CASE Insights Survey

CASE Insights on Philanthropy (Australia and New Zealand)

Register for the survey

Key Dates

  • 2023 Key Findings Published
  • Data Collection Opens
  • Data Collection Closes

CASE Insights on Philanthropy (Australia and New Zealand) survey collects detailed information about fundraising and donors to measure the philanthropic performance of higher education institutions. It also provides an estimate of the overall impact of philanthropy on the higher education sector.

This survey of philanthropic giving uses the methodology used by the CASE Insights on Philanthropy (United Kingdom and Ireland) survey adopted by UK universities. It is an important tool for institutional leaders, development and alumni staff who work at education institutions as it allows them to be more rigorous in benchmarking, more confident in accountability and more persuasive in relationships with alumni and other donors. This survey is a key source of information on this subject, enabling institutions to compare themselves with similar universities.

 

Why participate?

Participating in the survey benefits institutions and the overall fundraising profession. The survey findings will help:

  • Raise the profile of philanthropic giving within the sector
  • CASE lobby on behalf of universities, especially in the area of fundraising
  • Measure the impact of policy interventions
  • University teams measure and monitor their progress
  • Universities, and other stakeholders, see the broader trends in fundraising

In addition, the survey findings, and ability to easily compare results to previous years, help university teams set objectives, assess performance, make informed investment decisions, lobby senior management for investment and improve overall departmental performance.

Member institutions that have participated in the survey will have access to an online toolkit to benchmark their performance against other universities and their previous submissions.

 

What do survey participants need to provide?

The survey asks for data on specific fundraising variables:

  • Number of fundraising staff and the team's expenditure
  • New funds secured and cash income received
  • Number of alumni from the university
  • Number of people donating to the university
  • Information on the university's fundraising campaign(s)

How to Participate

The first step in the process is completing the Survey Contact Form. We will use this information to provide you access to the survey. Your information will be stored on our database and you may get other information from CASE from time to time as well. Once the contact form is completed, a member of the CASE research team will reach out to you with instructions for completing the survey. Please contact Fiona South at fsouth@case.org if you have any issues

The CASE Insights on Philanthropy (Australia and New Zealand) survey must be completed and submitted via the new CASE Insights survey website. Once the survey opens, you can begin entering your data. The new survey platform includes instructions and definitions within the survey and real-time data validation to identify and correct errors as you go. 

There are also three documents to assist with survey completion: 

  • a PDF of the survey questions
  • a Survey Guidance Document (that contains definitions, counting standards, examples and question-by-question guidance)
  • and an Excel Survey Data Collection Form to assemble data before entering it in the online survey. While all data submitted on the CASE Insights survey site will be stored for future access, saving data in the Excel survey data collection form can serve as a backup for your reference. The Excel sheet performs some automatic quality checks on your data but the survey platform itself will provide further validation of your data. 

Before the completed survey is submitted, we require that the senior most Advancement Professional/Director of Development reviews and signs off the reported data. You are also required to sign the Data Sharing Agreement (DSA) – this has been embedded within the survey itself. The DSA is in place to ensure participating institutions do not share results outside of their institution and guarantees that results are only used for benchmarking purposes.

CASE conducts additional validation and may follow up about any perceived discrepancies. The data is run through rigorous checks to ensure that the data submitted is free from errors and as robust as possible. Once the data is validated, CASE will open up access to benchmarking capabilities. In addition, CASE will conduct data analysis and write a report on the findings; this will be distributed to participants and posted on this webpage.

Once benchmarking is available you will be updated. In the meantime, previous year’s data (from 2012 till 2023) will continue to be available on the CASE Benchmarking Toolkit. The Benchmarking Toolkit How-To-Guide provides a click-by-click guide to help you navigate the toolkit while benchmarking. Please use either the Firefox or Internet Explorer browsers to access the CASE Benchmarking Toolkit as some features of the toolkit are not compatible with the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers.

Please note that access to the CASE Benchmarking Toolkit is a member benefit and requires a CASE account. If you have previously logged into case.org, please use the same email and password to access the CASE Benchmarking Toolkit. If you don't have an account you will have to create a new account. If you're not sure if you have an account you can look up your account here.

If you’d like to update your institution’s data for 2022 or 2023, please email Fiona South at fsouth@case.org 

Insights for Building Strategy

Questions?

Contact Fiona South at fsouth@case.org or insights@case.org

Tags

Asia-Pacific Higher Education 4 Year Private 4 Year Public Community College 2 Year Colleges Research and Data Fundraising