SUE CUNNINGHAM
President and CEO of CASE
@CunninghamCASE

Credit: Sean Sime

Albert Einstein said, “Not everything  that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Einstein’s point is well made. We know that data have become increasingly important to our work in advancing education. In my recently published book, Global Exchange, the chapter “The Art and Science: Understanding the When and the Why for Data and Analysis” considers this very issue. When I talk with CASE members about our benchmarking surveys an important question often arises: as we track and use more information about engagement, when is the work of capturing data valuable, and when is it not?  

In this issue of Currents, we celebrate our Circle of Excellence Awards. As you seek inspiration from these initiatives, I invite you to consider what underlies so many successes at our institutions. Often, the insights come from data. Data not only informs decisions we make as professionals, it also should influence strategic decision-making at the highest levels for our institutions. From demographics about the students we recruit for our academic programs to the giving trends that inform our fundraising, hundreds of decisions we make each day are data-driven. When we are functioning at our most strategic, we use the significant data at our disposal to make informed decisions that will improve our institutional advancement outcomes. We bring these outcomes to life with the stories of impact we tell. 

This month, we mark five years of the CASE-Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education research partnership in which we collect advancement data from Canadian colleges and universities. The results will be published in February. What is remarkable about this survey, which aligns closely with similar CASE fundraising benchmarking surveys in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K., is how quickly institutions have become adept at both data collection and learning from it. We are now able to produce better insights into advancement trends within institutions across Canada and comparatively with other parts of the world. 

Early in 2023, we will begin to derive the first insights from our new advancement data partnership with the National Association of Independent Schools. Now for the first time, the Data Analysis for School Leadership, a long-standing data set, includes comprehensive data on engagement and giving in the schools sector, providing broader understanding of alumni, trustee, parent, and donor engagement. When the survey closed in October 2022, nearly 500 CASE member institutions had completed all of the new DASL advancement questions.  

These important research collaborations with longtime CASE partners are just two sources of advancement benchmarks, metrics, and analytics provided to you as a CASE member. And this year, we are rebranding CASE AMAtlas as CASE Insights to better reflect what we do to support your work. We invite you to learn more about this exciting effort.

I encourage you to stay abreast of the coming research reports, even if they are not from your region or about your institution type. Sometimes we can gain new insights by casting our gaze elsewhere and then bringing that perspective home. I also invite you to participate in any and all surveys specific to your institution type and region, so we can continue to learn together. 

The more information we have, the more informed our work will be with a holistic view of trends in the profession. Some of the 2022 Circle of Excellence awardees have already embraced the use of data in their advancement efforts resulting in greater ingenuity, more effective teamwork, and outstanding results for their work in advancing education. Whilst all that can be counted cannot be measured, much can—and we invite you to join the teams around the globe making data count.