The first step in the process is completing the survey contact form. We will use this information to provide you access to the survey. Once the contact form is completed, a member of the CASE research team will reach out to you to verify that you have been granted access. If you participated in Year 1 and you have not had any staffing changes, you might be able to skip to step 3. Please contact research@case.org if you have any issues.  

The survey is hosted on CASE's Benchmarking Toolkit, and requires a CASE account for access. If you have previously logged into case.org please use the same email and password. 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. 

Once you have a CASE account and you have received confirmation from the research team, please navigate to the Benchmarking Toolkit. After you login, the survey should be visible in your "Active Surveys". If you do not see the survey, please email research@case.org. 

We have created two documents to assist with survey completion. The first is a Guidance Document that contains definitions, counting standards, examples, and question-by-question guidance. The second document is a Survey Validation worksheet for use in assembling and checking data prior to entering it in the online survey.  The excel sheet performs some automatic quality checks on your data. For example, it checks that "contactable alumni" is less than "total alumni".  

It is possible to start the survey, save responses, and resume the survey later but be sure to click the "Save Responses" at the bottom of each survey section before closing out.  Saving data in the validation form also provides a backup should you neglect to save data or have a connectivity issue.  There is a comments section at the bottom of each a survey, but upon returning to the page it appears that comments have disappeared. This is known issue but rest assured your responses will be saved as long as you click "Save Responses". Please reach out to research@case.org if you would like to verify your responses have been saved. 

After completing your responses, but before submitting the survey there is an additional step you will have to take. New this year, we are requiring that the senior most Advancement Professional/Chief Advancement Officer reviews and signs off on reported data. Participants are also asked to sign a Data Sharing Agreement (DSA) (linked in the survey).  The DSA is in place to ensure others do not share results outside of their institution and guarantees that results are only used for benchmarking purposes. Access to benchmarking capabilities will be restricted unless the DSA is completed.

Once the DSA is signed and sign off is provided, you will be free to submit your data. CASE conducts additional validation and may follow up about any perceived discrepancies. Once the data is validated, CASE will perform data analysis and write a report on the findings. The report will be distributed to participants and posted on both the CASE and CCAE website. 

Once CASE has reviewed data, all survey participants who signed the data sharing agreement will be granted access to the Benchmarking Toolkit enabling them to benchmark fundraising data and other information year-over-year and against anonymized peer groups.

Survey participants will also receive a report of aggregate findings, be able participate in an online report and discussion of results, and have the opportunity to order customized institutional reports.