a more engaged alumni population and more dollars raised.?
4. ?The CASE Report and the CASE data portal offer a wealth of information and benchmarking resources.?

If you want to learn more, I encourage you to subscribe and check out past episodes of CMAC’s podcast Alumless. Alumni engagement data (and how to use it) is a frequent topic of conversation and we’re here to help.?Reach out to Chris Marshall if you'd like to discuss how CMAC can assist with your institution's gathering of engagement metrics. With Melissa Schipke on board, we're more ready than ever to partner and provide everything you'll need.

How are you collecting and using your alumni engagement data? Let us know in the comments!?-NK