CASE-Aligned Reporting Eliminates Manual Data Compilation for Advancement Teams
For decades, advancement professionals have wrestled with a persistent challenge: proving the measurable impact of alumni engagement. While fundraising dollars offer clear metrics, the broader spectrum of alumni involvement—mentorship programs, volunteer activities, event participation, and ongoing communication—has remained notoriously difficult to capture, standardize, and translate into strategic insights that resonate with university leadership.
The fragmentation of engagement data across multiple systems compounds this problem. Alumni relations teams often spend countless hours manually extracting information from disparate platforms, attempting to align scattered data points with recognized frameworks, and building reports that institutional leaders can use to inform strategic decisions. This labor-intensive process not only drains resources but also delays the insights that could shape more effective engagement strategies.
Bridging the Gap Between Alumni Activity and Institutional Strategy
PeopleGrove, a SaaS platform specializing in higher education engagement and experiential learning, has introduced CASE-aligned reporting functionality within its Engagement Hub. This development addresses the measurement challenge by automating the alignment of alumni activities with the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s globally recognized Insights on Alumni Engagement framework.
Originally launched in 2019, the CASE framework established four core engagement modes: Philanthropic, Volunteer, Experiential, and Communications. This standardized approach enables institutions to move beyond simple participation counts toward holistic measurement of how alumni remain connected to their alma maters throughout their lifetimes.
The new functionality maps alumni platform activity directly to these CASE categories, eliminating the manual data reconciliation that previously consumed advancement team bandwidth. When alumni participate in mentorship conversations, attend virtual networking events, or engage with institutional communications through the platform, these interactions automatically populate within the appropriate CASE framework categories.
“CASE has set the standard for how institutions define and measure engagement,” explained Dawn Hiles, CEO of PeopleGrove. “By partnering directly with CASE and integrating that framework directly into our platform, we are enabling universities to easily translate alumni engagement into actionable strategic insights.”
Technical Integration Delivers Strategic Capabilities
The reporting functionality operates within PeopleGrove’s broader Engagement Hub, which serves as a centralized platform connecting prospective students, current students, alumni, and staff. For advancement professionals specifically, the system now offers several operational advantages:
Instant generation of CASE standards-aligned reports replaces periodic manual compilation. Real-time tracking captures engagement as it occurs rather than through retrospective analysis. The centralized data repository eliminates the need to aggregate information from fragmented systems. Longitudinal tracking enables institutions to identify engagement trends and benchmark their performance against peer institutions using the same measurement framework.
Jenny Cooke-Smith, Executive Director of CASE Insights, emphasized the collaborative value: “Our collaboration with PeopleGrove empowers institutions to focus less on compiling data and more on telling the powerful stories of alumni connection, contribution, and community.”
The Strategic Context for Standardized Measurement
This development arrives as higher education institutions face mounting pressure to demonstrate return on investment across all operational areas. Advancement teams must increasingly justify budget allocations with data that illustrates how alumni engagement contributes to institutional priorities beyond direct fundraising outcomes—including student recruitment, career outcomes support, and institutional reputation.
PeopleGrove has indicated continued investment in alumni and advancement capabilities, with upcoming integration into national research initiatives including the forthcoming National Alumni Survey. These efforts signal broader industry momentum toward standardized, credible measurement approaches that translate complex engagement ecosystems into insights actionable across institutional stakeholder groups.
For advancement professionals managing limited resources while navigating expanding expectations, automated CASE-aligned reporting represents a shift from data compilation toward strategic analysis—potentially freeing capacity for the relationship-building and program innovation that drives meaningful alumni connection.
About PeopleGrove
PeopleGrove empowers colleges and universities to deliver meaningful engagement and hands-on experiential learning that drives measurable outcomes for students, alumni, academic programs, and institutions. From student and alumni engagement to clinical placements and competency management, PeopleGrove helps institutions improve student and alumni outcomes. Leveraged by more than 500 institutions and 750+ academic programs, including 98% of key clinical programs in the United States, PeopleGrove is the leader in engagement and experiential learning management.
Learn how PeopleGrove is shaping the future with a comprehensive suite of solutions across the entire learner lifecycle – from student and alumni engagement to clinical experiential education, mentorship, and career readiness. Visit us at www.peoplegrove.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
